Category Archives: Surveying
Certifications or Licensing? The Future of Surveying
Part 1 Editor’s note: What will regulation, certification, and licensing of the surveying profession look like in the near and distant future? Surveying is and always has been molded by external influences: markets, technologies, economic conditions, demographics, and competition from outside of the profession. Other professionals, consumers, and prosumers have found that the legacy mysteries...
Trial by Fire: First Party Chief Experience
As we ponder the many challenges presented by the rapid transformation of the land surveying profession, the topic of mentoring often comes up. I have written about that topic a couple of times in past editions of Field Notes. (The image above is Whisky Pass Colorado, 1935. Credit: NOAA National Geodetic Survey.) I attribute much...
Behind the Big Eye of the SX10: Trimble, Danderyd, Sweden
A visit to Trimble’s engineering and production center in Danderyd, Sweden, reveals the story of the SX10’s development. As surveyors, we purchase and use some of the most sophisticated instruments of any field-oriented profession. Such sophistication yields incredible precision, accuracy, reliability, and flexibility, and, as would be expected, can carry hefty price tags. With such...
The Unthinkable and the Thinkable
The following is the editorial for the July print issue of xyHt magazine: If we completely dismiss a notion as unthinkable, we might find ourselves ill prepared should the notion become an eventuality. This applies to how we might view the status of our professions and how we fit into the markets we serve. Is...
“Next Big Thing” Essay Winner: Bring the Old and New Together
Bring the Old and New Together The next big thing for the surveying profession is much more than a new instrument or the use of a new technology. To me, it is something much more profound than that. I recently read a statistic in an article printed in the Gem State Surveyor, the quarterly publication...
The Young Surveyors on the Young Surveyors Network
Note from Editor Scott P. Martin: As I read and absorbed the Young Surveyors Network response (below) to last month’s Field Notes, I realized that I have been ignorant of the perception and perspective young surveyors have of our profession and the old guard. We have contributed greatly to our own demise (I touched on...