We encourage our team here to work with technology and dabble in some of the apps, webmaps and resources that our user community and clients might also be interested in. Case in point, a number of our team members have shared their interests and passions using Esri Story Map Technology. Indeed this is a great way to follow your passions and also learn a little about some of the cool Geo technology tools that are available to us all. Our team all use Admin Tools in their daily jobs and they also work with many other apps like Collector, Survey 123, Story Maps, and WebApp Builder outside of their work day for their own professional development.
To date, we’ve seen our team members create some fun and interesting travel maps, sports team themed story maps, pub and brewery maps and much more. Most recently, our support engineer, Blake, used the Esri Story Map Journal template to start mapping an interest of his, the real world locations of Iconic Films. Using the story map, Blake shares images and descriptions of iconic films that you are likely very familiar with and places them on the real World map to show you exactly where the filming took place to create the magic that you enjoyed on the big screen. Ever wondered where exactly the castle is located that was featured in Monty Python’s Holy Grail? Here you go…
Interested in learning more about Story Maps?
The templates are useful for many scenarios and may even be useful for you in your daily work or perhaps for a project or client. Some of the ways you can use the Story Map templates include:
- Sharing a sequence of photos of videos (perhaps useful for a tutorial)
- Sharing a rich multi-media story
- Cascading Story. this could be used for a report, article, case study
- Present a series of maps
- Sharing crowd0sourced data and photos – we used this for our Admin Tools user map
- Compare two maps using a swipe or spyglass effect (think before and after)
- Customize the code and create your own, branded design – see the Story Maps developer’s corner
Perhaps the next step for Blake will be to learn about how he can create and host his own Story Maps! This fine developer blog post by Esri’s Own Evans can help him to get started. See An Introduction to Hosting Your Own Story Maps

See Also:
- Learn more about Story Map templates HERE
- View the story map Gallery HERE
- Admin Tools for ArcGIS Online – Building A User Community Story Map
