2011 - Geoinformatics

E v e n t
More than just an Exhibition
I n t e r g e o 2 0 1 1
Intergeo is more than just a huge geospatial exhibition. In line with last year, there is not only a 3-day
exhibition, but also an academic conference, this year supplemented with a Navigation Conference
and the first ever Intergeo BarCamp – an open space conference devoted to Open Street Map.
By Eric van Rees
Introduction
Intergeo is Europe’s major exhibition for the
geoinformation industry. This year’s event was
held in Nuremburg, Bavaria during 27-29
September. The 17th edition of the event,
which normally combines a trade fair with a
conference, was for the first time combined
with a Navigation Conference, held during
27 and 28 September, jointly organized by
the German Federal Ministry of Transport,
Building and Urban Development and the
Federal Association for Information Tech no -
logy, Telecommunications and New Media
(BITKOM).
No less than 527 exhibitors were to be expected
from over 30 countries, the visitors amount
was over 16,000 and 1,500 conference participants
from around 80 countries from all continents.
The event claims to cover all the trends
along the value-added chain, from data acquisition
to sophisticated applications, on a gross
exhibition area of 28,000 meters.
The overarching motto for this year’s conference,
the 59th German Cartographers Day
and the Geodetec Week was ‘Knowledge and
action for planet Earth’. For the first time, this
year’s event also sees the integration of the
‘Navigation Conference’, held on Wed nesday.
One new feature aimed at the open data community
is a BarCamp devoted to the potential
of OpenStreetMap. The BarCamp was part of
the Intergeo Academy launched in 2010 with
great success and started on the Monday
before the fair. Participants were to determine
the program of presentations themselves at the
outset.
The BarCamp is a type of open-space conference
and centers on the idea that coffee breaks
are the most important part of a conference,
providing an opportunity to share knowledge
and float new ideas. Beforehand, 250 participants
were expected.
Press Conference
The German Intergeo event hosted a press conference
with several major people from the
industry on Wednesday 28th of September. An
interesting point made by Prof. Dr. Karl Fr.
30
Thöne was that politics was also present at
Intergeo, which means not only the focus on
business and technology. The importance of this
remark was proven by the Galileo project,
scheduled for 2014/2015 which will yield a
lot of work for not only satellite building companies
but also for the industry as a whole.
Also, it was stressed that it’s important to be
independent as a country as a whole for having
such as system for itself.
Rainier Bomba State Secretary in the BMVBS,
The German Federal Ministry of Transport,
Building and Urban Development, spoke about
the use of navigation systems in transportation,
as well as building future housing more energy
efficient, all through the use of geospatial software
and hardware.
Matt Delano (Trimble) spoke about the surveying
industry and the company he represented:
he described that the future for geomatics professionals
is not only about location since the
technique tells you all about the location. This
vision was shared by Ed Parsons, also present
at the same press conference, who held a
October/November 2011