The National Geographic Society, The Association of American Geographers (AAG) and ESRI have announced the inaugural worldwide GIS day will be held on Friday November 19, 1999. The purpose of the event is to create a single worldwide event that effectively communicates the benefits and significance of GIS to the rest of the world.

GIS Day will be held November 19, the last day of Geography Awareness Week. Since 1987, the National Geographic Society has sponsored Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy in schools, communities, and organizations, with a focus on the education of children. Geography Awareness Week will be held November 15-19, 1999. GIS Day is a grassroots event that formalizes the practice of geographic information systems (GIS) users and vendors of opening their doors to schools, businesses, and the general public to showcase real world applications of this important technology. The event is sponsored by the  National Geographic Society, the Association of American Geographers,  the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, and ESRI.

GIS professionals and businesses are being asked to open their doors or perhaps sponsor an event in some other way by taking what they do into the community and letting the general public get a chance to see what they do and to see how GIS technology is involved in so many different aspects of making organizations function on a day to day basis.

In support of GIS day, ESRI has established a website at www.gisday.com. It is at this site that you will be able to sign up as an event sponsor, register for a gisday newsletter, locate an event near you, request help from a volunteer, and find out just about anything else you could possibly want to know about GIS day. Email inquiries can be sent to gisday@esri.com.