Join a Working Group

We chartered our Advisory Council to review these working groups over the past few months. After receiving their findings and advice, we are taking action in a measured fashion in order to align the working groups with our strategic goals and drive toward the future together.

After recently sunsetting our Commercial GEOINT Working Group, we are ready for the next significant step in this process. At the GEOINT Symposium in May, we will announce the transition from our Tradecraft and Professional Development Working Group, to separate working groups for each element. the Tradecraft Working Group will be chaired by Ben Conklin, Steve Fleming, and Jim McCool. Their first tasks are establishing a charter for the new group and determining a process for generating thought pieces on the future of GEOINT Tradecraft. We are tremendously grateful to the outgoing chairs, Keith Barber and Bradley Bautista, for their leadership over the past several years.

We will kick off the new era of USGIF Tradecraft leadership with a joint panel between the outgoing and incoming chairs at the TPDWG Breakout Session on Wednesday, May 8, at 11:30-12:15 during the symposium with a discussion on the Factors We Must Consider in Defining the Future of GEOINT Tradecraft.

The Commercial GEOINT Working Group, originally designated as the SmallSat Working Group, was established in 2019 for the purpose of educating and informing the global GEOINT community on the rapidly evolving geospatial data and imagery capabilities in the commercial sector. Over the past six years, the group has accomplished many of their original objectives and had a positive impact on integration of commercial capabilities across the enterprise. As USGIF evolves our working group construct to address the demands and challenges of the current environment, we want to celebrate the success of the CGWG as we sunset the working group as the first step in our evolution. We heartily thank all the leaders and members of this group for their hard work and accomplishments on behalf of our community. We look forward to working with many of them and others when we transition to our new construct. Our new construct will continue to reflect our unwavering support of the commercial GEOINT community and their key role in the enterprise.