The WALIS International Forum 2008

As well as being a success in terms of the number of registered delegates The Forum also had the largest number of sponsors and exhibitors, enabling the trade exhibition to be held in the spacious Pavilion 1 of the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre. The Forum opened on Wednesday 12 March with pre-forum workshops. The WA Local Government GIS Focus Group attracted over 100 delegates to their afternoon workshops. The Forum was officially opened by the Hon Michelle Roberts MLA, Minister for Land Information, on Thursday 13 March, followed by inspiring keynote addresses by Rob Atkinson from CSIRO Land and Water on the use of spatial data infrastructures to allocate Australia's water, and Professor Lyn Beazley, Chief Scientist of Western Australia, on women in sciences.

Craig Rispin provided a very entertaining and insightful interactive presentation on the future of the spatial industry, followed by Glenn Stewart, Sports Science Manager for the West Coast Eagles, who detailed the use of global positioning systems in the Australian Football League.

The Thales sponsored Forum Dinner on Thursday evening attracted over 400 guests, who enjoyed a three course meal and entertainment from Fyredanz.  Dr Ian MacLeod from the WA Museum provided a very entertaining presentation on mapping deterioration on historic shipwrecks, and band Hi-NRG got delegates up and dancing as the night wore on.

The final day of the Forum opened on Friday 14 March with details of a successful partnership between Landgate, CSIRO and the Ministry of Forestry in Jakarta to reduce incidences of wild fires in Indonesia.  Ed Parsons from Google then demonstrated Google Earth and Google Maps, followed by Harvey Sanchez from Microsoft Australia and a demonstration of Virtual Earth, providing an interesting comparison between two exciting products.

Five streams of concurrent sessions ran on the Thursday and Friday afternoons.  All presentations will be available for viewing on the Forum website shortly.  For images of the Forum, visit http://www.walis.wa.gov.au/forum/photos.