The poster competition is part of the GIS Day Celebration started in 1999 by Jack Dangermond, president of Esri. Dangermond envisioned GIS Day as a grassroots effort to promote geography and the application of GIS. Georgia Tech began celebrating GIS Day with a poster competition in 2009 when Lisa Douangchai, a student studying city & regional planning at the time, organized the competition to promote GIS campus-wide.

"The posters were selected by a group of 5 judges," writes Associate Director of the Center for GIS Tony Giarrusso, "which included a past student, faculty and researchers affiliated with CGIS." The two winning entries were chosen from a field of twenty-three posters based on their overall design and their ability to effectively demonstrate the use of GIS in addressing a spatial problem. The event demonstrated the effectiveness of GIS in communicating large amounts of information through concise visual displays, and according to Giarrusso, the event  "will become an annual event in CoA and will only get bigger and better."