About Directions Media

Jane Elliott co-founded Directions Media in 1998 along with husband, the late Scott Elliott. Both had previously founded Wessex, one of the first companies to offer desktop mapping and digital street and demographic data packaged together. Ms. Elliott has guided the company toward substantial growth during the Directions’ twelve year history as the first entirely online geospatial publication. 

 Joe Francica is the editor-in-chief, vice-publisher and member of the board of directors of Directions Media that includes Directions Magazine, the world’s top-ranked publication for location intelligence, geographic information systems (GIS), and wireless location-based technology. He is the chairman and founder of two conferences sponsored by Directions Media: The Location Intelligence Conference, now in its seventh year, and the Rocket City Geospatial Conference held annually in Huntsville, Alabama.

Personally, Mr. Francica has authored numerous articles and editorials on topics ranging from market research, wireless location-based services, retail trade area analysis, and the use of geographic information system (GIS) technology for business applications. During the past year, because of the tremendous growth in the location technology market, he has been sought out for his market guidance by the national media, venture capitalists, and market research groups.

In addition, Mr. Francica is a member of the oversight committee for the Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, TX and was selected in 2010 to be among the top geospatial technologist in the country that helped complete the U.S. Department of Labor’s Geospatial Technology Competency Model that provides a comprehensive set of guidelines to universities and colleges to develop the curricula and skill sets of the next generation of geospatial professionals.

Mr. Francica is asked to speak at conferences and corporate events, as well as adjudicate mapping contests by companies such as Bentley Systems and Microsoft. He was recently featured in the documentary “The Geospatial Revolution” produced by Penn State Public Television. He has contributed to three books, “Profiting from a GIS” (published in 1993; edited by G. Castle), “Geographic Information Systems in Business" published in 2005, (edited by J. Pick), and the “Encyclopedia of GIS” published by Springer.

 Nora Sherwood Parker has 25 years of experience in the geospatial industry. After completing her Masters Degree in Geography (specialized in GIS) from the University of South Carolina in 1987, she started her career at a long-defunct GIS software company (Criterion) based in San Diego that offered one of the first PC-based GIS solutions (LandTrak). The product had been developed to help address the redistricting required by the break-up of “Ma Bell” into the “Baby Bells,” and originally ran on a mainframe - it's main function was the ability to run vector-based "point-inpolygon" algorithms. She spent her early days in the industry attempting to get schools and police departments to use LandTrak for redistricting, bus routing and crime analysis-type applications. This was a major challenge at a time, as most of her training sessions started out with showing people how to turn on their computers!

From Criterion, Nora joined Ernst & Young as a management consultant in GIS in 1990 and led the GIS practice for the government IT consulting group for two years. During that time, she served on the URISA Board of Directors, and participated in numerous California-based committees having to do with state-wide geospatial data issues. She was recruited by GIS World toward the end of 1992 to start a new magazine, Business Geographics. She ran the magazine and the conference by the same name until 1995, when GIS World was sold to Pearson.

Nora started her family in 1996 and has since been working primarily behind the scenes in a variety of capacities, and helped found Directions Magazine in 1998. She is on the company’s Board of Directors, and serves as the senior managing editor, conference program manager, and as the webinar program manager. 

 Adena Schutzberg serves as Directions Media’s Executive Editor, but that is only part of her service to the geospatial community. Selected to join the advisory board of the Penn State Online Master of Geographic Information Systems program when the degree was under development, she has since joined the faculty. Her courses use innovative technologies to ensure students are fully aware of, and prepared to evaluate and use the variety of new tools and technologies available to the working professional. She’s currently serving as a content advisor for WPSU’s Geospatial Revolution video project and appeared in the first installment of the series.

Schutzberg is a sought after speaker who has addressed a variety of small and large geospatial events, including NE URISA, New York State Geospatial Summit, Pennsylvania GIS Conference, MAGIC, FOSS4G among others, on the current and future state of the industry. She’s served as a judge in a geospatial app contest hosted by NakdReality.

Schutzberg is a resource to the mainstream media and has been interviewed on NPR and CNN International and quoted in the Boston Globe, St. Petersburg Times as well many technology publications.

Schutzberg does not believe in “press release journalism” and is often the one who “dig ups” and then questions the latest decision of a vendor or government agency. She asks the hard questions and publishes the answers. She has a special interest in, and provides regular coverage of open source geospatial technology, patents and lawsuits, and health GIS, topics rarely covered by other geospatial publications.

 Mr. Santos is a Forestry Engineer, specialized in Forestry (Universidad de Madrid) with a Masters Degree in Geographic Information Systems. (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.) He is a consultant in the fields of Geographic Information Systems and LBS a specializes in business and GIS integration. His expertise includes GIS tools such as 9.2..NET ADF. SQL Server and software development using and Javascript as well as teaching GIS courses for the employers Association of Engineering Companies.

 Alvaro de Gracia, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in European Business Studies, awarded by the University of Portsmouth (UK). He has extensive experience in IT projects, specializes in Business Intelligence technologies and GIS. Alvaro has an international career, working during years in banking for JP Morgan (London) and Amadeus GTD (Madrid-Nice), where he cultivated a strong multicultural and multi-technology environment experience. He currently heads Iberia, a subsidiary of Integeo Pty Ltd, manufacturer of connectors between Business Intelligence and GIS.

Alvaro's principal activity is the analysis of companies in varying sectors of the market with the objective to implement strategies and concepts to improve business practices and management through Map Intelligence. Clients like Carrefour, Wurth, Audi, EDP, Banco Santander are in his portfolio. rections stry Politécnica alizes development ols ArcGIS Server ent ArcGISserver 9.3 of the ean ensive nologies king vated e Integeo rer n oncepts ence. tfolio.