ESRI UK User Conference 2015

Down to London for the ESRI UK Annual Conference for users on Tuesday this week. It's the first time I've attended. This is the biggest GIS event in the UK.

Around 2500 delegates were at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, opposite Westminster Abbey. I met up with Mark from OCR en route, and we chatted as we made our way through the city and walked down to the venue.

We went to the education room and there were a range of exhibitors present, including the OS, Edina, the Royal Geographical Society and the Geographical Association.
Downstairs and upstairs were other exhibitors, although I missed out on the I love GIS badges which I saw tweeted. There was also a chance to play on the amazing Urban Observatory installation.

After plenty of coffee and pastries and chat, it was down for the first plenary session, where there were over 1000 people in the audience. As I arrived a short while before it started, I managed to bag a front row seat, which was nice... There were some impressive features displayed, including a live demonstration of 3D Mapping and geofencing, which included real time plotting. There's an interesting article here on the background to the technology of the location of things. There was also a talk from Walking with the Wounded on their expeditions.

After the plenary, it was back up to the Education area to meet up with lots of teachers who I've worked with over the years, and hear some excellent sessions.
I particularly liked the session from Raphael Heath, where he talked about the work that he has done, and also launched his Ash Cloud Apocalypse project.
Raphael is picking up the OS award that I won back in 2008 at the start of June. He shared his use of Geo Forms, and I have since had a play with those to create one for a session that I'm running in June.

I also enjoyed watching the session from Garry Simmons on his use of StoryMaps. He also shared an Extreme Weather presentation for 6 extreme places. Plenty more on his Twitter feed too.



After the 3 education workshops, I then went for a quick drink with Richard Allaway, who had flown over from Geneva for the day especially to attend. Always good to catch up...
This meant that we missed the final closing plenary where Raphael Heath was awarded a special community award for the GIS World Record 



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