AGI CPD Scheme Survey 2013 - WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!

Dear Member,

The AGI are committed to ensuring you maximise benefits for being a member.  A key part of this is our support for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – the means by which people maintain and enhance their knowledge and skills related to their professional lives and careers.  For further details of the current AGI CPD Scheme, please see: http://www.agi.org.uk/education-and-cpd/

Our first aim is to understand what members want from AGI with regard to CPD.  We have developed a short survey to gauge member views, and we would welcome your feedback.

Please complete this short survey.

The AGI have established a CPD Action Working Group (AWG).  The aim of the working group is ‘to bring focus to expanding the CPD programme through increasing the range of services offered to members and strengthening the association between all of our membership services and activity with the CPD scheme’.

The working group has six key areas of work (further details can be found here):

1. Understanding what members actually want from AGI
2. Clarification of the CPD offering from AGI
3. Assess the requirement for a Skills Framework and develop this
4. Develop events which support CPD
5. Building Links to other organisations
6. Education

To thank you for your input, we have a prize of a luxury hamper to give away to a randomly drawn member who has completed the survey – so be sure to respond by Friday 25^th January 2013 to be in with a chance of winning!

UK GEOforum Annual Lecture 2013

The Annual UK GEOforum lecture will take place on Thursday 24th January at 18:00 at the lecture hall at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors,  12 Great George Street, Parliament Square, London, SW1P 3AD.  This lecture is free of charge and open to all, although registration is required.   Please contact cmallett@rics.org to attend.

The guest speaker this year is Mark Ovenden, and the title of the lecture is 'How Beck's diagram re-mapped the modern world'.

Further details can be found HERE.

Updated version of UK GEMINI published

Version 2.2 of UK GEMINI, the metadata specification published by AGI, has been released. It contains minor amendments to the previous version, requested by the UK Location Programme Metadata working Group.

Further details here.

First #geomob of 2013 - 7 Feb at the BCS

First #geomob of 2013 - 7 Feb at the BCS

Happy New Year geomobbsters!

We have several announcements to make as we kick off the 2013 #geomob season.

First of all, we're very pleased to announce that the Association for Geographic Information (more commenly known as "the AGI"), is joining us as an ongoing promotional sponsor. We look forward to welcoming AGI members at all future #geomob events.

Continuing on the theme of sponsorship we have more good news, November's sponsor Knowwhere consulting is returning to help us with our February event. Along with permanent sponsor Lokku Ltd, makers of property search engine Nestoria, we now have a solid basis to ensure #geomob remains an informative and enjoyable (and thirst quenching!) event. 

Of course the final piece in the sponsorship puzzle are our location sponsors who donate their facilities. Our first event of 2013 will take place on Thurday the 7th of Februray at 18:30 and we're very fortunate to be invited back to the British Computing Society's excellent facilities near Covent Garden (The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street London, WC2E 7HA to be precise).

Our agenda for the evening features

• Simon Willison, founder of Lanyrd

• Chris Connell, creator of Mixer

• Stuart Grant of geo.me

• Shaun Gibson of Tech Britain

and we hope to add one or possibly even two more speakers to the list as well (all speaker suggestions, for this event or future events are always gladly received). All of which will be followed by traditional #geobeers and informal discussion at a nearby pub. Please sign up on the Lanyrd page for the evening so we can get a sense of numbers, and please arrive on time as we will kick off promptly.

A final note for those who just can't wait until February to get your geofix: WhereCampEU is happening in Rome on the 18th and 19th of January. Closer to home, the OSM London pub meetup series kicks off this Thurday evening (10th of Jan).

We look forward to seeing all of you on the 7th of Feb at 18:30.

AGI GeoCommunity '13: Open for Business - Registration Open

16th - 18th September 2013: East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham

AGI is pleased to announce that this year’s AGI Annual Conference - AGI GeoCommunity '13: Open for Business - will be held in Nottingham on the 16th to 18th September 2013.

This is the 7^th year of the extremely popular AGI GeoCommunity format and we will be returning to the East Midlands Conference Centre.

AGI GeoCommunity is the largest and most comprehensive independent conference in the UK digital mapping and data calendar. The conference provides tangible insight and leadership in current geographic information and location based issues via a range of keynote addresses and conference papers, a showcase exhibition, as well as by hands on training and face to face delegate networking. The event is already a 'must attend' for decision makers, practitioners and thought leaders from all aspects of the public and private sectors.

AGI GeoCommunity '13 will open on Monday the 16th September with the popular pre-conference 'Icebreaker' evening event and offer two full days of thought leadership, practical education, knowledge transfer and real world best practice and case studies.

The residential format, introduced in 2007, is now well established and the event has proven its growth and sustainability. Feedback from last year’s delegates indicated that 96.5% of those polled thought the event offered value for money and 94.7% felt it fulfilled their expectations. 96.4% said the venue was ‘good’ or ‘excellent. A full report of delegate feedback is available on the AGI website.

AGI GeoCommunity '13 will also offer a select number of sponsorship spaces to showcase new products and services and network with delegates both at the sponsors' exhibition pods and in the conference sessions and social events. Companies that are AGI members can get additional booking discounts. The conference format will offer our sponsors an unrivalled opportunity to meet and network with the key practitioners and influencers across government and the commercial sectors.

To register as a delegate and to see costs for AGI GeoCommunity '13, click HERE.

To register as a sponsor and to see costs and benefits for AGI GeoCommunity '13, click HERE.

Following on from the AGI GeoCommunity '13 conference, the FOSS4G 2013 conference will run from the 17 th to the 21 st September in the same venue. As a delegate at AGI GeoCommunity '13 you are able to receive a 10% discount when booking to attend FOSS4G 2013. Please contact Claire Gilmour for the discount code.

Yours Sincerely

Claire Gilmour
AGI Events Manager