Esri UK Annual Conference 2014 ‘Pushes the Boundaries’ of GIS

Esri UK has announced that its 2014 Annual Conference, the biggest ever Esri GIS conference in the UK, will take place at the QEII Conference Centre, London on Wednesday 11th June 2014. The event will showcase how Esri is pushing the boundaries of traditional GIS technology through its latest spatial analysis and location analytics solutions, enabling customers to increase sales, enhance customer relationships and meet their strategic goals.

“The conference provides a great opportunity for GIS professionals to explore the latest Esri technologies, to network with their peers and to develop our growing community. It is a chance to share and grow skills and solutions to specific business challenges,” says Charles Kennelly, chief technology officer, Esri UK. “Last year 96% of attendees said the conference met their objectives for attending and we are looking forward to building upon that experience.”

Keynote speakers include Alan Bristow. director, traffic, Transport for London (TfL); Tim Ashelford, head of geographic evidence team, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and Mark Critchley, GIS manager at Sport England.

In his presentation, TfL’s Bristow will highlight the benefits of the Traffic Information Management System, which is based on Esri technology and used in the London Traffic Control Centre (LTCC) to manage the city’s roads. He describes it as, “by far the best GIS application I have ever seen.”

Ashelford will outline how Esri and Defra, working together, used Esri’s ArcGIS Online solution to create a map showing the geographical extent of a revised policy area and make it publically available to farmers, farming unions and the wider community. Benefits included low cost of deployment and direct access to update and amend content as required during the consultation. Finally, Critchley will explain how Sport England is using Esri UK Premium Content Services to help reduce its data management overhead and ensure consistent mapping across the organisation.

The conference also features a range of short presentations by public and private sector organisations on topics of interest to Esri users and GIS professionals attending the event. Subject themes include ‘The ArcGIS Platform Story’, The Future for Government; ‘Fundamentals for Developers’ and ‘Exploring Mobile Solutions’. Presenting organisations include English Heritage; The British Geological Society; Manchester Airport Group and the Office for National Statistics.

All Esri UK customers and technology users, including new users of Esri’s GIS; seasoned GIS professionals; GIS and IT managers and decision-makers, are invited to attend the event.