Geo8: the new GIS trade show?

Thursday, 10 April, 2008

Since the demise of the AGI Trade Show in 2006, I’ve felt that there has been somewhat of a void in the GIS industry. However, are there any other exhibitions that could fill this void? Well the potential is certainly there with Geo8 which was the “World of Geomatics”, predominantly a surveying trade show, that has rebranded slightly and is now trying to expand to fill the GIS area as well. And if this year is anything to go by then it has certainly gone some way to doing this (and shame on the AGI for killing off a great event). In addition to the more “surveying-type” companies (Leica, Topcon, Pentax), we had some GIS/data types as well in the form of Ordnance Survey (Vanessa Lawrence gave keynote), Cadcorp, BlueSky, Getmapping and NPA. MapInfo and ESRI were notable exceptions and their absence shows a marked lack of understanding of the current marketplace. Perhaps ESRI UK is focusing on the ESRI EMEA conference to be held in London. And MapInfo (or is it Pitney Bowes Software)? Are they becoming a meaningless part of a global conglomerate or a major force to reckon with? Whatever the answer, they weren’t here to talk about it.

So how did the show go? For starters the organisation was spot on. The Ricoh Arena in Coventry is just off junction 3 of the M6 and a complete no-brainer to get to. Anything vaguely in Birmingham area scores for centrality and transport links. The arena itself had ample (free!) parking with a generous size exhibition hall that was perfectly suited to the event. The nightmare of the Chelsea exhbition is, thankfully, a dim and distant memory. Not only that, but there was an inclusive £5 lunch voucher and 256Mb pen drive included in the free pre-registration. OK, so they are going all out for getting people in, but I have no complaints what-so-ever.

As ever the Kingston Centre for GIS had a presence in the form of a seminar by Ken Field on how to better present spatial data; targeted at middle-managers the talk went down well and was a big draw on the first day. Elsewhere, you had the usual vendors displaying their wares and it is a really good way of making industry contacts and keeping up with new faces and new products. Being a mix of GIS, data and surveying it was nice to see a different slant on things. In particular, laser scanning is clearly becoming a major sales ticket with Leica, Zoller and Frohlich and Faro all pushing their wares, along with Pointools for some stunningly fast point cloud manipulation software.

So Geo8 have got their finger bang on the money and I can only give a whole-hearted recommendation to the shebang. Roll on next year!!

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