In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

While being present at one of the main geospatial event in Quebec (Canada) called: Géomatique 2011, I will do the same as Alex and give some of my impression on the event. I was there mainly to link with my peers as well as discover the new data, apps or development project in the region. I was appealed by two main conference themes: data management and augmented reality.

On the data management side, ESRI Canada presented its new community driven project which offers a complete platform to publish data for free and hosted by ESRI Canada using ArcGIS Online as framework: https://www.esricanada.com/documents/MunicipalWorld_June2011.pdf. The project's main goal presented at Geomatique 2011 was to support open data initiatives in public organisation (http://www.esricanada.com/en_products/4046.asp) especially at municipal level, such as the one made for the City of Nanaimo, Toronto, Kamloops and Moncton, but elsewhere in municipality around Canada, like Sherbrooke in Quebec (and federal and provincial levels, if data are available).

In terms of mobile technology and augmented reality, a young developer Team from Fujitsu presents what has been developed during the Quebec Open Jeep Volleyball tournament (http://quebecopenjeep.com) in Quebec City in summer 2011. This generic apps for the public has been quite simple but demonstrate the use of augmented reality. This apps was showing point of interest and beer location on-site with 2D/3D moving objects added to the scene taken by mobile phone. The next Open Volleyball event in 2012 might be more innovative and integrating more 3D models. Like explained in the summary of Alex of Slashgeo (http://slashgeo.org/2011/10/19/G%C3%A9omatique-2011-Presentation-Notes) about the topic of augmented reality in the presentation made by Sylvie Daniel, the challenge and perspective of augmented reality are still huge, but right now augmented reality is still made for fun and exploration game and product. In summary, geospatial professional needs to stay in touch with opportunity related to augmented reality, but cannot see it as an easy way to develop serious geo-engineering / surveys project in today’s world. The slides and video of all presentations at Géomatique 2011 will be available soon, once it is on-line, Slashgeo will publish the news.