Howdy, TAGITM!

I don’t know if y’all heard, but it’s been an eventful few weeks! Ya boy goes on vacation and a hurricane rolls through, there’s a statewide internet outage, and the CrowdStrike ordeal happens. I hope everyone made it through ok. Thankfully for Seguin the brunt of the hurricane missed us, we had redundancy in place for the ISP outage, and the CrowdStrike event was a minor annoyance at best. Upon returning to the office, I did have fun reminding folks what happens when I’m not around. Clearly my presence is needed! I’m not certain anyone actually bought that, but it was funny nonetheless.

A couple of weeks after I got back I found myself in Houston for the TASSCC conference. It was their 50th anniversary and they put on a great event. It was a different vibe…but fun! My wife and I attended the 80’s theme night and had a ridiculously great time. The Spazmatics put on an awesome show and a lot of folks reached waaayyyy back in their closets by dressing up in top shelf 80’s swag. Mrs. Mc was super annoyed with me because evidently I never read the emails encouraging folks to dress up. I mean, is anyone REALLY surprised by that? I’ve been telling that woman for 20 years I’m not good for much beyond being pretty to look at! As you can imagine there’s a lot of eye rolling happening at Casa de McDaniel. Regardless, I’ve already planted the seed with our Conference Committee chair Mrs. Lana Spiess to see if we can do something similar at TAG next year. If the idea of having an 80’s night sounds awesome to you be sure to let Lana know!

Another takeaway from TASSCC was being uber impressed with their charity work. They raised over 50k for a local Houston charity over the course of the event. Wow! I also learned they farm out their social media content to university students via one of the member institutions. I don’t recall who I was talking to about that, but I did throw a “that’s cheating” accusation in the conversation somewhere and reminded them we still have 40% more followers on LinkedIn. So…you know (lol). All in all, it was a great event, and I give kudos to TASSCC and CMP for their efforts. Next up I’ll be attending GMIS later this month on behalf of TAGITM.

Last thing I wanted to touch on ties back to our 2024 conference theme. The summer Olympics concluded, of course the USA tied for first in gold medals and destroyed the overall medal count because that’s what we do. I saw Texas would have come in 7th overall, so that was cool! I’m not a huge Olympics fan, but Mrs. Mc and I watched the highlights each evening. That feeling of national pride was enduring as our athletes were over there doing what many had been training for a good portion of their lives.

It was a nice reminder of what we can accomplish when we put our minds to something, and it made me think about the pride in our communities and in this organization. Specifically, for TAGITM I’ve had the privilege to be involved in some capacity since 2017. It’s easy to live in the moment and forget how much the org has evolved in the blink of an eye, but TAGITM has progressed extensively in recent years. Our membership has grown incredibly, we’re constantly upping our game with event locations and speakers, exhibit space sells out in minutes, we’re breaking records for education session submissions annually, we’re collaborating more than ever, invited our GIS friends to join us by offering more content geared towards them, opened our doors to neighboring states, and so much more. The scholarship program is incredible and we’re proudly extending that program for the foreseeable future. We’re constantly discussing ways to expand member benefits. The org has been so successful we’re now exploring options to advance TAGITM’s long-term financial success.

Bottom line is none of that happens without all of you. I feel so much gratitude to witness the continual positivity encircling TAGITM. When attending other orgs events, I’m proud to wear our famous TAGITM polos. I’m talking noise when chatting with board members because let’s be honest, that’s what I do! Long story short, I hope all of you feel pride in elevating this special organization. Big state, small community as I say. You’ve built something incredible. Be loud and proud TAGITM, you’ve earned it, and there’s more awesomeness in the works! Until next time, thank you for reading and have a wonderful month!