About Me

My name is Connor, I am a former filmmaker turned GIS analyst and cartographer, and an avid tinkerer and maker with a penchant for leading creative explorations of problems.

While working on a documentary set for the Denver Musuem of Nature and Science during my time at the Denver School of the Arts & Colorado Film School, I fell in love with environmental science and changed directions to attend Colorado State University to study Ecosystem Science with a minor in GIS. I was bothered by the environmental challenges facing our shared world, and wanted to find a way to make positive change. My first foray into GIS was trying to map the Cameron Peak wildfire extent while it was burning, using a PostgreSQL-powered spatialSQL server I set up on an old Mac Mini and QGIS in my free time, which eventually led to me declaring GIS as a minor.

While at Colorado State I found cartography to be the perfect exchange of the science and arts, and began an internship at the Geospatial Centroid, an Esri & alternatives shop on campus which offers technical services in spatial analysis, cartography, interactive web applications, and remote sensing. At the Centroid I got to expand my skill set with Esri products such as Pro, Story Maps, and Server. I also got to explore the connection between the arts and mapping, and helped create workflows that included multi-media and multi-modal processes using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, and more, creating visualizations for books and magazines. I also got to experiment with PostGIS and database management, Google Earth Engine, detection models, and QGIS while at the Centroid, as well as abroad when studying remote sensing at the University of Exeter in Penryn for a semester.

In my free time I make videos about mountain biking and bike maintenance, I also tinker with 3D printers, old computers, and cars. I also illustrate and draw what I see in the field and on my expeditions.

My work at the Centroid has been spotlighted by CSU Source here (link) and by the CSU Magazine here (link), and I’ve spoken at GIS Days events and at GIS In the Rockies:

Contact: csiegfreid@me.com | cws2001@colostate.edu