As a ex-Autodesk employee, I was very interested to watch co-founder of Autodesk Dan Drake describe the development of the first version of AutoCAD on NerdTV, a PBS show hosted by Silicon Valley guru Robert X Cringley and available to download as an mpeg. Other interviews on NerdTV include Tim O’Reilly, Dave Winer and Andy Hertzfeld
At the AGI conference this week Graham Vowles presented a paper on the development of GeoDRM Geographic Digital Rights Managment, and in the debate which followed a consensus seemed to point to the best type of DRM offered only “just enough” protection. Mark’s Sysinternals Blog illustrates how DRM can go too far. Another reason to be an Apple user, rootkits are just evil !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Amazing how tired you can get after just three days… maybe it was the party that did it !
So the end of this years conference got be thinking about how the nature of the annual GI industry conference has changed over the years. This year was I think a little bigger than last year with maybe 300-400 delegates, and a small but busy exhibition of nearly 50 stands.
Once upon a time, in the early 1990’s, when I started attending this conference there were perhaps three times as many attendees and there were two major GIS exhibitions with thousands of visitors.
So what has happened ?
Well the industry as such has matured and I guess those people who need GIS now have adopted the technology and established relationships with data providers, software companies etc. Now of course if your want to find out about new products and services you go online rather than waiting to talk to sales staff at a conference. An often heard quote is that there is “nobody new” at these conferences – well yes that’s true !!
Those people who are adopting GIS for the first time go to vertical shows in retail, health , defence and intelligence etc. – Does this mean that there is no need for a GIS show, in the same way there is no need for a spreadsheet show – No, because GI is still a lot more complex a discipline, with many issues still to resolve.
The AGI conference over the years has shrunk down to a level where now it meets the needs of the industry perfectly, as a forum for the industry to meet with itself, to network and discuss issues of interest to the specialist. The quality of papers this year I thought were exceptional, with excellent discussions taking place in the Q&A sessions I attended.
So long live the AGI conference, it may never need to hire the ExCel conference centre, but it’s not going to end up in a phonebox either.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.