Celebrating five years of Smarter Data, Smarter World
Written by Hayley Walker-Smith, Event Manager
We’re gearing up for our best geospatial event ever – don’t miss out!
I am very excited to be planning this year’s #SDSW21 conference as a hybrid event, a first for us and hopefully the best of both worlds for our ever-growing global audience.
For those of you that have joined us before, you’ll know our annual conference is the highlight of the year for us and many hundreds of our industry colleagues. The event gives us all the opportunity to connect with our geospatial peers, as well as building our knowledge and discovering the latest solutions to meet organisation’s needs.
We’re always thrilled to celebrate the great work and successes of our customers through use case examples. No one case study or customer challenge is the same. Our technology is always evolving, and we love to showcase our innovative software through live demonstrations.
You can take a look back at the playlist from last years event and watch presentations from the likes of Google, Ordnance Survey, Highways England, California Dept. Of Transportation and many more.
Our team are always on hand throughout the event to answer your questions or provide a deeper understanding of our technology. And after a busy day, when I’m sure your head will be left brimming with information and ideas, comes the end of conference drinks reception, where you are able to kick back, enjoy the entertainment and have a tipple or two.
So let me provide you with a little more information about this year’s hybrid event. The first day, 10th November, will be both in person and online and on 11th November we will be hosting online only. During both days, all presentations will be livestreamed on an interactive conference platform that lets attendees, speakers and our experts connect with each other.
We have decided to host a hybrid event following the success of last year’s online conference and the feedback from last year’s delegates. SDSW has been getting bigger and bigger each year, and in 2020, we saw a huge upturn in registrations and attendance, between 2019 and 2020 we had a whopping 131% increase in registrations.
We know that in-person catch-ups can be really valuable, and now it is possible, we are providing a platform to do so. We are continuing to pick fantastic places and spaces to create the right inspiring environments. This year we are hosting at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and we will have made sure there is time to talk and share ideas into the evening with a great line up of entertainment. So, for those of you already thinking of attending in person, we are very excited to finally welcome you back for real networking, discussions and of course the post event entertainment.
Our goal is to make sure that this hybrid option enables even more of you to be part of the conference, regardless of location or any restrictions that may be in place at the time. All of the presentations will be live streamed for our virtual audience and will of course be made available on-demand afterwards for you to watch back at your leisure.
Over the course of the two days the focus for our presentations will be around three key drivers for unlocking your data ecosystem: Innovation, Sustainability and Collaboration. The agendas are shaping up nicely and I hope to reveal these to you very soon, but in the meantime, if you haven’t yet registered, please do so!
If you haven’t joined us before or you’re not sure what to expect at #SDSW21, here are my top five reasons to attend:
- Learn: There’s always something new to discover, whether it be some cool new technology, a case study you can relate to, or hearing from our inspiring industry keynotes
- Network: We’ve all missed the face to face contact, but that’s not to say you can’t connect online. There will be many people to chat with over a cup of tea/coffee and a biscuit during the breaks
- Ask the experts: Our team of experts, whether they’re presenting or are in the audience are all on hand to help with your data challenges, however big or small – we love to help
- See technology in action: There will be plenty of opportunity to see our technology in live demonstrations and you’ll get a preview of our product roadmaps.
- Have fun! Come along meet some new people, have a chat with those you haven’t seen in a while, learn some new things and enjoy the evening entertainment!
For me, there’s always such a great buzz leading up to and on the day of the event, it really does have that ‘Christmas is coming’ vibe about it. Yes, there is a lot of hard work, months in advance and even the night before, laying out what feels like thousands of name badges, but all the stress disappears when the doors open!
We will be releasing more information on this years event over the coming months but for now, if you haven’t already, please register and I look forward to welcoming you in November.