Take a break with 1Spatial's Jessica Hampton

Take a break with Jessica Hampton, our Head of Utilities.

Tell us about yourself?

Born and raised in Sheffield, I didn’t go far for Uni moving just down the road to Nottingham. Although I graduated with a first-class degree in Law, I quickly realised that the legal profession wasn’t for me. Instead, I moved into the world of technology, joining IBM in London. Although I loved working at IBM, after suddenly losing one of my closest friends, I decided I needed a complete career change. So, I joined the Met Police and it was one of the best and most rewarding experiences of my life. 

I could talk about being in the police for days…but to cut a long story short, after a couple of years I decided to move back to Sheffield to live with my partner, Jonny. Wanting a more stable work schedule, I returned to tech sales and found myself at 1Spatial. I haven’t looked back since. 

As well as working for 1Spatial I’m also a part time dog sitter, regularly looking after my brothers English Bulldog, Poppy. She’s a ‘family dog’ apparently…             

Jonny and I are currently house hunting in Sheffield. We’d love to stay happily surrounded by both our families and the same group of friends we’ve each had since school. Despite our love of travel, we’re true home birds at heart. 

Fun fact about you?

Even though I’m a huge animal lover, at 10 years old I was badly bitten by a dog whilst in the South of France. I ended up with 13 stitches around my left eye and I have a pretty cool tooth mark in my left eyebrow. 

What do you enjoy most about working at 1Spatial?

The best thing about 1Spatial is the team. There’s truly a work hard, play hard attitude and we’re all striving towards doing the best for our customers. 

What are your favourite geospatial products/technologies and why?

For me, anything with a virtual reality element to it really brings operations to life. However, we all know that none of these technologies are valuable unless they’re powered by quality data. It’s been fantastic to see data quality finally getting some of the attention it deserves.

1Spatial’s 1Data Gateway product allows organisations to keep control of the quality of data entering and exiting the data landscape – this will be crucial as we start to open up our data and share data more proactively. 

What’s the most interesting solution problem or data challenge you’ve tackled?

My favourite data challenge so far is the ArcGIS Utility Network data migration. There are a few reasons why: 

• The massive benefits that the ArcGIS Utility Network will bring, once migrated. 
• It forces a conversation to be had around data quality at a senior level. 
• An understanding that data is only ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based upon the standard or model you’re defining it against. Data is often fit for one purpose, but not another. 
• Increasing end user confidence in the data being provided, especially for field workers. 
• The applications and technology that will be able to enhance the core Utility Network, will be able to deliver more value than the industry has seen previously. 

What do you love about working in the Utilities team?

One of my biggest joy’s whilst working at 1Spatial has been seeing the Utilities team grow from strength to strength. Even though the team are incredibly busy, every single day someone in the team will bring me close to tears with laughter. You can’t buy that kind of team spirit. 

We’re also incredibly lucky that our customers and the market are aligning with the core 1Spatial principles, meaning every day we’re able to have truly innovative and exciting conversations with our customers. 

If you were given an airline ticket to go anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

Nowhere particularly fancy, I’d just like to make it to Spain to finally get married.