Mapping Morganton: Stephen Fox balances analytics and creativity

Much of Stephen Fox’s work happens behind the scenes but helps people more easily understand patterns and relationships about where they live through the City of Morganton’s Geographic Information System. As the city’s analyst, he fulfills custom mapping requests for several departments and regularly maintains and improves datasets.

Fox first worked for the Western Piedmont Council of Governments as a contractor for the city before officially becoming an in-house analyst, eventually helping build the city’s GIS system from the ground up.

Though his 9-5 work is very technical, Fox has a more creative side, from being a member of Morganton’s music scene to creating digital art for the city’s Art in the Hall exhibitions. His adventures outside of City Hall have taken him to auditions for “American Idol” and to the No. 1 spot for Rock Band vocals worldwide.

Fox shared the ins and outs of his career along with his life as a husband to Maggie and father to Logan and Nora.

Note: Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Tell us about yourself and your role with the City of Morganton.

I have been with the city since 2013. I did contract work for the city through the Council of Governments in 2004, so I’ve actually been doing work for the city since 2004.

I’m a GIS analyst, so I do mapping. I maintain things like the zoning layer here and the utility layers for all the different departments. I work very closely with almost every department of the city, especially Development and Design, Main Street, and even Public Safety.

I do mapping support for everybody, and that can be internal data maintenance, that can be public facing maps, or support for grant writing projects. It’s a very, very diverse job.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I work with the GIS technician here and a lot of the time we’re working on previous projects or long-term tasks while prioritizing new requests.

Almost every day we have some sort of custom data request or map request. I really like what I do. It’s a lot of fun having so much diversity and getting to work with so much different stuff. Something that we’ve been trying to do is work on an official cemetery map and take our old database and update it into a geographic format, and that’s been kind of a long process.

What got you interested in GIS work?

I went to UNC Charlotte for geography. I just gravitated toward geography when I was young because I was into a book series called “Lone Wolf,” and they had these great maps. I would just sit and I would draw maps, and then I became really interested in real life maps and just geography in general.

My major is in planning because they didn’t have a GIS focus at the time, but through that, I discovered GIS.

What are some of your passions outside of work?

I just finished up playing with a band for 18 years called Fox and Company. For me personally, it was to spend more time with my family. I have two very young kids named Logan and Nora, and it was just kind of a good time to step away. We ended on a high after playing TGIF last year.

I’ve also had a lot of ties to singing over the years. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was the No. 1 ranked player in the world on Rock Band for vocals. I actually had a sponsorship from a company that sold equipment for the game, and they flew me out to the E3 conference in San Diego in 2009 to be at their booth and demo their equipment. They had me come up and sing for a demo of a new gameplay feature.

It was a fun chapter in my life. It took a lot of hard work in my free time to achieve that No. 1 in the world.

Another thing I did was the Art in the Hall. I was also the top-ranked artist on Photoshopcontest.com. I told people when I did Art in the Hall that this was the last time that someone was going to be able to do an artwork that was created digitally, and it still seems relatively impressive to people because of how much AI is advancing.

I also used to try out for “American Idol” years ago. I never got to the point where I saw the judges because they have their pre-selection process, they sent through like one in 400 people, and I got really close to going through two times.

Do you think you’ll ever perform again?

I have talked to my brother Michael repeatedly and before we started the band, we were doing acoustic stuff. We’ve got really tight family harmonies, so I think both of us would really like to get together and work on some stuff and get back to doing that sort of thing again. I think it would be really fun to kind of get out and play some gigs around town in some of the places that have more stripped-down venues.

What makes Morganton special to you?

I like the community. There are a lot of people who are just really, really passionate about Morganton. I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of those people, particularly the downtown community. I’m really excited about the Main Street Conference being hosted here.

I’ve also worked with the Meeting Place Mission some over the years. My wife Maggie was on their board for a while, and she did a lot with them, and they have lots of really fun events.

I also love the access to nature, being near the mountains, Lake James, and we’ve got really great parks. I’m super excited about Oak Hill Park and what’s been going on out there.