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Dear Readers, A very stirring statement that went across the Grand BallRoom Hall on the second day of the Geospatial World 2005 was that – “It is crisis that leverages true opportunity. No amount of strategies or planning finally leads to growth.” This came point blank to the hundreds of professionals and strategists from the geospatial industry and its user base, in this second and largely applauded keynote session. The speaker was Thomas J Koulopoulos and the session was on ‘The Enterprise Revolution’. The speech delivered for about an hour received a gigantic applause. His inspirational words traversed technical areas, philosophical issues and aspects of mindset change or vision. The second and third day at the Geospatial World 2005 had a lot to offer than one could have expected through its numerous technical sessions and workshops and good quality presentations. Demo theatres and ‘Ask the expert’ sessions along with the many ‘workshop and training sessions’ particularly of all the divisions of Intergraph’s Mapping and GeoSpatial Solutions happened at considerable phases throughout the day in almost each of the 14 halls. The range of papers presented and discussed covered topics, application areas and techniques that are not only important to understand, but also contextually exemplifying of many of the theories we talk of. Find below a brief of the final two days of the conference and its key developments. Regards, Ayon Tarafdar Senior Assistant Editor, GIS Development ayon@gisdevelopment.net Keynote Address – Thomas J Koulopoulos The second day started with Thomas J Koulopoulos, President and Co-founder of The Delphi Group presenting a highly motivating and intriguing speech. His theme was about how the government and industry are to survive in the modern age of perpetual change and innovation. He raised questions that make us wonder about the geospatial technology and its relevance. “What makes a vision?” Thomas started with this important question for everybody. He mentioned that it is important to have a vision for every human as well as every organisation. It is the vision that makes the figures ticking. And he emphasized that vision should not be quantitative but essentially qualitative. Having a vision of a better service or product is always a better stance than having a vision for reaching a target figure. And that is typically the case for GIS and related technologies. He covered important issues and gave a succinct description of the state of affairs with information age. “The way we see the world has a tremendous impact on the world itself” Thomas philosophized the fact that the way we see or comprehend our world has actually an impact on our immediate world and hence we actually make the way in which we want to live. The problem arises when we do not see anything or want anything and just keep going. In the same way, he emphasized that the use and application of the technology is to be properly understood and then developed, since it is going to finally deliver in the manner we want. Hence it is always good to have a solution as a direct function of the problem statement of any area “It is crisis that leverages opportunity” Even though the actual ‘need’ should drive the service and product development, there are cases where asking what do you need may not help in the advancement of technologies. And most leaps of growth in every walk of commerce had taken place during a crisis. Hence he emphasised on looking at every crisis in the positive light and that any lack of crisis should make us prepared for the worst. That shall not only reduce the potential development of any technical product but also its utilization. The Geospatial World Awards There were a number of awards given out after this:
Technical Sessions The technical sessions commenced after tea simultaneously in 16 halls of the hotel. Many papers were discussed in all in the pre-lunch session spanning cases from over 18 different countries. The third day was full of technical sessions and various aspects were touched upon that lead an organization to move towards being seamlessly integrated in the geospatial sector. Aspects of Data integrity, Data reuse, View generation, Process flexibility, Scalability, etc., were elaborated upon. Interoperability had a heavy presence through the day’s talks. Various local governments cases and regional departments put their views. Utilities, transportation projects and technology updates took up a large amount of discussions and papers. A special session on military and intelligence was of immense interest to many as presentations exemplified different ways to data updating, capturing, easy data dissemination and data encryption. Exhibition The exhibition area with over 1000 sq m of space saw impressive surges of visitors estimated at over 900 per hour in the peak afternoon. Even though the number of exhibitors seemed reduced to about 15 exhibitors, the layout and exhibition phases were very helpful. Social Event The second day ended with an exotic evening programme on the San Francisco Bay Cruise – Belly with dinner arranged by Geospatial World, setting music, rhythm, fragrance and hues to the upbeat technical mood with a mix of the Fishermen’s Wharf in the air. |
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