The geographic information industry’s must-attend event is fast approaching, here Chris Holcroft, AGI’s Director and CEO, gives us an idea of what we can expect.

Just as Christmas seems to come around quickly, before we know it, another AGI GeoCommunity conference is upon us! But for the AGI staff the end of one conference is simply the start of another.

For the last six years AGI GeoCommunity series has proven itself as a ‘must-attend’ event for a range of service delivery managers and information management and technology professionals. Previous delegates and speakers have been drawn from Central and Local Government, Utilities, Health, Emergency Services, Infrastructure, Insurance, Marketing, Business Intelligence, Finance and Technology sectors.

AGI GeoCommunity ’12 ‘Sharing the Power of Place’ will follow the integrated approach to the annual AGI conference introduced back in 2007. Presentations, hands-on sessions, exhibition, networking and entertainment all come under one roof to give the best and most focused experience possible. Ordnance Survey has kindly sponsored every event as a Platinum Sponsor. This year sees the event back at the purpose built East Midlands Conference Centre for the second time.

AGI GeoCommunity ’12 will open on 18 September with the popular pre-conference ‘icebreaker’ evening event and will offer two full days over 19 and 20 September of thought leadership, practical education, knowledge transfer and real world best practice and case studies.

Twelve themes across five streams of papers will be delivered along with plenary and keynote sessions. The twelve themes are as follows:

• Who, What, Where: This stream deals with national geographic issues such as the Census and Land Registration.
• Environmental Impacts: From managing the aid response during humanitarian crises to reducing pollution in sewer networks; here is the application of GI with an environmental perspective.
• Emerging Technologies: This part of the conference addresses hot topics like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Linked data.
• Data: Attend this stream if you wish to hear about aspects of INSPIRE, OpenStreetMap and OS MasterMap.
• Sharing Best Practice: Learn from a series of projects relating to GI in local government, education, the third sector and insurance sectors.
• Social Geography: Here you can learn about the role GI and GIS has in connecting the citizen with public services and community information.
• Engagement: This stream addresses about how GI has a vital role to play in data sharing and collaboration with examples from the public and private sector.
• Health Geography: The health sector is yet to fully embrace and exploit the power of GI. This stream covers aspects of health geography from two leading speakers in the field.
• BIM: Building Information Modelling is being mandated by Government for large construction and infrastructure projects. GI is a key part of BIM. Learn about many aspects of BIM and GI in this section of the conference.
• Opening Up: This stream straddles both days to look at Open Source and Open Data from a range of backgrounds and applications.
• Cloud Solutions: Cloud Computing is an increasingly popular approach. What is the role of GI in this? This is the stream to find out.

Hands-on sessions will also be delivered by Autodesk, Esri UK, Ordnance Survey and the Open Source Community.

Keynote and plenary speakers already lined up include internationally renowned urban planner Professor Tim Stoner, Esri UK’s CTO Charles Kennelly and Ordnance Survey Director General & CEO, Vanessa Lawrence CB.

AGI GeoCommunity ‘11 attracted 450 delegates. Feedback from last year’s delegates indicated that 97% of those polled thought the event offered value for money and 89% felt it fulfilled their expectations. 97% said the venue was ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.

More information can be found and ‘all-in’ delegate packages at excellent prices can be found at www.agigeocommunity.com