Geographic Conferences

My thoughts on the nature of conferences were stimulated by an entry in Ed Parson’s blog. This entry was written while he was at the geoTEC conference in Calgary. He made the comment that there was a high technical content at this conference and how this was an interesting contrast to conferences in the UK. He felt, and here I paraphrase, that UK conferences can comprise vendor sales pitches and OS bashing.

I am on the working group organising the AGI2007 conference in Stratford Upon Avon in September, though very much the layman on that organising group. I am interested generally in what constitutes a successful conference and specifically that we get it right for our conference.

It seems to me that there is no single ingredient, but a whole range of ingredients which go to making a successful conference. A bit like a recipe I guess – too much of one ingredient can jeopardise the whole end product.

What if we gave a conference and nobody came? Well of course that would be a total disaster. So the conference programme must attract attendees. That may seem obvious, but it must be uppermost in our minds throughout the planning.

I also feel that the conference must generally move debate forward. So whatever the individual content, there should be a desire to make progress collectively and take some issues up to a higher level. There may be specific issues where consensus could be achieved and that consensus fed into future debate or even future legislation. Effectively the conference must aim to be more than just a talking shop.

And what about the content? Taking Ed’s points, how technical should this be? Perhaps I can digress a bit here. I used to work at the Royal Festival Hall in London. We had debates about the concert programmes we should be offering. There was a school of thought that we should do endless ‘popular classics’ concerts – Mozart, Beethoven, a bit of Bruch and maybe the 1812 to finish. This would ensure bums on seats. Another school of thought was that it was our duty to highlight the work of contemporary composers and educate our audiences. Perhaps concerts of the compositions of Xenakis or Birtwistle. Of course both schools of thought, in isolation, were wrong. Too many contemporary concerts with low audiences would not be financially viable. But if we did endless popular concerts, they would end up not being so popular any more. We would have a declining, and increasingly elderly, audience. Balance was key. Audiences, who would not attend a concert of purely contemporary work, would happily listen to a contemporary piece of work as part of a more general concert.

Back to Geography. Surely the issue is the same. We have a very wide range of potential attendees, some from the corporate world, some from Government, central or local, some from health authorities, some from utilities etc. All sessions will not appeal to all attendees and we shouldn’t attempt to achieve that. A conference should surely have a range of topics and a range of technical content within those topics. But there must also be a recognisable theme and a number of logical strands. And yes we must stimulate debate, but not by putting up an easy fall guy and allowing delegates to vent their frustration. The debate should try to push delegates into thinking in ways that they might not hitherto have done.

And what is the measure of success of a conference. Strangely I do not think the main measure relates to that conference at all. It is not whether that conference made money (though that is certainly important). The success of a conference is the base it can build for the conference in the following year. I would want delegates to leave the conference asking ‘ When is next year’s conference? We want to keep our diaries free.’

As I mentioned at the start, we are running AGI2007 on 19th and 20th September in Stratford upon Avon. The general theme is ‘Building a GeoCommunity’. I am really excited by the format and by the programme. Details can be found on the AGI website. I think the technical content will be high, but also there will be useful content for the less technically-minded delegate. There will be relevance to a wide range of interests within the GeoCommunity. I think we will live up to the theme. And on the Wednesday night, there will be a fabulous party.

See you there!

Addressing

I do realise that there is a debate going on regarding commonality of addressing. Not a debate that I can get involved in. Meanwhile, here are the British postcodes.

Infotech Golf Day

I was pleased to have been invited today to a golf day organised by Infotech Eterprises who are an AGI member and a global software services company specialising in geospatial solutions.

The day was held at the Buckinghamshire Golf Course, which was in superb condition. The hospitality was excellent. The weather was not so great - windy and wet.

Despite the weather I really enjoyed the day. All the more so because I played quite well and, amazingly, won the event. I'm dead chuffed.

AGI2007

I have, along with members of the AGI2007 working group, spent a couple of days in Stratford Upon Avon, venue of the AGI2007 conference in September. We reviewed the venue, the papers submitted and the administration.

At the end of the weekend, I was really excited by this year's conference. The selected papers are very interesting and thought-provoking, the proposed programme is I believe varied and educational and the venue is excellent.

I urge all who are interested in Geographic Information to make the effort to come along to our conference.