Users from Many Sectors Explain the Benefits Gained from SDI 

Redlands, California—May 07, 2012—Government, commercial businesses, community leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and the academic community will gain an understanding of the breadth of geographic information system (GIS) solutions available for implementing a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) at the Global Geospatial Conference 2012 (GSDI 13) being held May 14–17, 2012, in Québec City, Canada.

The theme for this year's conference is Spatially Enabling Government, Industry and Citizens. Several opportunities, including those listed below, are available for attendees to find out how cloud technology can be leveraged to bring SDI across these different sectors:

• Preconference workshops will take place on Monday, May 14, such as Lessons Learned from Implementing SDIs, led by Mark Cygan and Marten Hogeweg from Esri and Gordon Plunkett from Esri Canada.
• User sessions will be held May 15–17 to provide use case examples of SDI implementation. For example, Building the SDI Foundations in Latin America and the Caribbean will be given by Eric Van Praag, GeoSUR.
• Daily plenary sessions will address diverse topics such as Industry Experiences and Perspectives, to be presented by Esri Canada President Alex Miller, who will be joined by innovative GIS user Ubisoft, maker of the popular Prince of Persia video game. Ubisoft uses GIS to improve video game application development and enable the visualization of geographic data in the virtual world.
• A regionalized view of the use of SDI will be provided by local users like Prashant Shukle, director general, Mapping Information Branch, Natural Resources Canada, who will present Canadian Experiences and Perspectives.

Esri is a platinum sponsor of the GSDI 13 conference and works closely with the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association and GEOmatics for Informed Decisions (GEOIDE), the conference organizers.  For more information on how Esri technology can be used for SDI solutions, visit esri.com/SDI. To learn about the conference and to register, visit gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi13/.

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About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

About Esri Canada
Founded in 1984, Esri Canada Limited provides enterprise GIS solutions that empower businesses, governments, and educational institutions to make timely, informed, and mission-critical decisions by leveraging the power of geography. The company distributes the world's leading GIS software from Esri, Telvent, CityworksAzteca Systems, Inc., and other technology partners. Headquartered in Toronto, the company serves over 10,000 customers from 16 regional offices across Canada and has been named as one of the top 250 Canadian IT companies and top 25 IT professional services providers in Canada by the Branham Group. Information about Esri Canada can be found at esri.ca.

About GSDI

The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association is an inclusive organization with members from all sectors—public and private—and individuals from around the world promoting international cooperation and collaboration in support of local, national, regional, and international spatial data infrastructure developments. The goal of the GSDI Association is to allow nations to better address social, economic, and environmental issues of pressing importance through the establishment and use of SDIs and geospatial information. For more information, visit gsdi.org.

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