Bad Comedy Act
Chris, Tom and I decided to “perform” at the AGI Soapbox. We went with for a stand up comedy routine, based on bad geography jokes.
– What do you get if you cross a cowboy with a map maker?
– A Cow-tographer
Most all of the jokes were pretty bad, but the soapbox was a fun end to the day. But I’m hoping the video never gets released.
Jon Winslow - Day 2 Keynote
The Keynote – Jon Winslow: Making the move to become a wholly location intelligent organisation
Jon Winslow – Global Portfolio Director for Location Intelligence. Had some excellent examples of how Location Intelligence may be everywhere, yet is often not always intelligent. Examples such as the classic EU report that printed a map without Wales. He also set out PBBI’s strategy and vision and talked about future product line-ups, and reiterated that the MapInfo brand will continue to live on in the products.
Click for Slides
Ian Broadbent – Crime on the increase as the recession takes hold
After accusing the audience of all being criminals, Ian Broadbent went on to do a great job explaining with examples how the current recession is affecting crime patterns. Referring to privacy concerns, he talked about how we are all at risk to organised fraud. There also some great examples of how Location Intelligence has been used to help combat crime.
It was a great presentation delivered with Ian’s usual witty style. The judges agreed and the presentation made it into the top 8 having beaten 158 other papers, well done Ian!
Data as a Service – Scott Robinson
Scott Robinson gave an insight into how the most important part of GIS – the data is also changing in the way we want to consume it and the ways in which technology is helping us gain more from our data. Ranging from the need for full digital distribution of data, thankfully an end to the days of shipping 20 DVDs of worldwide date, to buying the exact data you want in the format you want, when you want it. When you then throw in the ability to add significant value by appending other data records at the same time as performing a geocode – with the obligatory postal correction, the old adage of “rubbish in, rubbish out” becomes a thing of the past. Scott has shown us quite the opposite, that you can start to put rubbish in, and get out high quality value added insight. Hopefully those with archaic licensing restrictions were paying attention
The Inspration Hub
I posted a couple of pictures on day 1 from the stand. I’d also like to mention the Inspiration hub on the day before the conference. We had all the kit on show and it was really well attended. We had a lot of interest in Stratus Connect and a couple of people had dropped in just for the day to see us, so many thanks for taking the time to do so. The Oracle Spatial SIG was also running at the same time and a quick thanks to them for working with us to share delegates! Also you might have noticed we had some interesting coloured polo shirts – rather unbelivably one of the customers asked if we had any spare (they probably have some DIY projects or garnedning in mind)
Inspiration Hub
Competition Time
Rob Salmond put together the Stratus demo for the competition. As mentioned in an earlier post it was a “pin the tail on the map” competition with the prize going to the closest guess. It thought it was for the whole of the UK, but the guess needed to be within a bounding box of the midlands. A neat addition was that the system was tied into our e-messaging software and each entrant was SMS’d a personal thank you for entering.
Rob (on the right) setting up the competition demo. Pete in the background ready to demo Stratus Connect
We announced the winner on day 2 & congratulations to the Paul Horton from Bristol City Council who guessed to within 7 miles of the mystery point.
The winning guess displayed on Stratus RIA controls
Mark
Stratus Connect 2.0
Stratus Connect 2.0 was launched at the AGI show – with a shipping date of 30th September. There was a lot of interest in the new capabilities and look and feel. Also a big thanks to the teams at Knowsley and Colchester. We were demonstrating their live sites at the show. Their implementations look fantastic, so it was great to showcase real live examples.
The new features included in Stratus Connect 2.0 extend the capabilities of the definitive location intelligence tool for the provision of live information about the location of services and amenities in any given vicinity:
“Find my nearest”: With unparalleled search capabilities for nearest facilities, access or points of interest on a live map interface, “find my nearest” facilitates self-service for citizens, helping to reduce the burden on call centres. Multiple layers can be set up for ‘find nearest’ searches and then categorised, for example by transport, health and environment. Search results are shown on a map as clickable markers, and custom markers can be added.
Automated tasks for the administrator: GIS administrators can schedule updates to the gazetteer index on a daily, weekly or custom basis. Critically, several usability improvements reduce the time spent administrating the system and ensure data is live and up-to-date, for vastly improved decision making.
Zero vulnerabilities: Stratus Connect 2.0 is fully secured against malicious attacks with zero vulnerabilities, having undergone industrial strength penetration testing for the web. It also features added support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, with up-to-date browser compatibility.
The full press release can be found here
Chris M
If you weren’t able to make the AGI conference this week, or are interested in presentations you missed, you’ll find some of them still up here, full day two review coming soon:
http://www.geocommunitylive.com/
Chris M
Interesting start to the conference -- buzzword bingo is well underway and all the usual suspects are already being used. The phrase neogeography is as popular as ever, yet I think its quickly becoming very passee’. Still that’s not the point of this post -- I thought I’d upload a few pics of the action.
PBBI freebie - USB Micro Mouse
Freebie went on every one of the 600 delegates seats (kept the team busy before breakfast)
Stand looking very cool.
Stratus Connect on show - (that's not a touch screen Craig!)
Finally a quick vid of the PBBI Stand
More content later as the event progresses
Cheers
Mark
