GRSS Continues Outreach at EO Summit for Increased Industry Engagement
GRSS sponsored a booth at the EO Summit conference once again this year to raise awareness and drive engagement with the Society from the larger Earth Observation industry. GRSS volunteers who staffed the booth felt the experience was very positive and overwhelmingly successful, especially in introducing the Society to people who may have had little or no familiarity with it.
In its second year, EO Summit 2025 drew several hundred attendees to New York City in June for two days of presentation tracks and exhibitions. As was true in its inaugural event in London last year, the EO Summit focuses on bridging the gap between commercial applications and end users. This year’s theme was “Where EO Meets Innovation.”
Nathan Longbotham, GRSS Director of Industry Relations, helped staff the booth at the 2024 and 2025 events. He said the booth was mutually beneficial to GRSS and EO Summit attendees: “This is part of the geospatial community that we don’t usually have a lot of contact with – specifically, practitioners on the industry side.”
Having participated in the event last year, GRSS went into this year’s Summit with a well-honed message for industry professionals, promoting the unparalleled technical expertise found at every level of the Society.
“[We discussed] how our technical expertise pairs well with attendees who have a bent toward geospatial applications and business models,” said Longbotham, who is particularly well-suited to lead such discussions. His day job is Head of Product at Impact Observatory based in Washington, D.C.
Booth visitors were informed of the many outreach mechanisms offered by GRSS that industry could leverage to meet its own objectives. These, of course, include Society publications, webinars, summer schools, and technical conferences. Even industry professionals who had never heard of GRSS in the past immediately recognized the educational value that such engagements could offer in keeping them up to speed on the latest technical innovations being developed in the academic and research fields.
In addition to keeping the workforce educated, industry professionals were encouraged to take advantage of the various GRSS outreach activities to let the research community know about the rapidly evolving technical needs of the commercial EO sector. GRSS members encouraged the professionals to submit articles and papers, make conference presentations, and even consider sponsoring an exhibit booth at IGARSS.
In return, such exposure to the industry could benefit the many GRSS members who plan to enter the private sector workforce upon earning their advanced geoscience degree. Having knowledge of the employment opportunities available to them in many businesses represents an enormous advantage come graduation time.
Many of the conversations led to discussions of the current employment market in the global industry. Several attendees expressed interest in knowing GRSS has a job board and that events such as IGARSS are ripe for companies to recruit the best and brightest new degree-holders in the geoscience and remote sensing fields.
Overall, however, Longbotham said the prevailing sentiment is the Earth Observation job market remains soft. Private sector businesses are still reluctant to hire as they see the industry attempting to align their commercial product offerings with demand from end users. This could take a while to sort itself out, especially with new technologies such as AI having such a significant impact on traditional job functions.
Longbotham observed the EO Summit was created to bring about better alignment between supply and demand in the market, which will ultimately help alleviate stagnation in job creation. He saw many people engaged in valuable conversations about how technologies and innovations can be connected to viable business models either as new businesses or products that will spur investment and growth in the industry.
Key takeaways from the booth experience included realization of how valuable local GRSS activities are to everyone. For people learning about the Society for the first time, one of their initial queries was to ask what events take place near them. This underscored the value of regional GRSS chapters.
Booth visitors were given information about joining GRSS either as individuals or organizations, and the EO Summit will undoubtedly bring new members into the Society. But from a personal observation, Longbotham believes the primary value of outreach efforts like this is that people recognize GRSS as a resource for networking and engagement to foster the exchange of ideas among all sectors of the geoscience and remote sensing community.
