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'Map Africa 2006'




GIS Development has achieved yet another milestone in its journey of more than a decade in promotion of Geospatial activities by organising 'Map Africa 2006'. The conference was its first venture in African continent. The Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg was the event venue. The Exhibition was organised in collaboration with and cooperation from eleven reputed global and South African exhibitors.

The conference began with the welcome address by Dr Hrishikesh Samanth, which was followed by the inaugural address by Mr Derek Clarke, who spoke on behalf of Dr NP Makgalemele, the DDG, Department of Land Affairs, South Africa. Mr Derek stressed the necessity of the theme 'Building Geospatial Capacity and Infrastructure in Africa' in achieving the objectives of Agenda 21 and Millennium Development Goals.

Key-note addresses were delivered by Prof. Milan Konecny, President, ICA; Dr. Elizabeth Gavin, DDG, Statistics organisation, South Africa and Mr. Maneesh Prasad, COO, GIS Development.

In her speech Dr Gavin emphasised that 'Capacity is not an end in itself', as it requires continued efforts and investments. Prof. Milan presented his ideas on 'Capacity building for Geo-Information development: Processes, Content and Context'. Mr Prasad spoke on 'Geospatial Capacity Building' in sharing his experiences with Indian perspective.

The opening day saw sessions on issues like 'Infrastructure Development' and 'Open Source and Interoperability'. The list of speakers included Mr. Derek Clarke, Chief Director, Survey and Mapping, South Africa; Mr. Chris Clarke, Director Business Development - EMD, MapInfo; Mr. Craig Schwabe, Director, GIS Centre, HSRC, South Africa and Dr.R.S.Rao, Director, International Sales, GeoEye. The other speakers who participated in the conference were Prof. Arup Das Gupta, Distinguished Professor, BISAG, India; Mr. Geoff Zeiss, Director of Technology, Autodesk and Mr. Andrew Terhorst, Manager of ICT for Earth Observations unit at Meraka Institute, CSIR.

The day-two commenced with Keynote Session on 'Spatial Data infrastructure' and a Technical session on 'Water Resources'. A workshop on 'Project Management - NRIS a Case Study' was also organised, which was coordinated by Prof Dasgupta. In the workshop Prof. Dasgupta explained participants about the various stages involved in Project management at Macro level with various elements involved.

The workshop by Map Info and Spatial Technologies on 'Business intelligence' was a hit among participants. Mr John Allan of Map Info coordinated the workshop and tried to prove the importance of Geocoding in various business purposes. Also, there was an hour-long demonstration on various capabilities of MapInfo in business applications and location-based services.

On third and concluding day of the conference, after various technical sessions, the valedictory session was held in which participants shared their views. Many of the eminent speakers spoke about their experiences while participating in 'Map Africa'. They all felt that the conference was very successful and they would like to have contributions from education and research sector in a big way in the coming days. The conference ended with a formal speech by Dr. Samanth.

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