On Friday 11th and Saturday 12th a new intake of UNIGIS professional students started into a demanding but interesting year of learning applied GIS by getting together in Salzburg for an introductory workshop. Participants of the German language version of the UNIGIS professional certificate course typically originate from Austria, Germany or Switzerland, although Austria was a bit underrepresented with just one student in this group. The team from Salzburg wishes a good start and looks forward to interesting discussions on GIS-topics!