Happy New Year!  As the immediate past president and incoming BOD chair, I would like to express my gratitude to all your support to me and CPGIS in the past year and beyond. Special thanks go to our honorary president Dr. Hui Lin, the Board of Directors (Chaired by Dr. Cuizhen Wang), General Secretary Dr. Shuming Bao, and all committee leaders, who helped me and the executive team settled. All together, we have been developing and promoting CPGIS toward a leading organization of GIScience worldwide. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, we stayed strong resilience and connections through a series of hybrid events.

The year of 2022 is the 30th anniversary of the founding of CPGIS! We have successfully held the following events (with hyperlinks) and activities to celebrate this milestone of CPGIS:
 

·       CPGIS Annual Business Meeting at AAG 2022

·       New CPGIS Website User Interface (worked with Drs. Shuming Bao, Xiao Huang, Hui Lin, and the technical support team Xiaodong and Manman)

·       CPGIS Educational Webinar Series on Geospatial Big Data Analytics from March 10 to May 6, 2022 (worked with the education committee chaired by Dr. Qiusheng Wu and supported by Drs. Min Chen and Jun Li) and the GeoAI series from May 10 to May 26, 2022 (chaired by Dr. Qingfeng Guan, organized by HPSCIL@CUG)

·       The 29th CPGIS Annual Conference (Geoinformatics 2022) was successfully held on August 15-18, 2022, in Beijing, China (with a large team, special thanks to Drs. Xinqi Zheng and Chunxiao Zhang, Anrong Dang and Hui Lin)

·       CPGIS 30th Anniversary Brochure "Stay True to Our Original Aspiration and Forge Ahead" (co-led by next President Dr. Lan Mu)

·       CPGIS 30th Anniversary Video Greetings (worked with worldwide CPGIS members and friends)

·       CPGIS Historical Multimedia Content Collection (worked with Drs. Hui Lin, Shuming Bao, Xun Shi, Fan Zhang, Yuhao Kang, past presidents and BOD members, and many CPGIS members)

·       CPGIS Presidents Interview Series (worked with the Media Committee, special thanks to Yuhao Kang, Fan Zhang, Xiang Ye, Jinwen Xu, Haokun Liu, Yuyan Liu, Ce Hou, Yikang Wang, Wanying Song and Qianru Liao)

·       CPGIS members contributed new book: “New Thinking about GIS”, edited by Drs. Bin Li, Xun Shi, A-Xing Zhu, Cuizhen Wang, Hui Lin

·       Annual Best Student Paper Competition (led by Dr. Xiang Chen) and Annals of GIS Best Paper Awards (led by Dr. A-Xing Zhu)

·       CPGIS Annual Awards (the Award committee chaired by Dr. Yu Liu; the awardees include the Distinguished Scholar Award: Dr. A-Xing Zhu; the Young Scholar Award: Dr. Chunyuan Diao and Dr. Yang Xu, the Service Excellence Award: Dr. Xiang Ye, and the inaugural Innovation Award: Dr. Qiusheng Wu; special thanks to Dr. Chuang Tao's sponsorship)

·       CPGIS Students and Young Scholars Career Development Supporting Series (closely working with a student-led group GISphere)

·       CPGIS Media: We continue collaterally sharing CPGIS news, event flyers, and announcements in multiple CPGIS media platforms, including Wechat Public Account, Wechat Group, Twitter, Facebook etc., aside from our conventional CPGIS website and CPGIS-L mail list. We also launched a new "Job Opportunities" channel for GIS professionals and students. Special thanks to the media team led by Drs. Xiang Ye and Zhiyong Zhou for their time and great efforts.

With the new leadership of President Lan Mu and her new administration team in 2023, As always, with your involvement and support, I fully believe that CPGIS will continue to succeed and have a bright future.

Stay well and healthy!

Song Gao

CPGIS 2022 President