The already 16th annual group of UNIGIS MSc students met for their kickoff-workshop from January 5-7 at the University of Salzburg, Austria. This German language program has established itself as the gold standard of postgraduate online GIS education over recent years. Right after New Year, 35 incoming students started their coursework by establishing a solid foundation of ‘networking’, helping them with successfully working their way through compulsory and elective study modules to be covered through distance learning. A challenging 2-year program, the UNIGIS MSc is an excellent foundation for careers across and beyond Geoinformatics and its many application domains.