2007 November 8

This issue sponsored by GITA

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Editor's Introduction

This week, I feature a guest article on the 13th Intergeo conference by Tom Gibson, the editor of GIS Monitor's sister publication, Professional Surveyor Magazine and I profile 3Di West, a photogrammetry company. Plus, 20 press releases.

— Matteo Luccio

Report on the 13th Intergeo Conference

The 13th Intergeo conference and trade fair for geodesy, geoinformation and land management took place in Leipzig, Germany, September 25 to 27. Tom Gibson, editor of Professional Surveyor Magazine, attended the conference and wrote this report.

As I awoke each morning in my room at the Marriott hotel in Leipzig, I peered at an office building across the narrow street. Occasional rooms were lit with people working in them and I wondered what they were doing. Then I noticed a sign on the roof that said "Leipziger Freiheit." I wondered for days what this company was before I learned that Leipziger Freiheit isn't actually a company but means "Leipzig Liberty." These two little words go a long way in explaining the character and status of Leipzig and why we are here.

This year, the 13th Intergeo took place in Leipzig, Germany in September with the theme "Knowledge and Action for Planet Earth." This ranks as the world's largest congress and trade fair for geodesy, geoinformation, and land management.

A bustling, vibrant city of 500,000 located in the state of Saxony, Leipzig blends the old with the new. Old-style European buildings exist side-by-side with gleaming new highbrow shops. Narrow streets filled with vendors fill the inner city, while modern suburban thoroughfares further out see heavy traffic from cars, trams, and bicycles. It becomes obvious that the city has embraced free market reforms to become one of the fastest-growing economic regions in Europe.

Read more…

Profile of a Photogrammetry Company

The photogrammetry industry in the United States received a big boost after World War II, when returning pilots, camera operators, and photointerpreters provided a large pool of personnel who were able to transfer their skills and experience into civilian occupations, applying aerial photography and remote sensing to a broad range of problems. In 1949 one of these veterans, H.G. Chickering, opened one of the first photogrammetric mapping companies in the Western United States in Eugene, Oregon. It is now called 3Di West and is owned by six of its current and former senior managers, who bought it in 2002 from 3Di Technologies, which was consolidating on the East Coast. In the intervening five years, 3Di West has doubled its staff, now numbering 26, opened a new office in Boise, Idaho, and more than tripled its revenues, with projects throughout the country. In addition to its photogrammetry, orthophotography, and mapping departments, the company two years ago launched a new GIS department, which provides both complete GIS products as well as consulting services.

This week, I visited the company and interviewed its president, Bret Hazell, as well as the managers in charge of photogrammetry, orthophotos, GIS, and project delivery. Following is my interview with Hazell; in next week's issue I will report on my other conversations.

  1. What accounts for most of your company's growth?

    I think that we've managed to market ourselves in a niche. Many photogrammetry companies have either become very large or very small — not many of them are comfortable in the middle. We've kept ourselves from getting too big by using teammates to take the overflow work. We do most of our work in-house, but we have several ex-employees who work out of their homes and we use them as needed. Our wide variety of clients and the fact that we are doing work all over the United States have helped us. We do work for four different state departments of transportation, military federal work, and a lot of work for states, cities, and counties.

Read more…

News Briefs

Please note: I have neither edited nor verified the content of these press releases.

  1. CONTRACTS & COLLABORATIONS

    1. BAE Systems Awarded $18 Million DARPA Contract To Lead Imaging System Program

    2. Kansas Department of Transportation Selects GeoDecisions for Pavement Marking Application

    3. U.S. Army Awards Flight Landata $6.6 Million Contract for Aerial Imaging in Afghanistan

  2. PRODUCTS & SERVICES

    1. Avineon Unveils Avineonics for Automated Emergency and Incident Management

    2. GeoStore Enables Site Surveys From the Desktop

    3. Enterprise Navigation Now Available

    4. Geneq Introduces Next Generation Submeter GPS Mapping Receiver

    5. New Online Local, State, and National Elected Official Lookup Service

    6. V7 Launches New Portable Navigation Devices

  3. CONFERENCES & TRAINING

    1. Azteca Systems Announces 2008 Cityworks User Conference

    2. Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging Represented at ASITA 2007

    3. 1Spatial Announces a Series of Seminars on Centralized Spatial Data Management

    4. GIS Day Across Canada

    5. URISA Leadership Academy Inaugural Class

  4. OTHER

    1. New Biodiversity and Conservation Website Launched

    2. New Book Underscores the Vital Role of Geospatial Technology in Homeland Security

    3. Hull City Council Win 2007 NLPG Exemplar Award with Emergency Management System Built on eSpatial's iSMART

    4. MAPPS President Testifies Before House Subcommittee on Hydrographic Services Improvement Act of 2007

    5. Pitney Bowes Moves 170 Jobs to Troy, New York

    6. Digital Quest Develops Geospatial Industry Book Series to Introduce Students to Benefits of GIS in Business & Industry

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Matteo Luccio, Editor
GIS Monitor

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