It with great pleasure that I welcome new blogger Trish Long.

Trish Long is a Senior Planner with the City of Trenton, New Jersey. Before joining the city staff in 2003, Trish was a GIS Specialist with the New Jersey Office of State Planning. She has also worked for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service and the Soil Conservation Service.

She received her Masters degree in Environmental Monitoring (GIS and remote sensing) from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Trish has a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from Cook College, Rutgers University and is a member of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association and the American Institute of Certified Planners.

In addition to her impressive academic and professional credentials, Trish brings to the discussion the viewpoint of a regular GIS user. This viewpoint is often ignored (or entirely missing) in our heated new-media-GIS-for-GIS’s-sake-centered exchanges. Trish is an experienced GIS user, but for her GIS is not the ultimate goal; it is a tool for accomplishing her primary objective, which in Trish’s case is being a good city planner.

Trish represents the silent majority of GIS users, whose voice is being drowned out by the very vocal GIS blogging community (guilty as charged). I am very pleased that Trish will be sharing her thoughts with us, and we’ll all do well to listen.