It’s not my habit to look back; I’d rather look forward. You can’t change anything in the past and as far as the future is concerned you at least have the feeling some of it lies in your own hands. But since this is already the last issue of GIM International for 2006, I feel the need to break my habit and take a look over my shoulder. It has been a good year for GIM International.

We are attracting more readers and advertisers and our global base is growing stronger, with more subscribers from emerging regions such as India, China and Eastern Europe. This all due, I am sure, more to the quality of our content being upheld than to any improvement in it. So much for the old year, 2006. Now I’d like to take this early opportunity of sharing a few of our plans for 2007 with you as well.

At the moment we are busy filling, testing and checking our new website before launching it on 1st January. The renewed GIM International website will contain a lot more features than did the old one. I say ‘old’, but of course our previous website was still quite new. However, we felt that due to the large and growing numbers of visitors, more than fifty thousand this year alone, we needed to expand the possibilities and services we offer our readers online.

So we’ve been exploring the full potential of the website and soon visitors will even have the chance to use it for networking with each other, in real time. Companies will be able to use the site to show their newest products ‘in action’. We are planning to add more and more value to all the articles published in the magazine. And rest assured: if by any chance you should forget about the new website by the end of the year, we will remind you of the launch via our e-newsletter. (Those who are still not receiving the e-newsletter, please email gim-international@reedbusiness.nl.)


Allow me one moment for our Chinese readers. From 1st January onwards we will be offering you the opportunity to read up on the latest international business developments, new products, geomatics news, and so on, in your own language. At www.gim-international.com there will be a link to the Chinese website, so finding it will be easy. Please spread the word among your colleagues and bookmark the Chinese website as from 1st January.


Initiatives such as these are aimed at guaranteeing we keep pace with developments in the geomatics business as it evolves all over the world. And ensuring that rather than looking back at the old we look forwards, to the new.