Looking Back to Look Ahead

I was in San Diego, California from 5th to 11th August, at the ESRI International User Conference (see review in this issue). Since the conference takes place every year at the same location and around the same time one gets quickly acclimatised to venue and climate. Nevertheless, no less than six years had passed since my previous visit: time flies. What impressed me the most at the end of June 2000 was the magnitude of the event; the number of attendees approaching a five-digit figure. In 2006 it really was a fat five-digit number, approaching fifteen thousand.

Rule of Thumb
The ESRI International User Conference is not the only geomatics event which is flourishing in terms of participants. In June 2006 Bentley for the first time hosted a user conference in Europe. It attracted over a thousand people, while the venue was not one of the glossy western European cities, but Prague, capital of one of the smaller, emerging European countries. The Trimble user conference, to be held in Las Vegas, USA from 6th to 8th November 2006, with 125 sessions and ten special tracks, will have more content than ever before. And also the twelfth edition of the Intergeo conference and trade-fair, scheduled from 8th to 11th October in Munich, Germany together with the 23rd FIG Congress, promises once again to set records: over fifteen thousand visitors from more than eighty countries are expected to attend (see preview in this issue). As rule of thumb it may be taken that the annual increase in participants at user conferences and other events is around 7%. Such a percentage, were it to refer to annual growth in Gross Domestic Product, would make many a national government jealous; such is only reached by a few emerging economies in Asia. Do we need more convincing proof that the geomatics industry is flourishing?

Reluctance
The success of the ESRI User Conference as I experien-ced it in June 2000 led me to reflect on competitive alternatives to congresses and conferences organised by professional associations. Included here are the International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) and the International Cartographic Association (ICA). These reflections were expressed in my Pinpoint column of August 2000 (GIM International) and reproduced in my book Geo-information Engineering: Changing Technology in a Changing Society. By the turn of the millennium, I observed, many professionals had shown themselves reluctant to attend events organised by the well-established societies whilst, on the other hand, user conferences organised around a single company’s products and services were noticeably gaining attention amongst these same members.

Drift Away
Why this trend? My diagnosis was that the professional organisations could no longer satisfy the needs of their members concerning efficient and continual transfer of knowledge and the provision of facilities to improve skills. And that is exactly the first of the two fundamental grounds upon which professional associations came into existence. The other ground was promoting external communication; for example, with other, related organisations, with government agencies and with society as a whole. The aim of external communication is to augment the status of the profession, to achieve and to safeguard privileges, to promote the profession and to protect the interests of all members. Around the turn of millennium the professional geomatics associations seemed to have drifted away from their grassroots. They seemed blind to the way in which impressive technological developments, particularly in the field of information technology, would result in increasing diffusion of boundaries between traditional professions. And that as a consequence professional profiles were evaporating. At the same time, there was an inadequate response to the changing needs of society. Professional associations, already around for a century, had, it seemed, for some time been resting on their laurels. My conclusion was that, if they were to justify their existence, these associations had to rethink the way they interacted with geomatics professionals. The straightforward issuing and exercise of blueprints, successful in the past, was by no means sufficient to satisfy the needs of today’s practitioners.

Renewed Influence
Fortunately, some recognised these trends, and that they required action. In this month’s interview, retiring FIG president Holger Magel discusses how, during his four-year term of leadership, the International Federation of Surveyors has evolved “from having the character of an association of amateurs to a highly professionally driven and operated global business.” More active than ever before, FIG has gone back to its grassroots as it promotes the profession and protects the interests of all its members. Today FIG influences political decisions on national aspects of surveying and development of land registry, and it is represented as a Non-Governmental Organisation at the UN. Recognising the essentiality of the land issue in sustainable development, FIG has stated its strong commitment to this, especially in Africa. “Secure land tenure and land administration, using modern technology, is of vital importance and a real challenge for our profession worldwide.” Further, FIG recognises transfer of knowledge as a most relevant issue because it concerns “capacity building and the future of the profession in a rapidly changing world.”

FIG would seem to be more vivid than ever. Its congresses and other events have as a result turned into competitive alternatives to user conferences.