Each year, September brings the annual and unofficial start of the geo-conference season. Lined up first - the W3G '(un)conference', AGI Community and INTERGEO 2010.
W3G '(un)conference' & AGI COMMUNITY 2010
First up was the AGI GeoCommunity conference in the picturesque town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Well, according to the brochure I grabbed at the hotel it is supposed to be quite nice. In reality I didn't see any of it, because I spent three days on the exhibition floor or in the hotel bar wearing a funny hat, listening to stand-up geo-comedy (yes, geographers have a sense of humour!). As this was my first ever AGI conference I was really looking forward to meeting up with the UK geo-community.
On Monday night, Ian, Eddie and I took off from Southampton with our cars filled with exhibition goodies and suitcases. After almost getting lost at Chievely Services (who in his right mind ever designed the roadplan for this place anyway??) we arrived in our hotel in Stratford.
Before the AGI GeoCommunity conference started, the W3G (un)conference took place.
In true Snowflake style Eddie and I contributed to this informal gathering of paleos and neo-geos.
Being Dutch, I decided to do a presentation on the Dutch pragmatic approach on building their national SDI...however, I expect that some people were expecting something slightly more exciting after reading my title: "Tulips, Porn, Cheese & Standards - The Dutch Do It Better".
Eddie took a more back-to-basic approach by fishing a piece of paper out of his pocket with some sketchy notes and scribbled diagrams and produced one of his memorable one-liners: "I am going to talk a little bit about linked data...and then start an argument!".
Apart from the usual exchange of friendly-fire between the paleos and neo-geos, at the end of the day a good amount of geo-beers united us all.
For an impression of the day, visit Paul Clarke's Flickr site. Some great pics that capture the day's atmosphere.
After an excellent ice-breaker party, the AGI Community conference 2010 kicked off.
At this years conference we presented our solutions for INSPIRE and demonstrated how our standard GO Loader product can be used to load OS Open Data datasets. A great benefit that any GO Loader customers with full maintenance and support can make use of. Read more about this on our Techy Blog.
Some 40 people turned up to watch Eddie's presentation on how 'INSPIRE is more than just an EU stick'. Eddie explained that INSPIRE is not a bad thing. It can act as an opportunity for organising your own spatial data infrastructure. One member of the audience even remarked that "INSPIRE is a godsend!"
The Soapbox
And then came that much anticipated moment: The Soapbox! Would Ian Painter be able to retain his Soapbox title? It turned out that the competition haven't been sitting idle over the past 12 months. No less that 11 contenders entered the stage. The competition was fierce, and at times even funny. After much deliberation it was decided that Landmark's Thierry Gregorius was this years worthy champion. The Soapbox was followed by yet another excellent night of entertainment, which included wearing silly hats.
The day after the night before started suspiciously quiet. After a few hectolitres of strong coffee, the Snowflake team was ready to go again.
In the afternoon, the main ballroom was reserved for Ian's well-attended talk about Open Data, aptly named 'Oi Sir Tim Hands Off My Spreadsheet'. Ian explained why opening up your data can be beneficial, not only for citizens, but for your own organisation as well.
View the presentations again
In case you missed the presentations, Ian and Eddie's talks are available on the Snowflake Slideshare site.
INTERGEO 2010
Next up was the 'Big One': INTERGEO 2010 in Cologne, Germany.
Some stats to put the conference in perspective: 3 days, more than 17,500 visitors (25% from outside Germany) and 1,500 conference participants. It is one of the largest geospatial conferences in the world.
GO Loader ALKIS Edition
Together with our German partners - grit GmbH, we welcomed many old and new faces to our shared stand... or could it have been the delicious smell of homemade soup that we served at lunchtime every day that attracted everyone? I am still in the progress of retrieving the recipes from the cooks, who also happen to be the directors of grit. Keep your eyes on our blog for any updates on my search.
We've been working hard with our partners grit to create a new product for loading German ALKIS datasets: GO Loader ALKIS Edition. At Intergeo we officially presented it to the world. For those of you who are not familiar with this, ALKIS is the German GML standard for exchanging cadastral data. Naturally, under the hood runs the powerful GO Loader engine. Visit the grit website for a demo.
Spending all 3 days at INTERGEO has been great. Catching up with the grit team was brilliant as was meeting so many people from across the globe, sharing experiences and geo best-practice. Many organisations want to exchange their data with a wider audience and are looking at open standards to enable this.
Visit our Flickr site for an impression of the conference.
CONCLUSIONS?
Although some people tried; comparing W3G, AGI and INTERGEO is almost an impossible task.
All three conferences attract different audiences and are on different scales (compare W3G: approx 80 attendees; Intergeo: 17,500 attendees).
Even though very different, the one thing that really binds all three events is the abundance of great food and drink. So, expect to see Snowflake again at these conferences next year!
Richard Rombouts | Technical Sales Manager | richard.rombouts@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/richrombouts
