The 20th AGI (Association for Geographic Information) Event and 2nd Geocommunity Conference 2008 was held this past week at Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK to an audience of 600 under the theme ‘Shaping a Changing World’. The evening prior to the event featured a pre-conference icebreaker which included the Earl of Oxford’s Men, a Shakespearean entertainment group who performed the Henry V Battle of Agincourt in full attire and with an abundance of fun and laughter. Steven Feldman once again acted as Conference Chair, putting together a program that included a wide ranging and diverse number presentations traversing the GI community within the UK. Major sponsors of the event this year included Autodesk, ESRI(UK) and Ordnance Survey.
Over 20 businesses and government agencies were in attendance to fill out the exhibition space. Attendance was up 20% this year as Feldman noted in his opening remarks on the first day. “Digital geography is at the heart of all that we do,” Feldman said.
Sean Phelan, Founder and director of Multimap, a company that was recently sold to Microsoft mentioned “this is the last generation that will know what it means to be lost.” Phelan went on to outline a history of digital cartographic evolution from 1993 onward.
{sidebar id=213 align=right} Vanessa Lawrence, Director of Ordnance Survey gave a keynote and offered up some interesting comments in a question period afterward, suggesting that more people need to consider giving presentations. Her observation was based on the fact that the same people often present in at conference keynotes and others need to consider to participate – a point well made. “Geography is a stage upon which issues can be debated,” she said. That in reference to the unifying nature of GI as a tool of communication.
Geoff Zeiss of Autodesk explained how “most valuable data within government remains on paper and thus it’s value is lost.” He indicated that digital infrastructure data is much more useful today and can be integrated across the organisation adding value to it. Stuart Haynes, director, Defence Geographic Centre explained how that agency is meeting the mapping and cartographic needs of the Defence sector and providing intelligence to soldiers, military and the wider defence related community. “We move rapidly and often turn around projects within 1-2 days,” he said. Haynes provided a wealth of examples that included a fusion of data to enable cartographic products to be generated.
Keith Wishart of ESRI(UK) gave a presentation entitled ‘Business Case 2.0 – Measuring the Intangible Benefits of GIS’ which discussed the issues of intangible benefits in terms of ROI. “We use GIS to get a handle on uncertainty,” he said. Wishart indicated that lack of awareness and difficulty in building business cases have been major obstacles in realising tangible benefits along with budgetary constraints.
Richard Kaufholz of Infotech would later provide a presentation on ROI entitled ‘Measuring ROI in the Utility and Telco Business’. Kaufholz see’s integration as a major issue in successful projects, if ROI is to be realised. “Challenges include coordination of implementation partners, legacy applications, different network asset schemes and maturity with other business functions,” he said. David Sercombe, GIS development manager, Teignbridge District Council gave an excellent presentation on the topic of {sidebar id=214 align=left} ‘Challenges for Maintaining Fit for Purpose Data in Local Government.” Sercombe hit on a number of interesting points coming from his wealth of experience. He explained how data comes together across the Council, the needs of people and how they interface systems. Overall his presentation is one of the most thought provoking I saw during the conference. Sercombe said, “INSPIRE is fantastic, it is causing metadata to be created.” I found that statement to be insightful – and true.
‘The Ripening of Earth Globes – From Earth to Decision Support’ proved to be an interesting presentation given by Johannes Kebeck, Microsoft. He explained how Microsft is tying in their products such as high performance computing (HPC), SQL Server, Live and Earth with geoinformation to meet consumer and professional needs. I like the Microsoft approach because it simply focuses on enabling people to use their products, and as Kebeck explained, it links things together. He was able to speak to crowd sourcing and other forms of data gathering while also talking about professional GIS products. It appears that the UltraCAM used for gathering high resolution imagery has a future in terms of its Near Infra-Red (NIR) imaging capabilities – something not often mentioned. Microsoft currently holds over 100 Tb of data for the City of London alone – a staggering figure.
I spoke with Elizabeth Wilkinson of SnowFlake Software about XML/GML GO Loader. The company’s GO Publisher and GO Loader enables organisations to work across XML and GML allowing users to publish directly to databases with an easy-to-use process. The GO Publisher WFS product moves data between OGC compliant servers and readily translates data. GO Publisher Agent enables large amounts of data to be distributed to consumers using the translation process. In practice, whole databases can be translated to XML/GML as needed, or distributed by geographic regions, for example.
STAR-APIC is now available for use from within ORACLE databases through the use of the new MercatorDB product. Tom Timms says the new product, “has more capabilities than previous versions in terms of font handling and placement.” He also showed {sidebar id=215 align=right} me a copy of the new ‘Philip’s Green Road Atlas’, loaded with MercatorDB produced maps for the UK and produced on recycled paper of a special type for cartographic purposes.
Lastly, Bentley was present with a full lineup of products. Mike Redmond and Wayne Marsh showed me some recently produced wind energy visualisation that was running inside of Adobe 3D where they were able to move around the generation site. Also, information on Bentley CADSCRIPT and Bentley Geospatial Server was present, the later oriented toward a federated approach for distributing enterprise GIS. This product brings together spatial databases, business documents and other information distributed across organisations into one framework serving platform.
In conclusion, AGI Geocmmunity 2008 can be considered a success. It is obvious with a 20% growth in attendance that something is going right and generating keen interest across the UK to attend this event. It seems to me, that the conference location is part of it together with a wide range of interesting presentations and good opportunities for merging old and new, young and old and simply focusing on GI – which is what this event is all about. The UK educational community needs to step up to the plate more. Most of the presentations from academics originated from London (which were excellent) – but it causes one to wonder, “where are those other folks?”
The conference has an air of intimacy which is contributing to its success. Finally, people have fun at this conference and it is nice to see people smile once in a while, enjoy themselves and have fun while learning and sharing.
Other blog coverage of this conference by V1 Magazine
AGI Geocommunity 2008 Opens in Stratford-Upon-Avon
AGI Geocommunity 2008 – Day 1 and 1/2
AGI Geocommunity 2008: The Big Debate
