Towards the end of last year, we attended a number of conferences. They were the Esri Asia Pacific User Conference in Auckland (APUC), ALGIM in Rotorua, and ForestTech in Rotorua and Melbourne.
APUC was a great conference with us. Looking out from our stand, the conference was bustling and busy the whole time and we were proud to have some involvement in the organisation of this event. Some of us got to some presentations and from what we heard; many of them were well received. GBS was happy to see some of our clients present their work where we have had some involvement, so thanks to PowerCo and Rayonier for their hard work. Pleasing aspects were some new streams and focus – e.g. the indigenous stream, as well as some of the mobility themes as well. Esri’s cloud options are going to open lots of opportunities for many organisations and we will be there for that journey. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the Conference. The food was great, and it is always fantastic to catch up with old friends and acquaintances. We are looking forward to the next instalment later this year.
Following APUC, we attended the annual ALGIM event in Taupo. ALGIM is always an interesting exercise. It is always consistent and in many ways, it is still the same as its fore-runner, ITMG. For example, there are always more vendors than delegates. We know some things have changed but a lot of the faces haven’t. It is good to see some of those old-timers still working hard. We think ALGIM has some issues for both organisers and vendors who attend. While there are some very good presentations – by both delegates and vendors at ALGIM, and also the entertainment is very good, from our perspective, we think the delegates need to be more engaged. We understand that other vendors / suppliers feel the same. So, attending ALGIM is always up for consideration by GBS, and we will consider carefully before committing to this event each year. On the positive side, it was great to share a stand with the Motion Tablet dealers – Exol, again this year. Thanks to Dale Campbell for her efforts in supporting GBS and also for her hard work on the stand.