I think a lot of tech people honestly don't know how to do this. GIS is a database with mapping software attached. I began explaining it to people as "kind of

I think a lot of tech people honestly don't know how to do this. GIS is a database with mapping software attached. I began explaining it to people as "kind of like SimCity for the real world." People who do GIS get lost in the details. They can't see the forest for the trees. Laypeople need a quick and dirty sketch of the forest in the simplest, most pertinent terms possible. This is just not easy to pull off when your day to day work is all about cataloguing individual leaves in this vast forest.