One of the long-standing problems for the geospatial community is the need to enhance our ability to influence decision makers, whether these be politicians, senior executives in commercial companies or leaders in our own organisations. This issue has again been highlighted as a challenge in the recent webinars discussing the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) developed under UN-GGIM.

This free tutorial will provide practical advice on presenting to decision makers and will help to make your propositions successful. The tutorial will be delivered by experts with many years of experience of interacting with senior decision makers in the geospatial industry whether in the public or private sectors: Andrew Coote, CEO of ConsultingWhere and John Kedar, global geospatial strategy advisor and lead author of the Communications and Engagement, components of the IGIF.

You will learn about:

-          Developing the Geospatial Value Proposition

-          How to craft a Communications Strategy

-          Understanding your audience

-          Choosing key messages and how to deliver them

-          Preparing for key presentations

-          Learning from feedback

The course will be delivered in two parts.

1) Self-paced e-learning module (available from Wednesday 24^th June)

This has been developed by Nigel Edmead, Principal at Enumanation, specialist in e-learning for the geospatial sector. This introductory course will be sent to delegates to complete in advance of the second session.

2) Webinar (Tuesday 7^th July 10:30 – 11:30 CEST / UTC+1 London, UTC+2 Brussels)

Chaired by Joep Crompvoets, Secretary General of EuroSDR and public policy expert. This session will include short presentations highlighting practical experience from Andrew Coote and John Kedar. The bulk of the webinar will however be given over to answering questions posed by delegates concerning their challenges influencing decision makers. Any questions not answered in the session will be followed up by the experts with delegates. 

Next steps:

i)                Feedback (positive and negative) on the tutorial would be much appreciated, please email EuroSDR: eurosdr@kuleuven.be

ii)              We will provide answers by email to all of the questions asked during the webinar and, as requested, include links to additional material.

This will be completed within the next two weeks.

iii)              The slides that accompanied the webinar can be accessed here:  https://vimeo.com/437105575

Vimeo is free and does not require you to login. 

iv)             Attendees who were unable to complete the e-learning course ahead of the webinar will be able to do so until August 7^th 2020.

As a reminder, this 30 minute course explains how to plan, prepare and execute an effective communications strategy to ensure decision makers cater for geospatial in their decision making process.

Please check the registration confirmation email for access instructions or email nigel.edmead@enumanation.com for a new link.

v)               A follow-up course on how to identify and evaluate the socio-economic benefits of geospatial projects is now being planned, further information will follow.

About the course organisers:

Professor Joep Crompvoets is professor and research manager at KU Leuven Public Governance Institute (Belgium). He holds the chair on ‘information management in the public sector’ and is Secretary-General of EuroSDR – a European spatial data research network linking national mapping agencies with research institutes and universities for the purpose of applied research in the domain of geospatial information management.

Andrew Coote, CEO of ConsultingWhere, has over thirty years’ in the management of location-enabled applications. He has held senior management positions in both the public and private sector in the UK and Africa. His expertise lies in strategy development and implementation, return on investment and market assessment.

John Kedar is a senior advisor to governments and global geospatial strategy advisor with a strong government policy and decision-making background. He offers independent strategic advice to enable nations, institutions and cities gain economic, social, and environmental value from a location-based approach to decision-making.

Nigel Edmead is a geo-focused learning development specialist with over 25 years’ experience in the geo-spatial sector. He has worked on numerous donor-funded programmes in South East Asia and Africa in land administration and environmental domains and supported the launch of new geospatial products and solutions to the market in the UK.