Volunteering with the AGI

Jeremy Hidderley - AECOM & AGI Events AWG

In our 25th year, the AGI has really pushed the boat out with the Geo Big 5 series of seminars.  The special interest groups continue to support the association with the provision of seminars with activities focused on specific subjects.

All of these events would not be possible without the support of a growing band of volunteers putting these events together with the support of the fabulous AGI staff.  This is a great method of working.  The volunteers (also members of the AGI) are able to set the vision for these events, and the AGI staff facilitate many of the volunteer requirements.  The volunteers benefit from a knowledgeable and hardworking support network.  The AGI, as an organisation benefit from the volunteers as they all bring something to the table.  

The benefits to the AGI typically fall into two camps:

•         Ensuring that the AGI follow the correct strategic direction
•         Making that strategic vision a reality

Whichever camp you think that you may fall into, the ultimate reality is that all volunteers are contributing to the community in which they are involved.  They are helping to share knowledge which should help everyone in their day to day jobs. 

The benefits of volunteering are not just one way, the individual can benefit greatly.  Some of the common benefits gained from any type of volunteering include:

•          Gain confidence and self esteem
•          Giving something back to a group that has supported you
•          Sharing your own knowledge/skills
•          Gain new or develop existing skills
•          Help to gain/maintain accreditation (CPD)

Particular attention should be paid to the benefit of gaining accreditation.  As a prospective and qualified Chartered Geographer, individuals should be demonstrating an ongoing commitment to promoting geography.

In the run up to the conference in November 2014, we are starting to look to fill our volunteer roles.  So if you are attending the conference, please do take a look at the AGI’s Big 5 Volunteering website (http://geobig5.com/volunteer-job-descriptions).  As a conference volunteer you will benefit from building a strong network of industry peers, some of whom may sit outside of your normal group of contacts as well as helping to influence how the conference looks and feels. 

Whilst some of our roles do require a minimum time commitment, these are normally short term or one off roles.  If you would like to volunteer on a more flexible basis, please do get in touch, as we are starting to look for Working Group members for 2015 and beyond.

We look forward to hearing from you.  

Big Data and Location – A real or imagined new frontier?

In the run up to this month's Geo Big 5 Big Data event (30th Sep, IBM, London) Andy Coote reports on some of the insights gained from speaking and listening to some of the foremost experts in the field and ponders the place of location in Big Data. A glossary of Big Data terminology is also provided.

Big Data, why should I care?

In their recent report on Big Data, McKinsey[1] suggest it is becoming a key battlefield of competitive advantage, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer behaviour. One of the key application areas they highlight is geo-centric - personal navigation data. They assess the application of such data as being worth $800bn worldwide during the current decade. Even if McKinsey are an order of magnitude too high in this forecast, it is still a staggeringly large potential market for the location industry. 

Mobile devices, earth observation satellites and the Internet of Things are just a few sources contributing to creating the world of Big Data. But it is about more than just Volume. Big Data also describes data sets with a high Velocity of change (such as real time data streams), and with a wide Variety of data types - collectively known as the three V's[2].

This combination makes processing and analysis difficult using conventional tools. In particular, the volume and mix of structured and unstructured data, is a challenge for object-relational database management systems (such as Oracle and SQL*server) that most organisations currently use to underpin their data management. Here the major disruptive technology has been Hadoop, employed by search engines to produce the almost instant query response we have all come to expect from Google et al.

The huge additional business value to be derived from Big Data comes from what Accenture describe[3] as finding new insights. These might include identification of financial fraud, increasing retail sales or sources of inefficiency in Government. None of these are new, but the science of what is often termed predictive analytics in Big Data circles, is introducing new tools and techniques which rely heavily on what we might have previously called spatial analysis and 4D visualisation.

Applications

According to John Morton, until recently with SAS but now an independent Big Data consultant, location figures in a wide range of applications because of its ability to reveal new information patterns and present information to senior executives visually.

Some real examples were showcased at the recent Strata 14 conference on Big Data in San Francisco including:

Transport – Ian Huston, Data Scientist at Pivotal, sees Big Data analytics as a way to bring techniques from other disciplines, such as change point detection used in the wind turbine industry and cell population analysis from biology to complex problems of traffic management[4].

Retail – Susan Ethlinger, Altimeter Group, described as an example the use of location to identify problems in the supply chain of steak restaurants to illustrate deriving actionable intelligence from existing social and enterprise information sources[5].

Security – Ari Gescher, Palantir, presented “Adaptive Adversaries: Systems to stop fraud and cyber intruders”, where he described the use of geocoding of servers through IP addresses and various other “location assets” to provide intelligence to banks. 

Health – genomics, the science of gene sequencing which involves very complex calculations on very large datasets takes centre stage in this sector. However, the medical insurers, such as Kaiser Permanente in the United States are also making heavy use of tools such as ArcGIS as part of their Big Data strategy.

  

Location in Big Data Platforms

Different suppliers appear to have different views on the potential for location analytics in Big Data solutions.

SAP have taken the decision to embed Esri technology into the core of their product, which they believe will enable their users to more simply leverage geospatial tools as part of the HANA in-memory computing platform.

In contrast, Steve Jones, Cap Gemini, (partners with Pivotal in the Big Data space), believes the dominant approach will see designers building location analytics for their platforms as they find it useful. According to Jones, Big Data analytics will borrow the algorithms of GIS via good developers but will not try to “shoehorn” existing products into their architectures. 

Another aspect of the Big Data debate was outlined by Steve Hagen of Oracle. Speaking recently at a UN GGIM meeting, he suggested that real time feeds of location data are simply so huge that they are unmanageable in raw form and that filtering at source before loading into databases is the only viable solution. It seems to me however, that although deciding what to keep requires skills which geospatial practitioners unique possess, it does pre-suppose you know in advance what insights you might find.

Big Data & Location - Geo Big 5

So much energy is being pumped into the Big Data story, it won’t go away. Even if it is simply a rebranding of concepts that have existed for a long time such as business intelligence. Why is it important to the location market? Because it is potentially a huge opportunity - well over 50 % of the presentations at the Strata conference used geo-centric use cases to demonstrate their solutions or ideas. Furthermore, there seemed to be a general under-estimation of the richness of insight that location analytics (what we used to call spatial analysis) could bring to the party.

If you’d like to understand more about what Big Data means for the location industry, the AGI is organising an event on Tuesday 30th September in London titled simply “Big Data and Location”.  Hosted at the prestigious IBM Centre on the South Bank, it will bring together the main players from the Big Data and Geospatial worlds to explain technical concepts and showcase real applications.  For more information go to the AGI website www.agi.org.uk

Andy Coote is Chief Executive at location consulting specialists ConsultingWhere

Email: andrew.coote@consultingwhere.com, Twitter: @acoote

Glossary of Technical Terms:

• Hadoop - is a database file system for storage and large-scale processing of data-sets on clusters of commodity processors.  The concept relies upon storing data items multiple times across different processors/disks for resilience and fast retrieval. Originally developed in 2005 by two of Yahoo’s engineers it underpins most of the search engines, Facebook, and many of th
  
  
• Mapreduce – is the programming framework that enables fast retrieval of data from Hadoop clusters. Originally developed by Google, it is based on algorithms that schedule and handle parallel communications necessary to make that retrieval fast and reliable. Put another way, it supports massive multi-threading of processes.
  
  
• NoSQL – is a term used to refer to the storage and retrieval of data which does not rely on SQL and the relational model of storage, of which Hadoop is typical. Although Hadoop is very efficient at dealing with certain types of tasks, such as retrieval from unstructured sources, relational systems, such as Oracle and SQL*Server, are better at operations on structured data, leading to the term being redefined recently to Not only SQL.
  
  
• Data Mining – is about discovering patterns in large datasets involving various methods drawn from machine learning (what used to be referred to as artificial intelligence), statistics, database querying and visualisation.
  
  
• Graphs - the mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A "graph" in this context is made up of vertices or "nodes" and lines called edges that connect them. The classic graph in the geospatial world is the link and node structure used to represent a transport or utility network.

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[1] McKinsey Global Institute: Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation

[2] 9 levers for Converting Big Data and Analytics into Results. Christy Maver, IBM.

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ninelevers/

[3] Realizing Data Value in the Insight Economy, Krista Schnell

http://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/technology-labs-blog/archive/2014/03/17/realizing-data-value-in-the-insight-economy.aspx

[4] Driving the future of Smart Cities

http://www.slideshare.net/ihuston/driving-the-future-of-smart-cities-how-to-beat-the-traffic-pivotal-talk-at-strata-2014

[5] Social Data Intelligence: Integrating Social and Enterprise Data for Competitive Advantage

http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/en/assets/1/event/105/Social%20Data%20Intelligence_%20Integrating%20Social%20and%20Enterprise%20Data%20for%20Competitive%20Advantage%20Presentation.pdf

Extracts from an article written by Andrew Coote, ConsultingWhere and published by GIS Professional magazine in their edition in June 2014

The AGI GeoBig 5 - Policy

Policy! Policy! Will anyone come along?

Well that was the first reaction from the AGI Cyrmu steering group when we discussed this theme for our part of the GEO Big5 programme. Compared to some of the slightly more sexy themes on the agenda we thought it would be an uphill struggle to deliver a stimulating and appealing day. 

How wrong we were.

As we got into the topic and considered both its significance to what we all do and the varying aspects for how we could run an engaging and exciting day we quickly found out a number of really interesting themes that we could focus in on for an interactive and lively GEO; Big5  event. 

Policy affects us all. Sometimes we moan about it and it seems overcomplicated and a burden. At other times it’s exciting and innovative and it moves us all forward in our jobs. The GIS community has to interpret policy, advise and convince management what the best options are for its adoption. Suppliers develop solutions to help people implement and comply with policy– a challenge as guidance never stays still! Then there is the effect GI has in shaping policy itself – location is a fundamental principle in helping to draft, deliver and measure the benefit of policy. There is also the policy of GI itself.

So at first what seemed a topic that would send us all to sleep has made us all think and got us really excited as we have put the programme together.

The AGI Policy event is certainly fast approaching, and scheduled to take place on 9^th October at the SWALEC Stadium, Cardiff.   The event is sure to attract a variety of public and private sector delegates as well as several exciting exhibitors, including our Platinum Sponsors Ordnance Survey and ESRI UK.  Following some great keynotes, the day will focus on the relationship between Policy and Geospatial with a split stream session of “Policy influencing GI” and “GI Influencing Policy”.  The afternoon sessions includes a series of lightning talks and a highly anticipated GI Interactive group event which will provide voting, networking and debating opportunities about some of the issues you should really care about.

Directly after the event will be a tips and tricks session, where you may find yourself learning some new skills and getting some value you can take back into your organisations and implement straight away.

If you want a bit of an ice-breaker before the event, come and join us at Y Mochyn Du pub at 7pm on 8^th October for a drink!

The AGIC Team

View the event programme here

Platinum Sponsor Comments:

Esri UK is delighted to sponsor the GEO: The Big Five Policy event in Cardiff on 9th October. Esri UK is committed to helping organisations across the public sector meet the most pressing policy challenges and implement government priorities – giving the geographic insight needed to make better decisions.  Esri GIS solutions help the public sector enrich operations, meet missions and better communicate with the public.

For further information on how Esri UK supports Government Policy, email info@esriuk.com or visit www.esriuk.com/government .

Ordnance Survey is proud to sponsor the GEO: Big Five Policy event in Cardiff on 9th October. Through the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) we are already supporting the majority of Welsh public sector organisations in identifying efficiencies and cost savings in policy creation, monitoring and delivery. We would like to ensure this opportunity is exploited by all our public sector customers and look forward to discussing how we can work together to make this happen.

AGI announces Professor Iain Stewart as Guest Compère at its annual awards evening - 13/11/14.

The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) is pleased to announce Professor Iain Stewart as Guest Compère at its new annual awards evening – The AGI Awards for GeoSpatial Excellence -  to be held at the Chesford Grange Hotel, Warwickshire, during the evening of November 13th 2014.

The AGI Awards are a prestigious event recognising the very best achievements in the field of Geographic Information throughout the year. The purpose of the awards is to recognise excellence within the industry and to foster a spirit of innovation to the betterment of Geographic Information in the UK. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the AGI and as a result the AGI has launched an exciting new set of awards for 2014 and beyond! The AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence move beyond the traditional sector based approach to generate an open and engaging competition for each award relevant across the whole industry! For more information about the awards and how to nominate yourself or your project please visit: http://www.geobig5.com/events/agi-awards-geospatial-excellence/. 

The deadline for nominations is 30^th September 2014.

About Professor Iain Stewart:

Iain Stewart, professor of Geoscience Communication at Plymouth University (UK), is an Earth scientist and broadcaster who specialises in recent geological change. He has presented major television series for the BBC on the nature, history and state of the planet, most notably ‘Earth:  The Power of the Planet’; ‘Earth: The Climate Wars’; ‘How Earth Made Us’, ‘How To Grow A Planet’; ‘Volcano Live’, and ‘Rise of the Continents’. He regularly fronts BBC Horizon specials on geoscientific topics, such as the Japanese earthquake, the Russian meteor strike, Shale gas/ Fracking, and Florida sinkholes. In 2013 he was awarded the American Geophysical Union’s Athelstan Spilhaus Award for conveying to the general public the excitement, significance, and beauty of the Earth and space sciences.

Learn more about the future of water infrastructure at a free AGI Asset Management SIG event

Jeremy Hidderley - AECOM & AGI Asset Management SIG

With ageing water infrastructure and the move towards total expenditure regulation in AMP6, UK water companies face tough decisions about how to spend their budgets most effectively.

Combining these decisions with delivering outcomes rather than outputs and increasing service demands from customers and the environment, the emphasis is on delivering effective operational and asset management. To help keep abreast of these challenges, the AGI’s Asset Management SIG is hosting a water utilities seminar in Bristol on Tuesday 9^th September. 

All water companies have recently submitted their PR14 business plans to OFWAT.  The next great challenge will be applying asset management expertise to help translate these plans into tangible benefits for their customers. 

At the forefront of this challenge will be the need for accurate and complete data, the lifeblood of effective asset management.  The transfer in ownership of underground assets since 2011 has made this requirement a greater issue as the householders were the previous owners of the asset, and of course, very few formal records were maintained. 

Water companies are tackling these data issues either by proactively mapping assets from paper records or predicting the number, length and age of those assets using any available data.  In addition to this, mobile mapping technology has truly come of age with operatives now able to collect location and attribute information in the field which can be returned to the corporate GIS quickly and efficiently as certain attributes can be mandated during the collection phase. 

Wessex Water and Arup will be sharing their perspective on some of these issues and how they are using geospatial technologies and geographic information to solve them.  South West Water will be sharing their approach to fast and accurate asset data collection with their new black-lining system.      

In addition to the completeness and accuracy of data, the volume and speed at which data is being created is increasing.  Networks of sensors across water company assets already provide a wealth of information about the performance of a system. Further investment is still needed in this technology to increase coverage, allowing the performance of whole catchments to be viewed at the click of a button. This will help water companies move towards real-time operational management, and even take this to the next level of self-learning asset control. For example, if water companies could link the effect of prevailing weather patterns to the need for additional network storage or a temporary increase in wastewater treatment capacity this could increase operational efficiency and reduce customer disruption.

By utilising this wealth of data that is (and could be) available, the industry can start to build up a greater understanding about how and when assets fail.  In a similar fashion to using weather and climate data to predict capacity requirements, the industry can start to look more at the environment in which an asset resides. On this subject, Cranfield University will be talking about some of their research into the impact of soils upon underground assets.  As we begin to better understand modes of failure, the industry can begin to fine tune their predictive capabilities. 

To learn more about the above, please register for the event at: http://bit.ly/1nDNMv5

Geo: The Big 5 - News Round-up

Big Data (IBM, London, 30 Sep) in Partnership with the Demographics User Group – programme online, book now!

There is still chance to book a place for this highly anticipated event and gain insight into one of the hottest topics in future IT thinking. The AGI’s Big Data event features world leading experts from big data (IBM, Cloudera, MapR, Deloitte), major commercial users (Marks and Spencer, Telefonica) and geospatial sectors (Esri, Ordnance Survey). Two parallel streams will run through the day, one focussing on Strategy and the other Best Practice. The conference is accompanied by an exhibition and the full programme can be viewed here.

Geocom - The Changing Face of Geo (Chesford Grange Hotel, Kenilworth, 11th-13th Nov) - early bird ends 12th September

This year’s new format Geocom (marking the AGI’s 25th year) will see talks from leading industry speakers and Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport. Talks will explore the challenges, opportunities and business benefit of integrating geospatial with a host of other tools alongside skills focused workshops, hands on training and an innovation theatre. Regardless of your sector or interest GeoCom will allow you to debate, engage with and shape the future of the geospatial industry. Logistics information and the conference registration form can be found online.

 AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence (Chesford Grange Hotel, Kenilworth, 13th Nov) - still time to gain recognition for your work

There is still plenty of time to submit an entry for the AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence and be recognised for your achievements in and commitment to geospatial in 2014. Detailed descriptions of our ten prestigious awards are available on the Geo Big 5 site. 

AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence – why you should enter, sponsor & attend

There is still plenty of time to submit an entry for the AGI Awards and be recognised for your achievements in and commitment to geospatial in 2014. Ten prestigious awards (new for this year and beyond) will recognise excellence in visualisation, education, research & development, business benefit, impact and sustained commitment to geospatial. 

Reflection and celebration is not often at the forefront of an employee's to-do list; award entries take time and effort (though the AGI's entry form really is quite concise) and other deadlines will often take priority. However, awards are an important way of acknowledging achievement and commitment. The AGI awards aim to inspire through showcasing the very best practice in the geospatial industry, fostering a spirit of GI innovation in the UK.

This post details a plethora of reasons to submit an entry for, sponsor and attend the 2014 AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence: 

Why Enter?

• Obtain recognition of your success among your industry peers – being shortlisted for an award will raise your profile among the most renowned names in the industry
• Showcase your company at one of the UK’s biggest gatherings of GI professionals
• Demonstrate your company’s success stories to prospective clients – the awards are an opportunity to prove that you are at the forefront of the GI market
•  Keep an eye on the competition - the awards are a great opportunity to measure your own performance against your competitors’ and see where you sit alongside the best in the industry
• Share your stories and excellent case studies of exemplar projects to help the AGI to sell the value of investing in geospatial to a wider audience.

Why Sponsor?

• Showcase your company at of one of the year’s premier geospatial events and position your company as a market leader
•  Stand out from your competitors with branding throughout the conference and ceremony
•  Differentiate yourself from competitors by demonstrating your support and commitment to the GI industry and its achievements
• Participate in the judging process and present an award on the night
•  Benefit from visual marketing at the event and coverage in the AGI Geocommunity Brochure.

Why Attend?

• Learn about the projects which your peers and competitors are undertaking - see state of the art projects and learn from the entrant’s experiences
• Network with Geospatial leaders from a range of sectors and network in a relaxed environment
• Celebrate the industry’s success with clients
• Establish face to face relationships and create new business opportunities
• Reward your team with a glamorous night out
• Meet our distinguished panel of judges.

Diamond Sponsors:

Awards Sponsors:

Getting Ready for Summer at the AGI

I've managed to find time from website specs, CRM user stories and PR plans to write the first blog in ages. It’s very very warm in the office which must mean it’s nearly time for the summer holidays so before everyone disappears to somewhere exotic and exciting I thought I’d give a quick preview of what you’ve got to look forward to when you come back.

GeoBig 5 - Big Data:

The next of the GeoBig5 events is looking at big data from both the perspective of how technologies and practices can and are impacting geospatial data collection and analysis and the opportunities provided by so much big data containing a geospatial element. The full programme will be released next week for what’s going to be a great event at the IBM hub in London on 30 September.

GeoBig 5 - Policy:

The final one day event of the GeoBig5 series will be exploring both the implications of policy on geospatial (INSPIRE, Open Data etc) and also the positive impact geospatial can have in informing policy decisions. The call for papers for this event closes on the 1 August so there is still time to submit. The event takes place in Cardiff on 9 October.

GeoCom ’14:

The culmination of the fantastic GeoBig5 series. Having been at the recent planning meeting and paper selection for this event I can safely say GeoCom ’14 is going to be something special and unlike any previous AGI conference. As well as having secured Sir Mark Walport (Government Chief Scientist) as our keynote we’ve got a mixture of presentations, lightning talks, workshops and training that will make the whole conference a lot more vital and dynamic. GeoCom ’14 takes place between the 11 and 13 November at the very pleasant Chesford Grange Hotel, earlybird booking with a 10% discount is still open.

Awards:

The final event of the year and a fitting end to 2014 will be the new AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence. Replacing the previous AGI awards these will take a much broader and more outward looking view of the industry to promote and recognise excellence and innovation. Compared by TV’s Professor Iain Stewart (A great evangelist for the power of Geography and GI) this will be a great showcase for the industry and a chance to see some of the great ideas from 2014. This will take place on the 13 November at the Chesford Grange Hotel following on from GeoCom. Awards submissions are still open.

Website:

The project that has been absorbing my blogging time is well underway and the new look AGI website should be greeting our members as they return from their summer holidays in September. Complete with content hub, best practice documents, space for SIGs and other AGI groups to interact the new site will provide both a showcase for the AGI and UK GI and a resource and benefit for our members.

And Finally

It’s hot, the evenings are bright and we’re not quite ready for summer yet so why not come along to the next AGI Geodrinks on the 23 July? These are being hosted by the Insurance and Risk SIG at the Crosse Keys (extra e not a typo) on Gracechurch Street, London. Its an Insurance and Risk event but other Geo talk is more than welcome!

Big 5, GeoCom and the call for Abstracts – Why you should submit!

Over half of the one day Geo: The Big 5 events have taken place now and the feedback from delegates, sponsors and speakers has all been excellent. The themed events have really added a new dimension to the AGI programme and have catalysed debate and the debate is changing.

A common point that has come through all of the events so far is how interconnected all the issues are and how collaboration of ideas and technologies across sectors is key to furthering the positive impact geospatial can have. Related to this is in increasing feel the GI and geospatial have gone ‘mainstream’ to the point that many people using these technologies and techniques don’t even realise that is what they are called. GI is just one of the tools businesses, governments and other organisations are reaching for to help them make better and more efficient decisions.

This growth bring a whole host of challenges and opportunities and massively increases the audience for whom GI is relevant (whether they call it GI or not). GeoCom will seek to tackle this head on with varied content from that aimed at policy makers with no technical experience to workshops seeing to grow practical GI skills.

Get Involved!

The call for abstracts for GeoCom ends on the 30 June and I cannot stress strongly enough that this is your chance to get involved in the debate! There are crucial conversations to be had and you can help frame the debate by speaking at one of the events. The submissions process is simple this year and all you need is a short abstract (more details here). With shorter and longer presentations, debate sessions and workshops there are more ways to get involved in the most interactive GeoCom ever.

The call for papers for the remaining Geo: Big 5 events (Big Data and Policy) is also still open with deadlines of 20/06 and 01/07 respectively. This is a great chance to influence the debate at the last two events of this exciting series. Both of which will help to inform the discussion at GeoCom and the AGI Foresight Study for 2015.

Don’t forget you can also submit your paper to be considered in the AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence taking place at the end of GeoCom.

Come Along!

Obviously we also encourage you to come along. With early bird prices from £290 for two days packed with content, debate and workshops (as well as networking and the exhibition) GeoCom represents great value and a very different event to last year. You can view details and book here.

With presentations ranging from the technical to the strategic there will be content for ‘hardcore’ GIS users as well as strategists, CIOs and the like so if you are a long suffering GI manager drag your boss along to reinforce the value of the expertise you provide!

Geo: The Big 5 - Open Geospatial Review

Simon Wheeler, AGI NI Chair and the person single most responsible for making the latest Geo Big 5 event a huge success has kindly provided a review of the event:

Last week saw the 2^nd Big 5 conference “Open GeoSpatial” hosted by AGI Northern Ireland. When the new format was suggested at the end of 2013, this was the theme that most excited me, and it has been great fun, and hard work, to help put the event together. Post event it has been deemed one of the best events we have hosted since AGINI started 11 years ago.

Opening the Debate

The Big 5 events can be summed up as AGI Conferences in the Regions, rather than Regional Conferences as the Nation groups have held previously. So what did this mean to us in Northern Ireland? The format effectively gave delegates a taste of what they might expect at the main 2 day conference (up to now known as GeoCommunity or GeoComm). We had big name speakers, 2 streams and hands on workshops, as well as the Sponsor exhibition. However, what made the event a game changer from my perspective, was the mixture of delegates attending, with a good mix of attendees from Northern Ireland, GB and the Republic of Ireland, with 2 of our speakers (Australia and Canada) giving it a truly international flavour – brought out in the panel discussion where we had 6 nations represented, with the myriad of views aired.

OK – what did delegates get on the day? Following my opening as AGINI Chair, Anne Kemp (AGI Chair) gave a brief summary of the Open Standards panel debate held in London the day before. We opted for 2 keynotes this year – Caron Alexander the new Director of Digital Services for the NI Civil Service gave her view and vision for Open Data in Northern Ireland. There are some exciting things to come and I am really looking forward to what this can bring to the Industry. She also announced a Head of Open Data has been appointed – a good move so said the #GeoBig5 tweets. Then Jim Lennon gave a quick update on the new LPS (OSNI for the old hands) data model, and Spatial NI, the Northern Ireland Inspire and spatial data portal to be officially launched on the 4^th June. The brief tale of how the major snow storms of March 2013 brought Spatial NI to the attention of the emergency planners was a great example of how a crisis can raise the prominence of Geo.

Estelle Lowry  about NINIS 

After the much needed coffee break (the opening coffee somehow appeared as the conference started), we split into two sessions plus a workshop. The main stream covered the broad Open themes – Standards, Data and Source plus what the AGI brings to the table – Open debate, whilst stream 2 covered case studies, but still largely around the Open arena. I stayed in the main session to help Bruce McCormack, our guest chair and President of IRLOGI and EUROGI, to host the stream. For me it was a major coup to secure Denise McKenzie from OGC to speak on the common sense and value of standards internationally. Standards allow us to communicate with each other digitally, and work best when open. Following Denise, John Carpenter from Ordnance Survey GB took us through the value of Open data to OSGB, and also some of the issues around the need for API’s and assistance to developers to enable them to be used effectively. Bill Roberts of Swirrl then gave an overview of Linked Data and the benefits which it brings to connecting data together. Stream 2 had some great talks from the feedback I got, with Ciaran Kirk of IMGS talking dynamic data, Brendan Sheehy of Mallon Technology looking at the benefits of Open to SME’s and Jo Cook of Astun Technology talking QGIS in the Enterprise.

Following a busy lunch (some WIFI issues to solve), we were into the 2^nd part of the split stream. OSGB delivered a great workshop on OSGB open data using QGIS, which had followed a very packed morning workshop from ESRI on Story maps and flex viewers. Where else can you get industry experts giving workshops for free? In stream 1, Eoin McFadden from DETI looked at how open public data was being

The Panel, Deep in Debate

used as a driver for innovation, and how Northern Ireland is at the forefront of this drive. We then had an extended international panel session chaired by Bill Roberts with some thought provoking questions for Anne Kemp, John Carpenter, Tracey Lauriault, Denise McKenzie, Eamon Doyle and Eoin McFadden. Sadly we had to cut it short at 1 hour – we could have gone on much longer – the session is available on the AGI site. The best practice stream meanwhile heard from  Eamon Doyle of ESRI Ireland, Rosita Mahoney of the SPACEial NW project, Estelle Lowry of NINIS and John Hewitt from SOPRA.

I asked one of the delegates who was new to GI and AGI to give his perspective on the day.  Paul Higgins from LPS Business Services gives his perspective on the day.

“Three years ago I didn’t really know much about GI, but over the last couple of years through work and media I have become increasingly aware of it. I just didn’t know it as GI. So I went along to the conference to learn and understand how GI could be of benefit. I went to the Open Data stream in the morning and to the Best Practice Showcase in the afternoon.

I was motivated by Denise McKenzie’s talk. I had a Health IT background and could see lots of potential for GI. For example epidemiology and GI are made for each other.  I also found it refreshing that it all speakers were advocating open data.

The Best Practice stream put into perspective the Open Data stream. Eamon Doyle from ESRI Ireland described his ‘Road to Damascus’ moment.  I think I had my moment at the conference.

I came away from the conference inspired and with a much clearer vision of GI and its potential. It occurs to me as someone from a mainstream ICT background, and new to GI, that it is going to be a growth area in the next few years as ‘big data’ becomes more prevalent. As all the latest technologies such as Internet of Things, Remote sensing, wearable technology and GPS mature, the only way to make sense of it all is through GI. So I am glad I went to the conference.”

Finding out how Canada does Open

To wrap up the day, we welcomed our plenary speaker Dr Tracey Lauriault, a prolific Canadian open blogger who is presently based at NUI Maynooth working on the Digital City programme. Tracey gave us a whirlwind tour of what we can learn from the Canadian experience of Open – standards, SDI’s and the role of the Geomatician. Tracey has huge amounts of energy and was a great end to the conference. Well not quite the end – this came with GeoDrinks when I finally got a chance to catch up with colleagues old and new.

So if you haven’t been to a Geo Big 5 event, there’s still time – it’s a great programme of events and well worth attending. Whilst it’s a great place to network and make new contacts, these conferences are also a great way to get a synopsis of what’s relevant at the present time from industry experts. You will always learn something new, or get a new perspective.

A big thanks to all our speakers and sponsors once again.

The 7th Spatial Socio-Cultural Knowledge Workshop – Defence Academy, Shrivenham, UK. June 9th-11th.

Over the past six years, the Spatial Socio-Cultural Knowledge Workshop has had several recurring discussion threads involving data requirements, understanding operational needs, and tools for addressing those needs.  For the 2014 Workshop titled ‘Human Geography – Challenging the Status Quo Through Better Use of Information’, these threads will be drawn together under the umbrella of utility in the fields of stabilization and disaster response.  The major Workshop objectives and questions will be geared toward answering:

• What do we need to make socio-cultural knowledge useful?
• How do we effectively share our knowledge and methodologies?
• Outside of the organizations represented by Workshop attendees, who would be interested in utilizing socio-cultural data?
• What aspects of socio-cultural knowledge are applicable beyond the Defence sphere?
• What are the barriers to sharing and utilizing information both within and outside the Defence sphere?
• What approaches are needed to overcome the barriers?
• How best to create a sharable record of what has been learned?
• How to utilize socio-cultural knowledge to identify stability problems before they start?
• Can the identification of information and models be formalized to enhance utility?

The workshop is expected to attract international delegates and speakers from across the services, government, NGOs, academia and the commercial sector. Full details of the event including the agenda, registration and logistics can be found on the Defence Academy website www.syposiaatshrivenham.com

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