Texas GIS Forum

October 19 – 23, 2026

Thank you for joining us at the 2026 Texas GIS Forum! Together, we explored emerging technologies, shared best practices, participated in workshops, and heard from inspiring keynote speakers including Jack Dangermond, Tori Murden McClure, and Pete Kelsey.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this year's Forum a success. Your passion, expertise, and commitment to advancing GIS continue to strengthen the Texas geospatial community.

We look forward to seeing you again next year at the 2027 Texas GIS Forum, October 18-22.

AI Heat Island of Central Texas

2026 Map Gallery Winner
Staci Collins - AI Heat Island of Central Texas

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Opening Keynote Speaker

Jack Dangermond

Founder and President, Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri)

A landscape architect by training, Jack Dangermond founded Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) in 1969 with a vision that computer mapping and analysis could help design a better future. Under Dangermond's leadership, that vision has continued to guide Esri in creating cutting-edge GIS and Geodesign technologies used in every industry to make a difference worldwide.

Dangermond fostered the growth of Esri from a small research group to an organization recognized as the world leader in GIS software development. Esri employs more than 4,000 people worldwide; many who shared his passion for GIS in the early days are still with the company and remain dedicated to helping our users be successful.

Dangermond’s vision for Esri goes beyond building the leading GIS technology. He keeps the company mindful of global challenges and the needs of specific industries. The ongoing drive is to engineer ArcGIS to aggregate and integrate increasing quantities of data, to visualize and analyze the data to gain holistic understanding, and to help individuals and organizations make impactful evidence-based decisions.

Keynote Speakers

Tori Murden McClure

Explorer, Author, Educator, and Record-Setting Adventurer

Tori is perhaps best-known as the first woman and first American to row a boat solo across the Atlantic Ocean, having accomplished the feat in 1999 after 81 days at sea. A decade earlier, she was on the expedition on which the first women and first Americans skied overland to the geographic South Pole during a 50-day, 750-mile expedition.

Tori Murden McClure is an explorer, author, and the former President of Spalding University from 2010 until 2024. During her career, she worked as a chaplain at a Boston hospital, as the director of a shelter for women, as a policy assistant to the Mayor of Louisville. She was the first full-time employee of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. She is a former Board Chair of the National Outdoor Leadership School, and she is a former Vice Chair and Interim Chair of the NCAA Board of Governors – the top governing body in collegiate athletics.

Tori holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College, a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, a law degree from the University of Louisville and a Master of Fine Arts in writing degree from Spalding. She is author of the memoir, A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean, which details her life and journey across the Atlantic. The book is the basis of a stage musical, called, Row, which made its world premiere at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts in the summer of 2021.

Tori has been an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and Wilderness EMT for almost twenty-five years. Currently, Tori teaches Wilderness Medicine for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), she teaches new Emergency Medical Technicians at a local fire house, and she volunteers her time for causes she feels are important.

Pete Kelsey

Founder, VCTO Labs

Pete Kelsey is a reality capture specialist with more than 25 years of experience leading strategic, story-driven projects that bring new insight to historically and culturally significant places. He works with LiDAR, photogrammetry, multispectral imaging, terrestrial laser scanning, GPR, and SONAR applying these technologies not as ends in themselves, but as tools to deepen understanding, preservation, and public engagement. His work focuses on projects where spatial data can fundamentally change how familiar stories are seen, understood, and sustained.

Pete’s work has been recognized by major global media outlets including The New York Times and CNN, most notably for his leadership on the comprehensive 3D mapping of Alcatraz Island. That project combined robots, drones, lasers, and high-performance computing to create one of the most complete digital records ever produced of a U.S. national historic landmark. His reality capture expertise has also been featured on National Geographic documentary television, including Buried Secrets of WWII, where modern remote sensing techniques are used to uncover hidden wartime landscapes and reinterpret history through data. Additional documentary film work includes projects for broadcast and digital platforms where reality capture is used to visualize inaccessible environments, support investigative storytelling, and translate complex spatial data into compelling on-screen narratives. These include National Geographic’s Drain the Oceans and History Channel’s The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, where geospatial data and advanced sensing are used to explore hidden, controversial, or hard-to-access locations.

In addition to media and documentary work, Pete collaborates closely with hardware and software vendors to push the limits of what reality capture can achieve at scale. These partnerships ensure that ambitious ideas can be executed reliably in the field and transformed into actionable, enduring datasets. Known for bridging technology, narrative, and real-world impact, Pete Kelsey’s work sits at the intersection of geospatial science, preservation, and storytelling.