Why you should attend Geo: The Big 5, Open Geospatial

There are only two weeks to go until the next Big 5 event Open Geospatial takes place in Northern Ireland 

and it’s definitely time to make a really clear case for why you should attend. I normally consider lists the epitome of lazy writing however in this case I can’t think of a better way to put it so here are 5 (or 6) reasons that we should be seeing you in Belfast on 13 May:

1. Whoever you are, wherever you are Open matters and is not going to go away

I have written about this before but time to restate it quickly. Open Geospatial impacts the whole industry; whether as a provider you are helping implement or competing with open source products or if as a user you are looking to utilise increasing amounts of open data (or as a data owner trying to open up your data). How the challenges and opportunities provided by open are tackled by the industry will have a huge impact in the future. A lack of standards, poor practices and a move back towards restriction could all have significant implications for the role of geospatial over the next 15 years. That is why it is important to get involved in the conversation now.

2. We’ve got a great programme of speakers

Following on from the above point we’ve got a great programme of speakers who will be tackling the pertinent issues in Open Geospatial. These range from high level industry insight and overview such as ‘open public data as a catalyst for innovation’ to more specific detail on topics like linked open data and the need for ‘geomaticians’. The day also includes a panel debate from some of our speakers allowing you to take part in the conversation.

3. Keep up to date with workshops

Need to convince your boss why you should be out of the office? How about a hands on intro to Ordnance Survey’s open data using QGIS or some open source apps from Esri? We know that workshops are always popular and are making sure we include more of them in the Big 5 event series.

4. Be part of a bigger response

This event is part of the wider Geo: The Big 5 series and the conversations that come out of it will be helping to inform the AGI's response to the issues of the day. The need for standards in open, the power and potential of opening up public data, enabling collaborative solutions to problems; these are issues where you can help us form our voice. Many of the discussions from Future Cities are coming up again as we draw up the programme and it is this chance for interlinked thinking that needs to be harnessed to push the value of geospatial forward.

5. Join the conversation (networking)

As always this is a great opportunity to meet with your peers, discuss the issues at hand and meet customers or look for new ones. Networking is a key part of any event and we have networking time afterwards. If you are coming from outside Northern Ireland this is a great opportunity to meet a new GI community.

6. Its only £49!

Finally, it is only £49 for members (including IRLOGI members in the spirit of cooperation), this is really very cheap for a one day conference especially one packed with two streams of great content and workshops making it ludicrously good value.

Also if you’re not from Northern Ireland it’s a great chance to come and see Belfast at the same time as learning something/doing some business. For more information on getting too and staying in a rather excellent city have a look at the logistics pack

Re-branding, Websites and GeoCom ‘14

I apologise for the sparse blogging over the past couple of weeks but I’ve been rather preoccupied with the three items above (and the other Geo: Big 5 events). The good news is that this work is paying off and we’ve made loads of progress to update people on.

First up is the branding, as many of you may have noticed (especially delegates at Future Cities) we have been working on a new brand. The old AGI brand has served well over the years but has become fragmented and a little dated over time. 

With the work being undertaken on a new AGI website we wanted to ensure that we had a clean and consistent new brand so this combined with the 25^th anniversary seemed like the perfect opportunity to undertake a rebranding exercise.

 More information can be found here but we feel the new brand gives a very clear visual statement that the AGI wants to make sure that it is doing all it can to be relevant in 2014 and beyond. The new brand is much more than just a logo and will reflect how we communicate within and beyond our industry going forwards and builds on a lot of work that is being done behind the scenes as to who we are and what we stand for.

We have created a page with the various brand resources on which can be found here.

Next up and probably most exciting for most of you is the work being done on a new website. Our current website is a little dated to say the least and places a lot of limits on what we can do so the decision has been taken that rather than attempt to re-skin and tinker with it we are going for a whole new site. 

I am lucky enough to be one of the small group working with the developers on the new site and I can already say it is going to be a vast improvement. We want the site and the member’s area to become a content and knowledge hub for the industry and will be populating it with news, features, interviews and content from passed events among other things.

As always the success of this will depend on our members and we will be making it accessible for SIGs and other groups to edit and add content that is interesting to them. We welcome comments from members on what content they might like to see and also if there is anything they would like to contribute. The new site is expected to go live in late June but in the meantime we have launched an interim site just for Geo: The Big 5.

Finally we come to GeoCom – ‘The Changing Face of Geo’, the change in name partly reflects a desire to move from an inward looking community to an outward looking group engaging with wider industry and partly because everyone just shortened it to GeoCom anyway. We visited the venue at the start of April and it is fantastic and a very different space to the EMCC. Not only is it a very nice looking country hotel but it also has an awful lot of different meeting rooms. This is going to enable us to run a lot more workshops and hands on training sessions (as the majority of delegates have requested). As a result we’re going to be delivering a GeoCom that is a lot more varied than last year with the core focus being on getting really good content and speakers.

Anyway more on GeoCom will follow as we finalise the programme and the speakers but in the meantime have a look at the new brand and think about what you might want to see on the new website.

Sponsor Feedback and GeoCom '14 - David Henderson

David Henderson the AGI Vice Chair has kindly provided me with a brief report of our visit to the fantastic new GeoCom venue last week:

Along with the AGI Team and some fellow Council Members, last Thursday I attended a meeting of AGI Suppliers SIG at the Chesford Grange Hotel near Warwick where we will hold this year’s GeoComm conference on the 11-13 November. 

The meeting allowed some of our corporate members – 1Spatial, Dotted Eyes/MISO, GGP systems, Sterling Geo and Ordnance Survey – to give some further feedback to the AGI events team (this year chaired by Rollo Home) and for us to have a tour of the conference facilities.

Whilst the move away from Nottingham will bring some inevitable changes to the look and feel of our annual conference, I am really excited by the fresh new opportunities that Chesford Grange Hotel will afford to the event – the food was quite tasty too!!

At AGI we’re really excited about how our 2014 events programme has begun. You can read more about the fantastic success of our first event, hosted by AGI Scotland national group, in Glasgow last month. Members travelled from across UK to participate in some very high quality discussion and debate.  Our events programme complete with new branding and sponsorship opportunities can be found here.

We’re delighted that both ESRI(UK) and Ordnance Survey have committed to Diamond Sponsorship for 2014 and equally pleased to have agreed event sponsorship packages with so many of our other corporate members. Our 2014 event programme in particular has been developed in conjunction with our Suppliers SIG and is giving an important platform for the geographic information industry to discuss many of the big issues that are impacting and presenting opportunity for our members. Plans for 2015 have already started. If you’d like to get involved in any of our events or discuss sponsorship then the AGI Team or any member AGI Council would love to hear from you.

In the meantime, we look forward to seeing as many of our members as possible at the next Big 5 event in Belfast on 13 May.

Open Geospatial and why we should care

The next Geo: The Big 5 event, Open Geospatial in Belfast is approaching fast. I am not going to launch into a lengthy debate about Open Source vs Proprietary GIS systems or similar. This has been done to death and by people much better placed to talk about it than me.

What I will say is that this event is about much more than open source software and has a relevance to all producers and consumers of geospatial information. The full programme will be released soon but some of the highlights among the speakers include Denise McKenzie from OGC,  Eoin McFadden from DETI NI and Dr Tracy Lauriat from NIRSA (National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analytics) who is highly regarded for her work with open data in Canada.

Following on from the Future Cities event the increasing opening up of data and the innovation and benefit this can bring to both the public and private sectors look to be a key themes. Whilst increasing use of open data seems on the face of it to be more of a benefit to the public sector in enabling joined up thinking and better decision making this is of course a huge opportunity for companies to sell their expertise and help various authorities and departments make the most of their data.

The less glamorous but vitally important cousin of open data is open standards. We were recently lucky enough to have a presentation from the AGI Standards Committee in a recent council meeting and for someone who has always seen standards as rather dry this was a real eye opener. If as an industry and a society we are to benefit from the increasing availability of data we need to ensure data standards are applied and followed in as universal a way as possible. It would be a great shame to find that one local authority was making data available in a format that was incompatible with other authorities’ data or to find that a contractor was collecting data that didn’t match up with their other data sets (an all too common occurrence in the private sector). We want to ensure that open data is a methodology to break down silos not just create a whole host of new ones. Again this is likely to be very much on the agenda particularly the panel debate, with the conversation following on from an Open Standards event the AGI is holding in London the day before.

Open is important whoever you are in geospatial. If you’re a user of geographic information then come along and see how you can be getting the most from opening up your data and if you’re a supplier or consultant then you should be exhibiting and showing of how you can help the clients make the most of their data (and accumulate more and more relevant data).

You can book for the event here; it’s only £49+VAT for AGI members (which is very cheap really). Remember these are UK wide issues and Belfast is only a short flight from most major UK cities and it’s on a Tuesday so you can tack it on to a holiday, explore Northern Ireland and make a long weekend of it.

For our corporate members this is a great opportunity to get your expertise with open in front of an increasingly geo savvy public sector from across Northern Ireland and the Republic. You can view and book sponsorship options or email chris.rhodes@agi.org.uk