On Thursday and Friday of last week, EGL held its annual Client Conference at the Carter Observatory in Wellington. The venue was fantastic; being able to make use of the Observatory facilities in breaks, over lunch and in the evening on Thursday was a great opportunity. With food from Nosh to complement the surroundings our guests took advantage of access to the Planetarium Shows and the Thomas Cooke Refractor Telescope to get mind-blowing views of Saturn and the moon.
The Moon taken through the Thomas Cooke Telescope
Our agenda covered many aspects of the work that we undertake for our clients, with a good mix of client presentations showcasing the interesting work that has taken place in the last 12 months. We very much appreciate our clients taking time out to attend our conference – and especially when they invest in providing a presentation. This year we heard from:
- Adam Cooper from LINZ who highlighted the work going on through Central Government to expose departments to the power of viewing and sharing geographical information against the context of Evidence Based Policy Making,
- Darrel Hall and John Macready from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council who have integrated Geocortex Essentials with Microsoft Dynamics – a proof of concept at this stage, but a POC which was done in under a week and for less than $5,000,
- Graeme Chamberlain from Upper Hutt City Council who have successfully rolled out Geocortex Essentials as their replacement for XPLview internally across the Council,
- Andrew Gray from Porirua City Council who demonstrated the incredible value that has been added to walkways across Porirua City through Porirua Pathfinder,
- Carol Cottam from Northland Regional Council discussed the Integrated Regional Information System (IRIS) and the importance of comprehensive and robust Project Governance and
- Leon Toorenburg from Surveylab showed off the IKE Mobile device which captures a plethora of information in the field and is fully integrated in to ArcGIS through ArcGIS Mobile.
The customer presentations were interspersed with content from the EGL team including the announcement from David Swann that over time EGL will become NorthSouth GIS New Zealand as we integrate further with the NorthSouth GIS Group. A separate post has made covering that announcement and the implications that has for clients here in New Zealand and globally. EGL also covered off what is coming in ArcGIS at version 10.1, the 4 technology pillars that EGL will are focusing on in the coming months of REST, Mobile, Crowd and Cloud, an update on Geocortex Essentials and Geocortex Optimizer from Latitude Geographics and Voyager from Voyager GIS. We also covered our approach to having better conversations with our customers using social media including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and our new Showcase web portal.
The presentations from the conference will be made available to EGL’s clients in the coming days – watch out for your email.
So, if you didn’t attend this year, perhaps you should make it a priority next year? Don’t take our word for it – this is what some of this year’s attendees thought of the conference;
Darrel Hall from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council said “Keep the good work up. The new branding is great. Four pillars ensure we know where you are focusing your effort is comforting in terms of future on-going support.”
Steve Caswell from Timaru District Council said “Another great conference. More personal than other conferences with great content and a fantastic location. Thanks team.”
We really hope to see you at next year’s NorthSouth GIS New Zealand Conference – watch out for our announcements and book early to avoid disappointment!
