The year was 2005. I was planning the launch of my current business. I wanted to offer GIS and web development services, as I had been doing both for about fifteen years. I was discussing market positioning strategies with a small group of friends and advisers.

The response from my focus group was strong and unanimous – don’t mix GIS and web development. One of them put it this way: “It’s like saying ‘We fly airplanes, and we also sell Band-Aids.’” In other words, don’t lump up the glamorous and romantic with the pedestrian and banal.

I listened to them and have been marketing GIS services and web development services separately. But I thought about all this after I wrote my previous blog post “Where the money at?” Is GIS still glamorous? Is web development still pedestrian? Five years later, it looks like the money in Band-Aids, no?