I went to see an allergist today, needed to find out what substance is causing my itchy red eyes during springtime. It wouldn’t be a reason for posting but before the doctor asked me about the reason for my visit, he asked me what “GIS” means in my job title.
In Austria the term “GIS” is, among regular people, often associated with a certain agency who collects a very unpopular fee here.
So just to avoid any upcoming antipathy while sitting in front of the doctor, I started explaining what “GIS” is: “No, I’m not working for that GIS-agency charging you fees.” was my opening statement. Have that in mind when visiting this country and you intend telling people your work is related to “GIS”.
Well, nowadays it’s actually pretty easy to explain what GIS, geographic information systems, are:
“I work with spatial information and create maps.”
There was still this questioning look – “It’s like Google Earth.”
“Ah.”
Turned out that the doctor is a big Google Earth fan and I ended up giving a 12 minute presentation on imagery resolutions, explaining how the data is collected, the weirdness of European geodata policies and the revolutionary aspect of allowing free access to geodata in Google Earth. He really was fascinated and I started thinking that maybe this guy is stuck in the wrong job.
After our Google Earth chat, it took the doctor like 20 seconds to explain that the blooming birch tree is causing my itchy red eyes and to hand a prescription over.
