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Take a break with Luke Winters, Solutions Engineer (1Spatial Inc.)

Tell us about yourself?

My name is Luke and I’ve been with 1Spatial for one year. I work remotely from upstate New York, in the Albany area. As an avid outdoorsman, I’ve always been excited by maps; planning routes for canoeing, hiking, and skiing trips. Through the Boy Scouts I served as a waterfront and lifeguard instructor, as well as trek guide for week-long hiking and canoeing treks through the Adirondack Park. I’ve also always been passionate about technology.

I went to college at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, NY where I majored in Computer and Information Systems. Even though we didn’t have a Geography department, I took a 1-off intro to GIS class in my Junior year. I immediately loved it and took every opportunity I could to weave GIS into my CIS degree, including completing a GIS analysis for finding locations to resupply along the Appalachian trail, and creating an Android app to query topographic maps along the trail.

I then completed my master’s degree in Geographic Information Science at the University of Denver, where I got a much deeper appreciation for GIS, with my thesis automating the classification of alpine and montane wetlands in Colorado.

After I graduated, I started working at 1Spatial as a Solutions Engineer. Since starting, I’ve worked on some really interesting projects for customers, with a focus on Utilities

Fun fact about you?

I completed a 750-mile section hike of the Appalachian Trail from northern Maine to New York! It was a really fun and interesting experience. Hiking up and down mountains for 20 miles a day and meeting interesting people is a pretty neat way to spend a few months.

What do you enjoy most about working at 1Spatial?

I’ve most enjoyed the variety of projects I have been able to work on. Since starting, I’ve worked on projects for probably 20 prospective customers, finding new ways to solve their data issues. It’s really fun to find new ways to configure the workflow to best resonate with different use cases.

What are your favorite geospatial products/technologies and why? 

Over the past year of working with 1Integrate, I’ve really come to like the configurability and performance. The rule authoring methods are intuitive but can also be deeply customized for all sorts of uses. Aside from 1Spatial products, I’ve also found spatial SQL (PostGIS, SpatiaLite) to be really useful for a lot of different use cases.

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

When I was working on a project for an ISP, I built a solution to infer where missing poles were on the network. This was really interesting since the whole problem was based around missing data, so being able to trace the network and quantify the confidence in there being missing poles was quite abstract but also cool to see real results at the end.

What do you love about working in the Sales and Marketing team?

The sales and marketing team is great. We have some great connections with customers and really work together to support the novel workflows for their needs. The best part is probably the teamwork with my co-workers.

What makes 1Spatial a great place to work?

1Spatial is really great for creative solutions. I’m encouraged to think outside the box and given opportunities to put my own spin on solutions and presentations.

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

I’m torn between Alaska and Japan, both for skiing! Alaska would probably be for some ski-mountaineering adventure, and Japan would be for the powder in the glades!