Eye on the Earth Summit

Posted: Mike Sanderson

I was privileged to be able to attend the Eye on Earth summit convened under the Patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates. AGEDI and UNEP gathered a panoply of world leaders in their fields for the plenary sessions. Jane Goodall talked enthusiastically about the chimps in equatorial Africa, polar explorer Rob Swan was passionate in his defence of Antarctica, Sylvia Earle (formerly Chief Scientist at NOAA) introduced us to blue carbon, Rebecca Moore from Google outreach talked about the Google Earth Engine. This was a call to arms event for sustainability.

The highlight was the presentation from Hernando de Soto of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru. He talked about the Tunisian street trader, Mohamed Bouazizi who set himself on fire just over a year ago. Hernando described the feeling of hopelessness that this individual felt as he realised that to trade legitimately he had to seek permits from 73 government agencies.  Development is key to human progress and cannot be avoided, so the role of government is to allow development whilst maintaining a balance with the environment and other individuals. The initiatives announced at the conference (see: http://www.iisd.ca/ymb/uncsd/eoes/) were purposeful but for us to return in 2013 and measure their success they need to pass the Bouazizi test (they need to produce a simpler form of interaction between the individual and government).

And for 1Spatial, the summit declaration contained the following words:  ‘we need to develop effective mechanisms for collecting, managing and disseminating necessary environmental information, with the responsibility for quality assurance resting with those who collect or originate the data.’

Looking for a new challenge?

It’s a busy time here at 1Spatial and as a consequence we’re eager to fill several roles including Software Developers and Test Analysts in our Cambridge HQ and .NET Developers in our Cork Office.

The company not only offers competitive packages, including great benefits, but also a good working environment that encourages innovation and initiative as well as fun along the way, with plenty of support when you need it.

You can visit the 1Spatial website careers page for more information about the roles above and you can contact hr@spatial.com to send in a CV.

It's ArcGIS Server, but not as we know it...

Posted - John Hartshorn:
For many years we have been automating and solving data quality problems for a range of international customers helping them get more value from their quality-assured data.  So why stop there?  Surely it makes sense to look at how else customers can be helped to get more value out of the data and their investments in the GIS technology that consumes, distributes and presents that data?  Enter....Geocortex. 

OK, I’ll expand a little....

I started my career 20 years ago this autumn at Esri UK.  Well, ‘Doric’ as it was then.  ArcInfo 5, if I recall.  (Yes, I was very young).  Since then, Esri has continued to dominate many aspects of the GI software sector.  So, it comes as no surprise that many of those we help solve data problems for are then publishing that data into web-GIS applications built on Esri technology, ArcGIS Server to be specific, and very 2011 about it.  So, to mark my 20th anniversary of joining the Esri world, 1Spatial has very kindly decided that it will expand its support for the ArcGIS Server community, by offering the finest tried-and-tested tool there is for getting the best out of ArcGIS Server – Geocortex Essentials.

Yes, we’ve become the UK and Ireland distributor for what Esri itself obviously sees as a clearly useful, complimentary toolkit for ArcGIS Server - it has elevated the software team behind Geocortex to become an Esri Platinum Partner.

Geocortex Essentials hugely reduces the amount of grunt work (development) you have to do and, instead, gives you a far more efficient approach to application development by providing a huge range of pre-built (and tried and tested!) capabilities out of the box.  Oh, and a focus on configuration instead of development.  Not to exclude custom coding, of course, but let’s face it – who wouldn’t want to be able to publish applications on top of ArcGIS Server faster, better and with lower risk?  I for one would want to spend less money and time by simply configuring web-GIS sites using an authoring tool and a load of pre-built functions, buttons, widgets, workflows and all sorts of other exciting “geo-thingies”.

We will be attending AGI, so if you are there and want to find out more, please get in touch via geocortex@1spatial.com . We will also be running a series of webinars in the next few months, so watch out for more information!

As you might guess, this is very exciting stuff.  Go on – ask me about Silverlight!