June 2010 Archives

Phew. What a week it's been.

Last week saw the annual INSPIRE conference, held in the beautiful city of Krakow. 

With a delegate attendance of over 600 across the four days, the conference agenda was packed with hands on workshops, packed plenary sessions, seven presentation tracks and a comprehensive exhibition.

As silver sponsors of the event, we spent alot of our time getting to meet the delegates down in the exhibition area (did you know it was a converted car park?!).

And when we weren't doing that, we were either taking the other sessions in, presenting our own findings or hosting workshops and demos.

It was a jam-packed agenda. And if I had to sum up my thoughts, here's what I'd say:

• INSPIRE is now on the agenda for organisations across Europe in a very serious way.
• Transformation and schema translation were the buzz words of the conference.
• INSPIRE forms part of a bigger process in data harmonisation and consistency.
• Cross boundary data (across EU/non-EU zones) is an unnecessary challenge.
• Open Standards are key for interoperability and future proofing (think OGC and ISO).
• Real implementations and examples of deployments of INSPIRE services demonstrate real business and organisational benefits.
• Spatial Data and National Spatial Data Infrastructures continue to be top of the agenda for INSPIRE.
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is key. Working out the TCO of an open source versus commercial off-the-shelf implementation (or perhaps a combination of the two) is important for implementations.
• Eye candy is important for exhibitors (think maps, mash ups, 3D visualisations and Google Earth).
• The Wieliczka salt mine is a beautiful tourist attraction well worth a visit, but beware the cave troll guarding the entrance ;)

Did you attend the conference? Have you got any thoughts or take-outs? Let us know in the comments below.

You don't have to miss out

At the conference we unveiled our web feature service (GO Publisher WFS 2.0) product and offered delegates the opportunity to take out a pre-release version, free for 30 days. The great news is that you don't have to miss out.

You can register for your copy of the pre-release version here: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/campaigns/prerelease.htm

And this is what you can expect:

• INSPIRE ready
• Off-the-shelf software based on open standards
• Works on top of your existing infrastructure - no need for change or costly investments
• Easy to use, easy to deploy, point and click user interface
• Full support for the OGC WFS 2.0 web feature service standard
• On-the-fly-schema translation
• Stored queries
• Temporal queries
• Proven, robust and scaleable

Our CTO, Eddie Curtis also held a workshop and hosted subsequent demonstration sessions on Schema Translations for WFS 2.0. Once again, if you'd like to see a repeat of the popular 20 minute sessions, get in touch with me at melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com as I'm currently arranging some webinars.

We'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave us a message in the comments if you're feeling INSPIRE'd, INSPIRational, un-INSPIRE'd etc etc... (Sorry, couldn't resist it.).

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware

With all the final preparations well under way for next week's INSPIRE Conference, here's a reminder of what you can expect from Snowflake and the team.

Workshop

Eddie Curtis will be kicking off the conference agenda with his workshop on Schema translation at 9am on Tuesday 22nd June.

Title: Demonstration of data exchange and reporting within SEIS using INSPIRE Services

When:  Tuesday 22/06/2010 09:00

Where:  Sala Seminaryjna room

Track: Number 6

More information: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/abstracts/50.docx

Speaker slot

Debbie Wilson, Snowflake's very own INSPIRE guru will be presenting her paper on some recent work within the Aviation industry on the OGC OWS-7 testbed. A key feature being the final testing and delivery of the WFS 2.0 standard that is being offered as an exclusive pre-release to any INSPIRE attendees.

Title: Modernising Aeronautical Information Management

When: Friday 25/06/2010 14:00 (Please note change of time from original)

Where: Aula Mala 

Track: European Research Projects for GEOSS track

More information: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/abstracts/49.docx

Exhibition

Snowflake Software will be in the Auditorium Maximum with their team on hand to help you with any queries at their exhibition stand. They'll be running regular demonstrations with their INSPIRE partner, Envitia of their new unified INSPIRE capability and they'll be taking pre-registration requests for the hot off the shelf GO Publisher WFS 2.0.

Product launch

Snowflake will be unveiling their brand new GO Publisher WFS 2.0 and will be taking registrations for a pre-release copy of the full product.  This is an exclusive for anyone at the INSPIRE conference and can benefit you with the following:

• INSPIRE ready
• Off-the-shelf software based on open standards
• Works on top of your existing infrastructure - no need for change or costly investments
• Easy to use, easy to deploy, point and click user interface
• Full support and testing for the OGC WFS 2.0 standard - a requirement of INSPIRE
• On-the-fly schema translation
• Stored queries
• Temporal queries
• Proven, robust and scalable 

(If you're unable to attend the conference but you're interested in the GO Publisher WFS 2.0 pre-release please get in touch with the team: info@snowflakesoftware.com).

Friends and colleagues at the conference

In addition to our own speaker sessions and workshops, here's a lits of our customers, friends and colleagues who will be speaking about their own projects, that have used GO Publisher to successfully achieve their INSPIRE requirements:

Thursday 24th June - 12:00:  Romanian Integrated Biodiversity Information System (IBIS) - Room: Aula Srednia I

Friday 25th June - 15:00: Benefits of a European Air Quality Data Model for CAFE reporting and Data Exchange - Room: Aula Srednia II

Looking forward to seeing you all next week. Please pop by the stand to say hello.

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware  

This weekend, our Chairman, Peter Woodsford received an MBE for his services to the Geographic Information Industry in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. The award is recognition of his contribution to the growing maturity and importance of the Geographic Information industry.

Member of the British Empire

For our overseas friends and colleagues, you might be interested to know that an MBE is an order of chivalry awarded by The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. It is awarded by the Sovereign on advice of the Government.

So naturally we're very proud to have him as our Chairman.

“Although the award is to me personally, I see it as a mark of the growing maturity and importance of the GI industry, and of the contributions towards this of my two companies, 1Spatial (formerly Laser-Scan) and Snowflake Software, the organisations I have worked with (AGI, EuroSDR, OGC and ISPRS) and universities I have been associated with (UCL, Edinburgh and Nottingham) to name those that come most readily to mind".

Yes, it's back. 

• GML Series (XML Primer, GML Fundamentals & GML Hands-On)  15 CPD points
• INSPIRE Series (INSPIRE Essentials, GML Fundamentals & GML Hands-On) 15 CPD points
• GO Loader Series (GO Loader Fundamentals & GO Loader Advanced)
• GO Publisher Series (GO Publisher Hands-On)

Take a look at our Summer School Schedule to find out more: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/training/course_dates.htm

Register for the Snowflake Summer School

If you'd like to take advantage of the Snowflake Summer school, register your interest and a member of the training team will be in touch to discuss your training needs and availability.

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware

With the INSPIRE conference at just over two weeks away; we're busy making our final preparations before we head over.

We're sponsoring the event, which also means you'll get to catch up with the team in the exhibition hall. Here's an overview of who's going, what we're doing and how you can catch up with the team:

Day 1: Tuesday 22nd June, 9:00 - Workshop

Title: Demonstration of data exchange and reporting within SEIS using INSPIRE Services

Eddie Curtis, our CTO will be running a workshop on schema translation. A sequel to last year's popular workshop, Eddie will be educating attendees on deploying translations via WFS 2.0, performing temporal and stored queries and setting up KML services (think Google Earth).

More details: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/abstracts/50.docx

Day 4: Friday 25th June, 12:00 - speaker session (European Research Projects for GEOSS track)

Title: Modernising Aeronautical Information Management

Debbie Wilson, our INSPIRE expert will be talking through her paper that details some recent work we've been doing to help the aeronautical industry overcome some of their challenges to data exchange. Creating and implementing standards to assist with demands to increase safety whilst supporting increases in capacity. Geospatial data used for real critical business decision making - think ashclouds- well, don't think about them too much...

Day 4: Friday June 25th, 15:00 - speaker session

Title: Benefits of a European air quality data model for CAFE reporting and data exchange (Trans-national SDI projects track)

Our friends and colleagues working on the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE) project will be presenting the work undertaken under JRC's contract "Development and demonstration of technical IT solutions linking INSPIRE services to the reporting and data exchange requirements of the proposed CAFE Directive".  Debbie Wilson, our INSPIRE expert was a key member of the project.

More details: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/abstracts/198.doc

Visit the stand

We'll be in the exhibition hall from Tuesday 22nd - Friday 25th where you can catch up with any of our speakers, our chairman Peter Woodsford or the rest of the Snowflake team.

We'll be unveiling our new solution for INSPIRE with our partner, Envitia; we'll hold regular demos at the stand as well as the chance to register for the beta version of our newest release of GO Publisher featuring:

• Full support for existing and upcoming INSPIRE Annex themes
• WFS 2.0
• Temporal and Stored queries

And you can pre-register your interest for the full release as well.

It's new, it's exciting and we'll be announcing more details soon. Watch this space.

So, to catch up with the team in Poland, find out about our new partnership with Envitia for INSPIRE, attend one of our workshops or speaker sessions and to be the first to get your hands on our new GO Publisher release, make sure you visit us at the INSPIRE 2010 Conference in Krakow, Poland.

More details: http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/events/conferences/inspire_2010/index.cfm

*Image at top, left to right:  Eddie Curtis (CTO), Debbie Wilson (Business Consultant), Peter Woodsford (Chairman), Melissa Burns (Marketing Manager), Richard Rombouts (Technical Sales Manager).

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware