Attendees Find Vital Information at This Year’s Conference

By Deb Nerud



 “I have learned more about AMI and integration to outage management that I had not contemplated before,” said Mark Lane, ArgusON, Franklin, Tenn. As a first-time attendee he is trying to branch out into “different circles.” As of the second morning of the conference, Lane was looking forward to attending more presentations that relate to his key area of interest before heading home. “I haven’t had the chance to walk the [exhibit] floor yet and am anxious to see the products,” he said.

Shenequa Duncombe, Bahamas Telecommunications Company, Nassau, is also at her first conference. “The meetings are good,” she said. “Especially the GPS talks. We are trying to get GIS up and running and I’m interested to hear about other people’s experiences in telecommunications."

Duncombe said that although they have a national GIS center, they are trying to “sync ours with theirs. The government has done the land base for two islands and they are also trying to

work with all utilities to share data. Right now telecommunications are trying their own stuff, electric utilities are trying their own stuff, etc. It also makes a difference that we are not one land mass, but have 32 inhabited islands.
Connie Mastin, Denver Water, Denver, Colo. has been to one other conference and notes that the conference keeps up with the new technology changes and new buzz words that  emerge. “I’ve been to three sessions so far to get an overview of Enterprise GIS. It has really opened my eyes to looking at the bigger picture. The possibility of Web services also appears to be big.” She is looking for information on integrating CAD with GIS and GPS, and will spend time looking for vendor and session information about these topics.
Tamara Davis, King County, Seattle, Wash. said that the conference is meeting her expectations as a first-time attendee. “I came to hear about asset management with GIS.

Paul Ollukaren, Florida Power and Light, Juno Beach, Fla., is also at his first conference. He’s seen good presentations on AMI and outage management. “I came to hear about the future of AMI and OMS and where this is headed,” he said. He has found out a lot about the technology and implementation strategies by listening to the experiences of others. “ I realize that after attending the presentations,that we are on the right track,” he said.  “We started our project about one year ago and are about 10% complete. It is a lot of work.” He also feels that the technology side is really taking off not and that this is the right time to “get in on it.” He plans on attending again.
The vendor’s perspective is also positive. The staff at the TerraGo Technologies booth (#409) have enjoyed the “great crowd so far.” They have been doing a lot of demos which have stimulated much interest and feel that the late-afternoon opening day March 10 was the busiest day they have ever had at GITA. “I really like the focus on the emergency response area,” said the firm’s Jeffrey Young. “As a company, we have doubled in size in the last year and a half and this is an appropriate venue for us. It is timely to have the emergency response topic.” Young feels that the synergy between vendors is very good this year.

Joe Schmidt, Xplore Technologies, Austin, Texas, provided a vendor’s viewpoint, and said “I think the change in focus for the conference is the right move.”