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Letter from the Low Lands, first published at Directions Magazine

November 28th 2011

Geo breaking down barriers

At the end of this month, on November 30th and December 1st, the Geo-Informatie Nederland

(GIN) Congres and GeoInfoXchange exhibition will take place in Utrecht, conveniently located in

the central Netherlands. With 2,585 participants in 2009, expectations for 2011 are high. By

longstanding tradition, The theme is rather general and can take the organization, the speakers

and the participants in many directions. This year’s theme: “Geo breaking through barriers.” Will

it break a barrier in attendance?

Breaking barriers for our society

The GIN Congres is an all-Dutch conference with only a few international exceptions. So

promoting it internationally seems, at first glance, a bit awkward. But if you want to understand

what is hot and what is not related to geographic information in the Netherlands, this certainly is

the place to be. And most Dutch do speak English, after all.

The action style of the theme was chosen by the program committee on purpose: sometimes

geo-information needs a bit of a push to get to new places. The program examines several

perspectives on breaking barriers: between organizations, between countries, and the barriers to

new applications and technologies.

The Geo-Information Nederland society also has broken a few barriers in recent years. We have

started to organize regional events, we’ve launched a relatively large social media presence

(with a LinkedIn group of over 1,700 members) and we’ve reorganized the way we do events -

always in cooperation with a professional company.

Program

As with most conferences, the GIN Congres has keynote presentations and parallel sessions. It

is hard to single out particular presentations, but I find three particularly noteworthy:

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Jantien Stoter, Kadaster/ TU Delft - has taken 3D geodata to a higher level in an

already famous 3D pilot project in which almost 70 organizations cooperated.

Lucas Bolsius - mayor of the city of Amersfoort, will explain why geography takes such a

central role, not just in his city, but also from a national perspective.

Joris van Enst - director of the Waterschapshuis, representing the water boards, will explain

how he envisions authorities working together with businesses and citizens alike. The water

boards are the oldest regional governments and have a clear and seemingly simple task:

keep the water out, or keep it in where we need it most.

Several of the hot topics in the parallel sessions are key registrations (the centrally orchestrated

databases, for example, topography, addresses, buildings), Openness 2.0 (on open geo data

and open source), and a new way of working (on generalization and the new satellite data

repository, with opendata). Presenters come from the expected organizations, such as Kadaster

and Netherlands Space Office, and from some less-expected sources, such as the insurance

company, Achmea and Mobile Result.

The conference ends with an extra focus on megatrends in openness: open standards and open

source, with presentations from the National Spatial Data Infrastructure executive committee in

the Netherlands (Geonovum , Marcel Reuvers), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, Athina

Trakas) and Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo, Arnulf Christl).

Partners

The challenge of managing an event of this size is too large for our society alone. This one is co-

produced by, among others, the Royal Dutch Society of Geography (KNAG), which will present a

session on geo-education. The Netherlands Institute for Navigation (NiN) has put together a

session on the topic of location-based services for a safe and secure society.

Many smaller co-organizing partners, like the open innovation platform, IIPGEO, and the labor

market initiative, SAGEO, contribute as well. GeoBusiness Nederland has been a strong

supporter since the beginning and both GeoBusiness and Geo-Information Nederland are

sharing a booth in the Geo-InfoXchange exhibition area. All of these organizations are

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professionally supported by VNU Exhibitions, a key resource in making the Geo-Info Xchange

exhibition a success.

I would like to think that it is the combination of efforts that makes the GIN Congress a success.

As a not-for-profit society, Geo-Informatie Nederland exists in the space that other players allow

it. But I see the society as a unique and vital player in this vibrant ecosystem of authorities,

companies and communities. It is this kind of open cooperation that I believe will break down

barriers for all involved. So, although the conference has not yet started, here is a great thank-

you to all active members from the editorial board of our Geo-Info magazine, the program

committee, Web team and general board, who contributed freely to make this event possible, for

members and non-members alike.

A new direction

The society Geo-Informatie Nederland is more than a congress, a symposium or a magazine; it

is an open network, for professionals and amateurs to openly share knowledge about

geographic information. There will be a lot more barriers to break in the years to come. In my

opinion, breaking the 2,585-participants barrier is not that important. It seems that the impact of

geographic information in society will increase and we all contribute to that. We sincerely hope

that more conference attendees will join the society and actively support that vision.

As an aside, I will be stepping down as president of our society. It has been an energetic

learning experience filled with many interesting new challenges and the pleasure of new

acquaintances. And it was a great pleasure (and fun) to push geo-information with our board and

the many cooperating organizations in a new direction. There is an abundance of challenges left

over for the new board of our society.

If you happen to be near Utrecht in the next few days, do come and see us! Help us break that

first or second barrier!