The Spatial Connection

SCP_002_Brendan Wesdock_YouTube
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Kelly: Welcome back to The Spatial Connection, the podcast where we explore the fascinating journeys of geospatial professionals and dive into the incredible ways location based technologies are shaping our world. I'm your host, Kelly McGee, and today's guest is Brendan Westock. Brendan has an incredible story that began with a love for maps, a Commodore 64, and coding a geographic database at just 12 years old.

From staring at a raised relief map in college to discovering GIS during an internship, Brendan Westock. He turned a lifelong passion for geography into an extraordinary career. From working with Rand McNally in the early days of digital mapping, to leading major GIS projects for the military and transportation industry, and guiding companies like Geodecisions and GeoCGI.

His path is filled with innovation and impact. We'll hear the lessons learned and advice he has for the next generation of geospatial professionals. Stay tuned as we connect the dots of his remarkable geospatial journey.

All right. Hello, everybody. Today we have Brendan Westock with us. I think Brendan's got a good story. You know, we'll try to bring you another good story, uh, each time. Definitely looking forward to hearing from Brendan. I have talked to him too much in a, in a while and it's great getting caught up with him.

Uh, I've known Brendan for quite a few years and, uh, I'm going to let him kind of walk through his story, uh, to kind of learn a little bit about his journey as we go through this here. Brendan, first of all, welcome. Uh, I'm glad you're able to be here. What I'd like to do is, uh, if you could start off, maybe tell us a little bit about where you heard about or how you got involved with GIS, you know, what, what was your initial introduction to it?

Did you hear about it through school, through work or whatever? And then maybe lead us through, you know, how you got your first job and, and kind of along your career path. With that, you know, yeah, please let us know how you got started.

Brendan: Sounds good. Well, you know, I'll start a little before where I first heard about GIS It kind of starts when I was a kid, you know, I really, uh, I've always been involved with or love maps, love to look at maps, love to draw maps, do that kind of stuff, even when I was 12, I got a Commodore 64, you probably remember this Kelly, you know, uh, I had, and I got the whole, like the whole, the whole thing.

I got the, I had the Commodore 64, the green screen monitor, I had a dot matrix printer and a dataset to store data on. Right. So the dataset was just a cassette, you know, you put in, it was, you know, Not even a floppy drive. It was just a, you know, music cassette, cassette tape. Yeah. Yeah. So I had that and, uh, you know, you couldn't do anything with that unless you had programs or whatever.

So, uh, a lot of people that time would buy PC magazine and PC magazine had, um, programs that you would have to type everything in, save it off and do all that kind of stuff, all the code and everything. So that's where I first learned how to code. But one of the first programs I ever wrote was, it was essentially a big array, but I called it a database.

And it was. A list of all the countries in their geographic center coordinates. And I had this thing where you could put in, you could, you could, you know, an interface where you could type in, you could start typing the name of the country and it would bring up the list of the country. So like A and B and C, you know, go down the list and it would have the coordinate of the country there.

That was my first program I think I ever wrote, uh, doing that. So when you think about GIS, you know, it's not quite GIS, but it was geographic in nature. Um, that would have been like 1986, 1987. I didn't even know what GIS was. I just knew that I liked that kind of stuff. And it was, it was fun. Fast forward a couple of years, I ended up at Penn state in 1991.

So kind of still pre internet. So I ended up there and you know, when I came out of high school, I really didn't. You know, but in my mind, there were two things you could do in college, business or engineering. And I didn't like engineering. I didn't like math. I didn't like that type of stuff. So I ended up going into business and did that for a while.

My freshman year, most of my sophomore year, and I think it was in my, um, my fifth semester. So my junior year, beginning of my junior year, I had an economics class and I was sitting in this class and it had, uh, the classroom actually had a plastic relief map up on the mall, you know, of grazed relief, USGS quad.

And I just found myself just staring at a thing every class. I wasn't paying attention to class. I was just looking at this map and it's like, this is what I want to do. And. So, I went back, uh, to my dorm room and tried to figure out what that major was. And I, at Penn State, you were issued what was called, uh, we used to call it the Blue Bible.

It was about the size of a Bible and about that thick. And those were all the majors and the requirements for every major. So, I'm flipping through this, trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I landed on Geography. I was like, this is cool. So, I'll start taking some Geography class. So, I ended up dropping that class, and I think taking a Geography class instead.

It was, uh, you know, just a Human Geography class, but it was the only one I could get into at the time. And that started my, my, uh, my, my path down, uh, the world of, uh, geography, GIS. Yeah, that's right at the beginning. This would have been in 1993 or so 94, right? The beginning of, of, of GIS really being taught in school.

There wasn't a GIS degree even in geography. There wasn't. You know, at Penn state, they had emphases and, uh, they didn't even have an emphasis at that time on GIS. So I ended up in urban and regional planning. Cause I liked the plan. I like planning, I like maps. I like that type of stuff. So I ended up in that and that kind of subgroup of geography.

I did five and a half years. So I did an internship after my year, before I started my senior year, after I started, before I started my super senior year and I did an internship with the, uh, Clearfield County Planning Commission, which is. The county I grew up in, in Pennsylvania and, uh, great, great time there.

The planning director was only a couple of years older than me. I think I was 22, 23. He might've been 26, 27. So we clicked, you know, pretty well. And he's like, Hey man, there's this computer in the back here that no one ever uses. I think there's a GIS program on there. I don't even know. You can go play with that and figure out what we can do with it.

So that was my introduction really to GIS. No, I shouldn't say my introduction to GIS. That was my Hands on introduction. So this computer didn't even have windows on it. It had DOS, whatever, version of DOS and had like MapInfo version two, something on it with, uh, with, with the DOS version of MapInfo. So I ended up playing with that all summer and doing stuff and creating maps and doing things.

And, uh, came back that fall and I think I took all GIS classes that fall before I graduated and, uh, whenever I could take and I started off the very first GIS class I ever took. You might remember this was, um. Pathless GIS was it? Oh, yeah, yeah. So ESRI bought it at some point in the 90s and just killed it.

But it was, you know, it was one of the only PC based GIS programs. Everything was on a Spark Station. You know, you had ArcInfo on a Spark Station. You had, uh, you know, uh, uh, well, that was the big one. You really didn't have much open source. You had, uh, you know, a few things like Atlas and a few things like MapInfo, which were on the PC, but you really didn't find it as an academics.

Right. At all. So that was my experience. I got, you know, I took an ArcInfo class. I took, I took an ArcView class. That was the only other thing on PC was ArcView. So my, my super senior semester, uh, took a bunch of those classes and.

Kelly: Cause that's about time ArcViews started getting popular.

Brendan: Yeah, that would have been, uh, that would have been the end of 1995.

So I graduated in December of 95, took those classes and uh, when I graduated from there, you know, this is like, you know, the internet just happened around then, right? So like when I started school in 1991, no one had internet access, no one had PCs, no one ever knew what a PC was, right? So if you had to do anything computer wise, you had to go to the computer lab and get on the mainframe.

And I had an email address but never used it. And it only worked, I think, inside the university. So you can only ever email anybody inside the university. By the time I graduated, I had a PC on my desktop. A lot of people did. Penn State had dial up internet access for free, which was one of the first universities in the country to have that.

So I could do from my, you know, from my fraternity house where I was living, I can dial up off campus and, and, uh, get into things. But at that time there were still, you know, news groups were a big thing and think of them today, you know, for folks listening to this now, uh, sort of like job boards. Oh, yeah.

They were great topics, right? So you could post anything out there in these newsrooms, but they were run specifically for jobs. And I posted my resume out there and, uh, someone from Rand McNally found my resume and gave me a call and said, Hey, you know, uh, we'd like to interview you. And they flew me out and I went to Chicago and interviewed and came back and kind of did the dance of interviewing for a while and they ended up offering me a job.

And I moved to, so this would have been in 1995, moved to Chicago. So. And, um, started working, uh, for Ram McDally, which, uh, you know, as geographers, everybody's probably pretty familiar with there. Ram Malinowski. Yeah. So I got, it was a great opportunity to work there. It was still, it was a time of transition there as well.

So you still had the road Atlas, which was the big thing. They actually ran three shifts of cartographers on the road. On the road atlas at that time and then they had the the real artists the guys and gals that created the uh, The tabletop world atlas books that were all done by hand shaded relief by hand all that kind of stuff And then you had us upstart young people in this group called new media, and we were producing software products.

There were three that we, that I worked on when I was there, they had a couple of others too. They had a screensaver, which were, you know, big back then too. Like people were actually paying money for screensaver, believe it or not. They had a couple other things too, a couple of games, but the three big ones were trip maker, which was, you know, routing your, you know, creating your route for your, for your trip.

And you would print it out and take it. So you print

Kelly: it out. Yeah.

Brendan: Yeah. And then there was Street Finder, which was, they couldn't put the, the detailed street level stuff on the same application, with the same application as the routing because it was too much data to put on one CD. So they put TripMaker and Street Finder on two different products and Street Finder you load up and you'd just be able to like search addresses and points of interest and things like that.

And the third one was the new Millennium World of Atlas, which was way ahead of its time. Um, it had a 3d bendable globe by 10 years before Google Earth. It's really cool, really cool. And they produced a lot of content. There were a lot of researchers that produced a lot of content for that. So you could click on the globe and, you know, get a lot of information.

It was not, it was, you know, an encyclopedic atlas is what it was. It was really cool opportunity to work there. And that kind of set me up, you know, I got involved with that. I, that's where I started really getting into GIS because I worked as a GIS analyst, uh, using writing map info, map, basic code, believe it or not, to help manage points of interest and database.

Uh, you know, the. The line work and the routing and I created a tool, uh, to be able to, one of the things I wanted to do in TripMaker was to be able to, you could download a construction file, like where long term construction was or there were road closures. So I developed this tool in MapBasic for, uh, an analyst to go in and create those blockages on those roads.

And then users could like update when they did it before they ran a route to make sure they weren't going, you know, through a road that was closed. That's it. So that was my, the analyst was, you know, we're already doing part of it already because right. Graham McNally ran a program. Uh, well, you're, you're probably familiar with it and the DOD side of things with detodd.

Oh yeah. It will official distances used to be, used to be just basically, uh, Ray McNally's PC Mylar is what it was. Uh, recent years it's been ALK's product has been that similar product. PC Mylar goes back to the 1970s. Where it was a mainframe driven program at the time where you would have, you would literally be a trucker and you would call up and say, Hey, I'm going from, uh, you know, Abilene to, uh, you know, to, to Jackson, Mississippi.

And then they would figure out, okay, this is the official mileage. This is what you're doing. You know, this is the road roads are going to take. And they, they create that out. They create that and they called it a trip tick. So is this literally, you know, the triple a started doing them where you have this, like, Matt, you know, just your route on, uh, on.

On a rectangular piece of paper that would fold out that you could have in your vehicle. So they started to do that in the 70s. So that, that group still existed at the time. And they did all these construction updates. So they really wanted it for the truckers more than for the casual person using ChairMaker.

So, uh, I built that tool and it's funny, funny story about that. So fast forward to 2020. 13, 2014, we get hired by Rand McNally as a consultant. This time, Rand McNally is a little different type of company. It's been sold a couple of times, you know, back when I worked there, there was the, the rallies were still running it.

Kelly (2): Okay.

Brendan: But we've been through like five different private equity firms that own them. And, you know, they, they shrunk down quite a bit and they brought Geodecisions on as a, uh, as a, as a consultant to come in. We, we helped them build their, transform them over to a complete RGIS cartographic environment. Uh, But we also did a bunch of other work there too.

So they're taking us through the steps and all the things that happen. They're like, yeah, we have this Matt basic program that runs the construction stuff and we don't know who wrote it and it's been here for 15 years. And I was like, I read it 15 years ago, tell you all about it. So it was kind of funny to, I, it was almost 20 years at that point.

Uh, but they were still using it at that point for, uh, for construction stuff for, for, um, for their, uh, mile maker product. So it was kind of interesting. That's kind of crazy. Yeah. All that long. Yeah. Yeah. For a long time. And I ended up there and then came back to, you know, I lived in Chicago for two, three years, four years.

I can't remember how long loved it there. Great, great time there, but I was getting homesick at the time and I wanted to come back and I started looking for jobs back in Pennsylvania where I'm from, uh, the Western Pennsylvania area. So are you with Geodecisions at this time? No, no. So I was at Ram McDowell at that point.

So , uh, looking for a job. Got it. And then, uh, I ended up getting an opportunity with, ran with, uh, with, um, GeoDecisions at the time. So this would've in 1999. So I come on board a GeoDecisions as just a GIS analyst or GS developer really. And I didn't really have anything. I was doing the first. You know, a couple of months I was working there, I was just doing odds and ends and things.

And I came back to State College, Pennsylvania. So GeoDecisions, to give you a brief story, GeoDecisions was a spin off from Penn State University back in the mid 80s. And, uh, Gannett Fleming was an engineering company, ended up buying GeoDecisions in 1992, uh, and making that kind of their GIS group, uh, at that time.

And, uh, At that time, I was, there were only about 30 people in Geodecisions, it wasn't a big company, it wasn't a big group. Most of the people were in state college. And, uh, so I was there, uh, in 99, and eventually I got assigned to this job they needed people to work on. And it was this, it was, I remember the, the person that, uh, that ran the job, they used to call it MITMAC.

And, uh, MITMAC, and I was like, yeah, I'm working on this MITMAC job. What it was, was MITMIC, was Military Transportation Management Command. Yeah. What became STDC a few years later. So that was Iris, initially. Iris. So I started doing work on that. I was doing, I did kind of like a lot of the stuff around the edges of it.

So I built some really cool tools with some early dev, uh, wireless development stuff, uh, with a, with cell phones. Uh, having, having some information, uh, uh, being able to, on a, you know, on, not even like on a real screen, I mean, know, it was just like a, you know, a Nokia, you know, type of stuff. I say your little flip, flip phone, flip phone, you know, said like, you know, like, you know, you could do, you could do, uh, you know, 60 characters or whatever.

So I was doing some stuff with that and doing some, um, uh, back end stuff, uh, creating maps and, and just GIS support work. And then 9 11 happened. So, uh, 9 11 happened. Uh, that's, I would have been with GeoDecisions a little less than two years at that point. That was an interesting story unto itself because I wrote a program.

To do, to take like an off the shelf GPS unit, literally a, you know, Garmin old school GPS unit, you can buy a Walmart or Bass Pro or wherever. And then pairing up with a PC that had a, at the time was a wireless, you have a cell phone card on it. It can send GPS points back. So I created this whole thing.

And so, so what were

Kelly: you developing this in at that time?

Brendan: All that stuff was done in VB6. Oh, wow. So, believe it or not, before dotnet, uh, before that world, uh, this was in VB six. It was, and it was using map objects and VB six. Okay. As we map objects in VB six. And so I had a, a console developed with map objects, so you could see the dot map and you could push that information out to, to GIS or into a database.

But it was, uh, you know, the, the, the laptop was hooked to A GPS and to a. Cellular card. And that cellular card would push these positions back to a database, which then we could see on the web. So we had an arch IMS set up. Where we're, you know, breadcrumb tracking vehicles. And so we, we were given a test to do.

It was a convoy that was going from Fort Eustis, Virginia to Yuma, Arizona. And so I went down to Fort Eustis, Virginia and set them up with this thing and was like, all right, guys, see you in a few weeks, I'm going on vacation. So I head out to, I flew out to Denver, met up some friends. We did some hiking out there in Rocky mountain national park.

And, uh, so I, I, I'm coming back, my birthday is September 9th, so I was out there for my birthday. That was a Sunday. Monday was September 10th. I fly back on the red eye on September 10th out of Denver. So I fly from Denver to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Philadelphia, about. 6, 6 30, something like that in the morning and then had an eight 30 flight or eight, a little after eight o'clock flight pop up to State College, which is only about 40 minutes.

I land in state college and it's like eight 30, you know this is right in the middle of everything. Yeah. And I, on the radio, they're talking about it. So I, I was heading to the office because I was gonna have to fly to Yuma to help them out a little bit. So I was heading to the office directly, get to the office.

Everybody's talking about, you know, plane hit the World Trade Center and there were a bunch of us talking about it. We're like, you know, we're all history buffs and geographers are like, Oh yeah, plane B 17 hit the Empire State Building in World War II and it was fine. And you know, and so then we hear that there was an, you know, uh, a second plane hit.

So we go over, our office at that time was in a complex called Innovation Park, which was run by Penn State. Uh, it was, it was an office park, but the Penn Stater Hotel was next door to us. And we went over there cause they had a TV in our lobby. So we went over there and saw what was going on, and then we heard about the Pentagon being hit.

And so we called our client. They're like, shut everything down. And that time we were hosting everything for STDC, it's that we're MIPMIC. And they're like, shut everything down. We're, we're, we're, you know, we're, we're just going to take a precautionary, you know, effort. We don't know what's going on. And then that sped things up, you know, for me, I, um, at that point they wanted somebody down at Fort Eustis and I was young and single at the time.

And, uh, they said. Come on down. So I went, uh, that, that, so that would've been in early 2002. I'm, I started doing kind of like two weeks there, weekend home, two weeks going back and forth, going back and forth, and eventually ended up buying a house here and meeting my now wife and having a 20-year-old and a almost a 17-year-old.

So I've been here ever since. So I really, well been there a while then. Yeah. It's been 20, what, going on 23 years I've been here in this area. So,

Kelly: so, so how long were you into. I ended up being with Geodecisions almost, almost 25 years. So, uh, so in Geodecisions, you kind of moved, moved your way up a little bit there too.

Brendan: Yeah. So at that point, you know, at that point I was, and I was fortunate at Geodecisions. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and along a lot of it. So moved down here, got to move. I moved up to becoming running this program, IRIS, you know, Intelligent Rail, Rail Information System.

Uh, okay. As military, you gotta have a long acronym. Yeah, I got to have a long acronym and, and, you know, it became a little, you know, 50, 60, 000 program to several million dollars a year program over time and ran about 20 years. So, uh, as Iris and then it, then it transformed to the transportation geographic information system and still isn't used today in some form or fashion.

So yeah, still there, we might, we might call it that, but we had that. And we, uh, so throughout that time, you know, I, um, I think in 2004, They asked me to kind of run that from a, from a, from a perspective of all, not just Iris, but all of our military work that we had. So from a technical perspective, running that, and I did that director of military solutions, I think was my title.

And then eventually I got promoted to VP of military solutions. And then, uh, in 2010 or so we had some people leave the firm and there was a big shakeup. The president at the time moved up. He actually, uh, Bob Scare became president of Gannett Fleming, our parent company. So there's a big shakeup of things moving at that time.

And I got the opportunity then in 2012, then to become president of Geodecisions. So I spent almost 13 years in that role as a, as president and got to do some cool things as president too and be involved in things, you know, there's, uh, You know, GeoDecisions did some cool things and, uh, you know, other things besides IRIS.

There was, uh, Fishity, which I don't know if you remember Fishity.

Kelly: Yeah, I remember that. Yes, Fishity. Was, uh, one of the employees kind of came up with it, didn't he?

Brendan: Yeah, so we had a program again at Fleming. It's called the Cooperative Research and Innovation Center, which as a second hand, I wore, I wore as well running that group, which was a virtual group, really.

It was nobody's first job. And the reason I got to wear that hat is because almost everything that came through there had a geospatial component to it. So, Geodecisions ended up being the executors of a lot of these great ideas that came from employees. And Fishity was one of them. Fishity was, at the time, you know, right when Facebook was coming out.

So, there was a social media, uh, mapping, angling, you know, uh, website that, uh, you go out and plan your, plan your, uh, your fishing trips and, Look at really cool maps that had a lot of fishing information as well as then share your information out in a social media type platform in a secure way. So if you want to share with some people, you could, but not everybody.

We seeded that in Ghana Fleming, uh, did that for several years. And then, uh, eventually spun it out. Uh, got angel funding and venture capital funding ran that. It ran on its own for about four years. Uh, and I served on the board of directors during that time. And then we sold to, uh, FLIR. So FLIR has a number of companies, people, most mostly know FLIR because of their imaging products.

Remote thermal, thermal, thermal imaging products. But they also own a bunch of other stuff, including Geospatial. They own the Hummingbird. Line of, uh, fish finders. So they bought Fishity at that time. It was just the right time in the market where everybody was buying up data. So Garmin's Garmin had got into the market big time and bought up a company called Navionics Navion, which is another company, not to be confused with Navionics, but Navion had bought, uh, another, another mapping company, and then, uh, uh, Fleer decided that and Hummingbird wanted to get.

They're, they're hands on fishing partnered with fishing hotspots, which is a upper Midwest, you know, paper map company that did fishing hotspot mapping for years. It was, you know, a little great little company. So they bought us and fishing hotspots at the same time. So really interesting stuff. It's still going on now.

Brian Jensen, who was, uh, the employee that came up with it, ended up being the, the founder and struggling founder. And, you know, did all the legwork and did all the pitches. Got rewarded, you know, got paid, you know, they, they bought, they bought it and he made some money on it. And now he's good, uh, the CEO of that group with employer.

So he's still, uh, still there with it. You know, this has been That started in 2009 ish, and we spun it off in 2014. So it's, he's been there for quite a long time now. So yeah, that's about 10 years now. Yeah, yeah. 10 years he's been, uh, he's been there. So it's, uh, it's, it's interesting stuff. So, but did that.

And then, you know, one of the late, the latest one that's still kind of in the, in the funding aspect of things is, uh, is ESP technology, uh, logistics technology. Which is really a game changer in how we, we approach supply chain problems from a geographic perspective. And, uh, it's a partnership between GeoDecisions, Esri and a private equity firm called, uh, Sabre Partners out in LA.

Uh, and, uh, it's, uh, and I still, uh, am involved with that. I mean, not only an investor, but I, but I sit on the board is that with that as well and help advise them. Um, we had several employees from GeoDecisions cause it kind of was seeded within GeoDecisions. A lot of the technology we used in Iris. Uh, a lot of those folks went over and, uh, worked with ESP, uh, left you a decision to do that.

We, you know, we did it with, uh, their, with our blessing to go over there and get that moving forward. And uh, it's been, it's been going really well right now. So we're, we're, we're in the process now of acquiring more funding and moving forward and more, you know, growing, growing the business and, uh, hopefully eventually, you know, we'll eventually sell it at some point, but, uh, doing great stuff.

So good. So that brings me to today. Right. Pretty close. So I left GeoDecision. So, so Gannon Fleming, our parent company was bought by a private equity firm at the end of 2022. And I was a partner within Gannon Fleming as well, and, uh, was fortunate enough, uh, to, to, you know, as we did that, it became the right time after 18 months or so for me to, for me to move on and do some different things.

And to, you know, take that, uh, that opportunity I was given to, to, to do something different. So I went to a company called Geo CGI. Uh, which is a great small woman on a small business company, mainly in the defense space, really went there to help them with their work with NASA. And uh, that's been great.

Uh, NASA Langley Research Center is right near my home. Uh, it was perfect fit, uh, worked out great and, uh, really enjoyed working with the folks there and doing some things, but I'm, uh, I'm moving on from there now too. Yeah. So what are you doing these days? I've decided to hang out my own shingle and, uh, I'm going to do a little bit of consulting With, uh, firms, private equity firms that are, uh, that are looking, uh, to invest in GIS technologies and GIS companies.

And I'm also going to be working with, uh, the local, uh, angel investment group here in Hampton Roads, uh, called, uh, 757 Angels, which does investment in technology company and other companies as well. But, uh, technology companies in particular, and they're one of the better, uh, angel investment firms in the country.

So, or angel investment groups in the country. So, real excited about that. And, uh, I don't know if I'll call it. Uh, you know, I'm looking forward to having a little more free time and doing some other things that are, that I want to do. So,

Kelly: well, you know, they say that about founders, you know, founders, you kind of think you're going to go out and just work when you want to work.

It doesn't work that way. No, but now you'll be in a place where you could, you have maybe a little bit more options for that.

Brendan: Yeah. It's 24 hours a day for those folks and doing things, you know, and just, I haven't truly been a founder. But I've been around them and working, uh, you know, working with these startup companies and working with stuff that we've done within, within the GEO decisions and it's a lot of effort, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of time in airplanes, a lot of sleepless nights, you know, and it's, you know.

At some point you got to, you got to take a, take a step back. So,

Kelly: yes, you do. So that sounds pretty, pretty exciting as far as where you want to go with all this. And so one of the things I hear in your stories too, you started off, you did, did a lot of the programming side, which, you know, I hear this from a lot of different people, you know, uh, what is it, you know, you probably run into this question before, especially early on in your career.

I still get this. My wife still asked me this. So what is it you do? I guess that, you know, she was like, I'm married

Brendan: to you for 20, 22 years. I still don't know what you do.

Kelly: Yeah, it's like, and you know, everybody's like, what do you do in GIS? And I always found it very exciting. And you know, your career kind of shows that is.

There's so many things that you can do because. You know, if, whether you have some programming skills or not, there's, there's just so many different directions you can go. So you started off, you had some programming skills. It kind of helped you get introduced a little bit. Uh, and you know, uh, I think the other thing too, is that business interest.

You know, later you kind of get in, you know, you kind of end your career more on that business focused side rather than technical side, but you're able to still keep that, that contact with the technical side of it, which I'm sure has been pretty exciting. Um, so what are some of the, you know, looking back on some of this time?

Uh, what were maybe some of your memorable projects that you were able to apply GIS or geospatial technology to that you found very interesting and also, you know, kind of seemed like it had an impact.

Brendan: That's a great question. Uh, it's, you know, I think, you know, going back to what you were saying before, I think from the programming aspect of things, you know, we started in GIS, you almost had to program to be able to do anything worthwhile, right?

You had to know a little bit of our macro language, AML or Avenue or something to be able to make the, make the system work and do what you wanted to do. Yeah, you could be a, you know, a technician and just kind of move lines around and stuff like that. That, that was there, but in order to truly do GIS work, uh, you really needed to understand that programming aspect and that's where I got into it.

And I'm sure you got to do it as well too. And, uh, so that led to some interesting things cause we used to be able to, and you did, I'm sure as well too, you had to push the software to do stuff that didn't do.

Kelly (2): And

Brendan: so one of the first things that I remember, you know, getting the software to do what it didn't do.

I was really before archive mass was very stable product. It took a lot for archive to be a stable product. It did. We actually took, I think it was just map objects, LTE. So remember the two versions? We took map objects, LT and wrote a wrapper around it to be able to output images to a, to a file or to a, to a, to a FI file folder.

And we were displaying those images. So back in the day, you know, we were showing just images up and as you can across, we were just basically using map objects LT to be able to output images and display them in a, in a frame. Was that web, A web web server. It was kind of a magic show. Yeah, it was kind of a magic show because archive message wasn't stable enough to do what we wanted to do, so we were pushing the software to do to, to do more of what we wanted to do, and that was one of my first experience taking GIS technology and being able to make it do what I wanted to do.

You know, just taking it to the next level, you know, doing anything on the web. At that time, in the late nineties, early two thousands, with Web Tech, with GIS, technology was cutting edge. No one was really doing it. Esri's technologies were, you know, okay, at Fast. Uh, there wasn't a whole lot out there, but that's when kind of the, the open source movement started coming into play.

You had, you know, uh, open web map and you had, uh, it was a map layers, a map server and app server. They started being produced at that time on a kind of fill in gap and being able to use that for, for those different things. But, you know, I think, uh, you know, in terms of the, the coolest things, you know, going back to, to Ray McDally.

Being able to do that cool stuff, uh, with, uh, GIS data, taking that data from AppInfo and then bringing it into a commercial product and being able to show GIS data in a commercial product, uh, was pretty cool at the time. For a period of time too, I worked doing work in, uh, we had, we had some work in the 9 1 1 business.

So back in the late 90s, early 2000s was when. First generation, they call it an adhesive 9 1 1 where the computer and dispatch systems were built and how did you basically build on GIS. Um, and being able to get all the tools to be able to do that. We get the, um, when I was first in June decisions, we did the, uh, we did Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which is Pittsburgh area, um, all the municipalities there, and we did a, we did a bunch of work there with, uh, With all county on, uh, developing their computer aid dispatch system using GIS and using their GIS base base base mapping system, which was pretty cool.

Uh, pretty cool time. You know, it was one of the first ones, the country using technology at that time. A lot of it was being done by raf, you know, the, the major competitor at the time to Yeah. Aircraft I'm doing. Yeah, I think that was even before June Media even came out. So it was still, uh, in June, Intergraph, gv, that type of thing.

So. It was a pretty cool, pretty cool project to work on, be able to implement that technology, you know, in a truly lifesaving application. Right. So that was fun. Let's see, you know, I mentioned Fish and Me, I mentioned Iris. Those are all truly, you know, technology type break, you know, bleeding edge type things.

Uh, so there've been lots of different, different things out there. You know, we always thought that building, you know, our, our job was to help our clients and our, and our customers be able to do what they wanted to do. A lot of times what they wanted to do wasn't available at the technology, so you had to build it and you had to manipulate the technology to make it work.

So lots of opportunities to do that. I, you know, I encourage folks out there now that are listening, uh, to this, that are, yeah, you know, that's really, take the technology and, and be able to make it do, do things, uh, it can't do for your customers and for your clients and your bosses. I mean, that's really the fun part about it.

You, uh, making it do stuff. It's not supposed to do

Kelly: and there's a lot of opportunity to do that. Uh. I guess, you know, especially in your role, you know, uh, back when you were in Geodecisions, you know, you probably worked with a lot of different, um, staff with a lot of, you know, different backgrounds. So, you know, that's one of the things I tell people in the geospatial industry, it's not just geographers.

It's not just GIS focused people. There's so many different opportunities, whether it's, you know, computer science, business, you know, even mentioned back when you were at Rand McNally. You know, the artistry, when you're making a final product, GIS is a great product. I mean, it's a great tool, I should say, but you still need that, that artistry, you need some better tools to make a final looking product that's going to be, uh, worthy of media print and things of that nature.

Even today, you know, while it's a lot better, I still think that, you know, you need those tools to, to take it to that final stage.

Brendan: Yeah. A hundred percent agree. And I think, and I'd say, you know, too, that just that mindset. Some of the best, uh, technology folks I worked with were fine arts majors in college, you know, musicians and artists and things like that that decided they really liked technology as well, too.

And starting, you know, got, got to know the technology side of things and that's when they work now, but they're, but they're, they had that, what is it? Your left side of your brain? Yes. Then the creative side of your brain is very active for them and they do a great job. So, and they definitely bring

Kelly: in a different perspective.

Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. So, you know, with all that, you know, kind of, kind of a lead into that. We, we've already done that is, you know, you're sitting at this, you know, imagine you're sitting in front of a room of students and, you know, people just starting out in their careers, you know, do you have any other words of wisdom that you would probably share with them?

Brendan: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question too. I think that, um, you know, If you're just, you know, if you're in Discovery, you know, they call Geography and GIS the ultimate Discovery major, uh, at least at Penn State, and I think it's true for other schools, most people don't enter it as a freshman, they do like you and I did, Kelly, they end up somewhere along the line, they, they, they find it along the way, and they enter it, and, you know, and they're very happy there, and they think it's great, and they love it, I think that that, uh, that's true, I still think that's true today, too, uh, across the board, not just at Penn State.

But I think it's part of that too. I think that you, you really need to, you know, if you want to develop a career in GIS and in geospatial technologies, you got to be curious, number one, and number two, you've got, even if you don't like the program, you got to learn a little Python, you got to learn a little something to be able to make your job easier, uh, because that's, you know, just part of the, part of the tricks of the trade.

You've got to be able to do that and everything's built around that. So taking some time where I find most of the, most of the people, you know, they come in with a business as GIS, you know, as a GIS specialist, and I'm doing data creation, or we're doing some simple tasks, they usually delve into two, two, two avenues, right?

Or maybe three, you know, they go the analyst route. More analytical things, the high end, more, you know, environmental analysis or spatial analysis type stuff, which is great. They get into, you know, artificial intelligence and deep learning and machine learning. That's a great path to take today, but you still got to learn some Python.

You still got to do some things. Others go into project management and wanting to manage things, you know, that's kind of self explanatory. And then the third path is really in the development side where, you know, and that's kind of the path I took was I really wanted to be more. More hands on building things, uh, than analyzing things or doing things.

There was a crossover in the AI side of things between those high end GIS geospatial analysts and software developers. Uh, but there's a run for both there for sure. And there's a, you know, it doesn't necessarily take a hundred percent technical mind to do that. I find that in the geospatial world, you can't just be a software developer.

You got to have. So if you're going to do it, you've got to know that gene space, the spatial analytics side of things. Cause you had to think that way. That's the important thing. It's easier to take a software, to take a. Geographer, geospatial analyst and teach them software development than it is to take in software developer and teach them the spatial side of it.

Although we try to do it both ways.

Kelly: They kind of need to know what is it, what is that mindset of the person using it? And like you said, I think. One of the things we find in the geospatial world is there, there is a, a big, uh, influence of that creative mind side. Absolutely. You know, it's, it's looking, you know, when you think about geography, you know, we're looking at broad areas and trying to see how things connect and, you know, you've got, you have to be able to imagine boundaries that there's not a physical boundary there, but you've got to be able to understand that distinction.

So it takes that creative, uh, mindset, I think. And when you're trying to develop a solution for that, you know, you kind of, you need that input, I think.

Brendan: Yeah, you have to be able to think non linearly, I guess is the best way to describe it. Uh, I agree. And that's not something, that's not something that, it's something that's difficult for some people to think, think differently, you know.

But yeah, it's, and I think that those are the biggest things. You know, you gotta be curious, you gotta be, you gotta be, you know, just, uh, wanna learn. Uh, the most successful people I see are, uh, are people who wanna continue to learn and find out new things. And, uh, yeah. If you want to come to work every day and work your nine to five or whatever, that's fine.

You can do that, but I don't think you're going to be as happy as if you are curious and excited about geography, geospatial stuff, uh, and doing that work you're going to do. If you're, if you're excited about that stuff, you're going to, you're going to want to go out and do these things and, and, and find different ways to, to apply the technology.

Kelly: I agree. I think one of the things, you know, with our career is expand, you know, the, The time that we put in here, you know, 30 years or so, we've seen a lot of change. And I think it's one of those things that, you know, we're talking about a long term, uh, careers here, but that change has been very rapid still within there.

And, you know, GIS hasn't settled down. I think it's still growing, you know, now AI is coming into the picture and it's, it's getting in there as well. Where, where do you see the future of geospatial going like in the next few years? But it's good. It's, you know, already

Brendan: started. I think, you know, 10 years ago, I was calling it the democratization of geospatial, right?

It's getting into everything, you know, Google maps and. Big maps and all these things, everybody's using it every day. Uh, they just don't know it all the time. Uh, that they're using and benefiting from it. Uh, today it's just accelerating, right? You know, you really don't have a true AI model unless you're taking GeoSpace into account.

So as those things move forward, and you're, you know, you're, you're able to do that in ChatGPT and other, other models that are out there. Uh, it only makes it better when you can do that the day to day aspects of things where you don't even realize that you're, you're using geospatial technology is going to is going to be there, you know, it's become mainstream a lot.

The technology itself is becoming mainstream, which is a big key, you know, even as reason to acknowledge that, you know, you know, you're from your time at Esri and my time with, you know, you know, we were working with it forever. It used to be kind of distinct, right, but Esri's kind of gone to this thing now, the well architected framework, they talk about things in terms of IT, not in terms of geospatial, they got rid of the bubble graphs and the little Esri specific things to make it look like IT people are used to making, you know, having it look like, but that's just the next step in evolving that it's getting, it's becoming more and more mainstream.

But, uh, you know, it makes your life easier. You know, I think for people who are not, you and I are spatial type people. We think spatially, but not everybody thinks that way. So if you can put it in their hands and let them, let them use spatial tools without having to be a spatial person, that, that makes everybody's life easier.

Kelly: Oh, I totally agree. You know, we think about GIS, you know, you know, you'd probably experiences a lot is when you get involved with, everybody's like, well, make me a map. You know, well, there's a lot of GIS that never make a map. You're answering a lot of questions and you're coming up with some data and some additional information, but don't always make a map.

So, yeah, it's, it's really, it is. There's, there are so many aspects to GIS and I think that's what makes it a very interesting career. Yeah, I know. I, I've really enjoyed it and I know you've enjoyed your career so far. Yeah,

Brendan: I'm lucky. And I think, you know, we all, we both are lucky, but I, I feel I'm particularly lucky because I've, I've got to do something I love for my entire career, basically.

So, uh, yes, I don't think a lot of people get to do that. And, uh, I've been fortunate, so very happy

Kelly: to get to do what you like, but also see the growth that it's, it's done from the days when you're like, what is GIS and

Brendan: yeah,

Kelly: trying to, nobody's out there recognizing it to where it is today. It's pretty exciting.

It is,

Brendan: it is, it is for sure. Yeah. Back when, uh, when Ezra was doing Superbowl commercials, you know, a couple of years ago, that was great. We've got a lot of people, got a lot of technology, you know, and people don't understand what GIS is out there, but, uh, they kind of fell off that and stopped advertising to the general public.

So,

Kelly: because the general public was like, what are these people? We got it. But yeah. So, so Brian, I want to touch on, uh, uh, something we talked about earlier. Yeah. Uh, and I thought it's kind of interesting, you know, we were talking about, you know, what were some of your influences of geospatial? And you mentioned your mom, actually, You know, I knew a little bit of maybe about GIS before you.

Brendan: Yeah, yeah, actually she did, you know, it was funny because my mom was the, um, director of tax claim and, uh, yeah, director of tax claim and the chief assessor, uh, property assessor for the, for the county I grew up in, in Pennsylvania. And so the mapping department fell under her. So that was, uh, cadastral mapping, property, property mapping, uh, type of thing.

So she was, she was very aware of what GIS was. And a small GIS group at that time, I think they might have had one license of ArcInfo, one person doing a little bit of work. It was still very manual cadastral mapping program type stuff, you know, producing plot maps and flat maps, I should say, and those type of things.

But, um, but yeah, she was, she was aware of it, but she was also very weary in the two, only aware, but also wary. So I remember when I called her, uh, when I said, Hey mom, I found what I want to do, you know, finally. And she's like, well, you're in your fifth semester of school, you know, you need to settle down and figure out what you want to get.

I was like, I'm going to do geography. I'm switching to geography. And there was just silence on the other end. And I was like, so that's pretty cool. I'm really excited about this. What are you going to do with this? You're going to teach. What are you going to do? You can't get a job doing, doing this stuff.

I was like, yeah, I don't think I can. I think I can do it. You know, I think this is something I want to do. I'll, I'll figure it out. And you know, 30 years later, I think I've figured it out, so. Got a good idea anyway. Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. Really cool.

Brendan: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. It's funny when you see these little breadcrumbs from past life that, you know, how, how it all kind of takes you to where you're at.

Brendan: Yeah.

Kelly: I'm sure when you were first starting out, you probably didn't ever imagine that you would have ended up, you know, in the, in the roles that you've been able to, to serve in.

Brendan: No, no, never, never. I was just happy if I had a job, you know, at first I was like, well, I can make a career in this stuff. You know, I can, I can do this.

Um, but I've been very fortunate throughout my life to be given opportunities and to be able to take them and to be able to do different things. So I'm very fortunate for sure. So, you know, now my later part of my career, I just want to give back. That's what I want to do. Help out people that are in the field, uh, help out others who want to be involved and, uh, kind of be, you know, uh, for, for geographers and geospatial folk as a, as a whole.

Kelly: Well, good. That's kind of what I hope this podcast allows us to do. I'm kind of in the same boat and yeah. I don't, I'm sure you're in the same mindset here to me. That's just as exciting as when you're starving out, you know, it's like,

Brendan: yeah. You know,

Kelly: being able to share that information. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Very cool. Uh, Brendan, do you have anything else you want to share with us? Uh, her,

Brendan: Yeah, I don't, I don't, I think I've, I think I've talked quite a bit here, but, uh, yeah, I hope, uh, I hope anybody listening to this, you know, they, uh, they get some inspiration, not just from me, but from others throughout your podcast here.

I think this is a great thing you're doing, Kelly. And, uh, really, uh, really, uh, as I said before, I'm, uh, very honored to be here and, uh, flattered that you asked me to, to, to participate in this. So thank you. Right back

Kelly: at you. I'm glad you responded to say, Hey, I'll do that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, this is fun.

It's. It's nice that I get to catch up with some, some old friends and people that I've known for a long time. And, you know, and be able to share with other people. I think it's really cool. So I appreciate you taking the time and agreeing to do this podcast and being here and sharing your story.

Brendan: Love to come back.

You know, maybe I'll come back later on and we can talk about other things.

Kelly: Yeah. So for our listeners out there, is there, you know, they want to find out a more, you know, more about what you're doing and where you're going. How can they find

Brendan: you? So they can find me on LinkedIn. You can just search me. I'm, you know, pretty unique name, Brendan Westock, W S D O C K.

Uh, anybody with that last name? I know personally, we're all cousins. Uh, you know, I'm, uh, I'm descended from Slovak immigrants. My grandparents came from Slovakia and it was H V I Z D A K in the old world. And so they, uh, they Americanized it for my, my dad's generation coming here. So, uh, so easy to find. I also, as I mentioned, I've put out my own shingle now.

Uh, the name of my company is a Whistler Advisory Services. And the reason it's called Whistler is because Istok in Slovak means Whistler, Whistler or Whistlemaker. So, interesting. So that's, that's, that's what I'm doing now. So whistleradvisory. com. You can reach me there, uh, uh, as well as, uh, brendan at whistleradvisory.

com.

Kelly: Very good. Well, again, I really appreciate your time. I know everybody's going to enjoy listening to your story. And, uh, hopefully we'll have you back on the podcast soon and we'll talk about other topics out. Love to. Thanks, Kelly, so much. I appreciate it. All right. Well, Brendan, we'll talk to you soon and we'll, uh, end it here.

Thank you very much. All right. Take care. Thanks. All right. You too. Bye. Thanks for joining us on the Spatial Connection Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media and visit our website for updates, resources, and behind the scenes content.

Do you know someone with a fascinating geospatial story? If so, send us a message. We'd love to hear about them. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep exploring the world through the lens of geospatial technology.