Public Record · 14 Oct 2026
Howdy Partners, I Said I’d See You Next Year
A Note From Our Founder, Kaitlin Quinn
Earlier this year, I wrote about how bummed I was to miss the Esri User Conference. I love that conference. I love seeing people I rarely get to see anywhere else, getting entirely too invested in someone else’s highly specific GIS problem, and remembering just how much people are doing with this technology. I closed that post by saying I would see you all next year. There were people I was looking forward to seeing, and there was also a little determination tucked into that sentence. I meant it.
So, howdy partners. Groundtruth 911 has joined the Esri Partner Network, and I am very happy to finally be able to say that.
I have listened to some of the most renowned people in our industry present at Esri UC and come away absolutely lit up. Some of the conversations that stayed with me happened entirely by accident. You bump shoulders with someone in a buffet line, start talking, and discover they have spent years doing something extraordinary. There is something about being surrounded by that much knowledge, curiosity, and care that restores my passion for my own corner of the work.
Those conferences kept bringing me back to something I have wanted for a long time: to help humanity in a precise, methodical, systematic way. That is a large ambition to carry around while doing very particular technical work. Seeing what other people were building, and hearing how they thought about it, helped me see the connection again. The details I spent my days working through belonged to something much bigger, and I wanted to keep finding out what I could contribute.
Being in those rooms carries some personal weight, too. I come from a highly disadvantaged background, born to two teenagers who did not complete high school. There are cumulative consequences to a starting point like that, and becoming a first-generation college student is one part of a much longer story. That is part of my history, and it is part of what I bring into these rooms, even when nobody else in them knows it. I almost never lose sight of where I started. It shapes what I notice and the connections I make, including the ones that might be less apparent from another seat at the table.
Once, after listening to me go on about one of those conferences, a friend said that someday I would be up on that stage giving a presentation. I chuckled and rolled my eyes, with this little cheeky thought in the back of my head: Yeah, I know. One day. The idea gave me goosebumps. I couldn’t have explained how I would get there, but I could feel the possibility, and there was so much wonder in it. I think about that conversation now as I build Groundtruth, because things I once imagined without knowing how they could happen have started becoming decisions I get to make and work I get to do. I try to follow my curiosity, even when I can’t see exactly where it leads. With every step, more of my past wonders are turning into my current life.
It is part of why I want to let myself feel this one. I know what my starting point was. Now I am making decisions about a company I founded, developing tools in a field I care about, and preparing to return to a professional community that has meant a great deal to me. I am proud of that. Writing it down feels a little cliché, but I would rather be honest about how much it means than pretend this is an ordinary administrative update.
My work in public safety and 911 gave that larger ambition somewhere specific to go. With NG9‑1‑1, geographic information is part of the infrastructure people depend on when they need help. Preparing and checking that data takes care, patience, and considerable judgment. Much of that effort happens well out of view of the person making the call, but I have always cared about the connection between the two. I remember being the GIS practitioner doing that challenging work. As someone building tools for those practitioners now, I want to keep their experience close enough to shape what I build.
I think about that in much the same way I think about my own background. Experience gives you things to notice that can become easier to overlook as your role changes. I want to remember what the work felt like from that seat, what made it difficult, and what would have helped. Groundtruth 911 is how I am putting that perspective to use.
Building the company has required me to take my own ambition seriously in some very practical ways. There is software to build, licensing to work through, demonstrations to prepare, and a business to operate around all of it. As a solo founder, I am responsible for making those decisions and following through on them. Some days I am excited by how much I get to shape. Some days I would appreciate being able to forward something to another department. I am the department, so we continue.
Joining the Esri Partner Network is a deliberate investment in that company and its future. I want to make good use of the technical resources, build relationships with people whose work complements mine, and keep developing Groundtruth into a business that practitioners can turn to for useful, carefully considered tools. Having spent years coming home from UC full of ideas, I am excited to return with work of my own to share.
I have my passes for next year’s User Conference, and I am planning to attend the Esri Partner Conference in March. If we have worked together, crossed paths at a conference, or lost track of time talking about something that would bore everyone else at the table, I look forward to seeing you.
I said I’d see you next year. I’m looking forward to introducing you to what I’ve been building.
If your next question is “Can we see it?” I was hoping you’d ask. You can request a live demo of Validation Workbench in ArcGIS Pro, where I’ll walk through the software and we can talk about the work you’re doing. Curiosity is a perfectly good reason to get in touch. Bring whatever questions you have, and we’ll see where the conversation goes.