Last week saw the spatial industry’s premier event, Locate, take place in Brisbane. The conference is an amalgamation of the three biggest Australian spatial events: Spatial@gov, the SSSI conference, and – as of this year – the GITA annual conference, and it also hosted the annual APSEA and GITA awards.

The Locate conference gave attendees the choice of more than 80 presentations across 9 concurrent streams focusing on the latest innovations, practical applications, business solutions and case studies.

Open data was the big theme of the conference, with the Minister for Communication, The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP giving an overview of some of the innovations in government surrounding the opening of data, and the downstream innovations that opening such data has created, including the Queensland Globe.

Nicholas Gruen, the CEO of Lateral Economics also have a fascinating speech on how open data is a ‘public good’ much like early infrastructure was – even though it may be delivered by private enterprise.

Other highlights included an open data panel discussion, ‘Current impacts and future directions for Open Data – the role of the spatial industry,’ consisting of: Drew Clarke, Secretary, Department of Communications; Keitha Booth, Programme Manager, Open Government Information and Data Programme, Land Information New Zealand;  Nicholas Gruen, CEO, Lateral Economics; Steve Jacoby, Executive Director, Land & Spatial Information, Queensland Dept of Natural Resources & Mines; and  Maree Adshead, CEO, Open Data Institute Queensland.

The day before the conference proper also saw an exhibition open day, where the public was invited to see what some of the biggest names in the spatial industry had to offer.

Presentations on the day included topics such as the QLD Globe, ICMS update, OGC, and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) Education Program (STEM).

The organisers of the conference have requested attendees fill in a short survey, so that they can prepare an even better program next year. If you attended, it would be appreciated if you could take a few minutes to fill it out.

All in all, Locate 15 was a great success, and we at Spatial Source are eagerly awaiting announcements regarding next year’s event.