Smallworld and the Big World #swuc

Recently the organizers for the Smallworld Americas Users Conference sent out an e-mail related to booking your exhibit booth. If you saw the subject line and ignored the e-mail (maybe because you are not a vendor), you would have missed a significant announcement. I have copied the announcement here in case you missed it...

====begin announcement====

This year we are introducing a new session on the agenda that may interest you…it is open to all attendees including customers, partners, and GE staff:

Smallworld and the Big World – Saturday September 11th 2:45-4:30pm, with a 15 minute break at 3:30

After a week of concentrating on products and applications within the Smallworld community, we’d like to shift the focus outside: how we relate to the bigger world.

This session is an open forum to discuss things like:

· visibility (making Smallworld and MapFrame more visible in the geospatial arena)

· standards (OGC and others)

· policy (stimulus, other government actions)

· technology trends (smart phones, neo-geo, social networking)

· organizations (sources of information and influence).

====end announcement====

I particularly am interested in the "technology trends" item. I have started doing work with integrating OpenStreetMap (neo-geo) with Smallworld (paleo-geo?) and now seeing that GE is going to have a forum about that is very encouraging. My presentation on OSM and Smallworld integration is currently scheduled for the same time as the open forum, but I am trying to get the time changed so I can be part of the forum as well.

I also see that they want to discuss social networking. In a past blog I have suggested that conference attendees try tweeting about all things conference-related under the hashtag #swuc. I think the amount of traffic on that hashtag could be gauge of how much the Smallworld community is already into this technology trend.

Could GE encourage their attending employees to start tweeting/blogging about conference proceedings? That would be very encouraging.

Exciting things happening in the Smallworld realm!