GITA Shifts Direction of Association

The Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) (CO, USA) has started a new branding campaign and changed its flagship conference name.

Association leaders have changed the "Annual Conference" to the "Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference." This repositioning and shift in how GITA will brand and market the event better reflect the broader interests and industry audiences that GITA's conference has accommodated over the years. The next conference will take place 9-12 March 2008, in Seattle, Wash.

GITA defines infrastructure as all fundamental services, activities, and operations that sustain our communities and way of life.

"We've taken a good, hard look at our association since the last Annual Conference in March of this year, and that was a challenging and insightful experience," said Bob Samborski, GITA executive director. "The survey responses are in, the research is complete, and the proactive changes we're making as a response are very exciting."

GITA understands that a significant evolution and an elevation of experience have occurred in the geospatial user community. The geospatial industry has officially migrated from being exclusively GIS to being a full-fledged industry sector that is instrumental in the management of the critical infrastructure that supports every aspect of civil life-from telecommunications to emergency response to banking and finance.

There was a time when people attended GITA's Annual Conference to learn about the emerging niche technology of GIS. Today, a majority of the user community has worked with at least one geospatial platform and looks to the vendor community and respective vendor conferences to understand the technology. Where many geospatial industry conferences provide users with vendor-specific solutions, users attending GITA's "Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference" can benefit from learning about specific solutions in a neutral venue-solutions that advance the GIS they are already using.

In addition to signalling GITA's new organisational focus through a new branded logo and name for the conference, there are a number of strategic initiatives, programs, and offerings that GITA will be launching to support its new focus as the industry's leading advocate for geospatial infrastructure solutions, including a "Green GIS" component and an emergency response "conference within a conference" at the next Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference. Those initiatives and more reflect GITA's stronger focus on broad, horizontal geospatial infrastructure solutions.