FME World Tour kicks off
Our 2019 FME World Tour kicked off with full houses in London and Cardiff
David Eagle, 1Spatial’s FME Division Manager, was host for the day and Safe Software’s Technical Director of Cloud Applications Stewart Harper was a key speaker throughout the day.
Sorry to those who couldn’t get tickets, the event was sold out in London. Maybe we’ll see you at one of the other UK dates.
Why is the 1Spatial FME World Tour so popular?
Around half of yesterday’s audience had been to FME World Tour events in previous years, so we asked why they come:
“It’s inspiring. We use FME for all sorts of tasks, and it’s cool to see how others use it.”
“I’m the only FME user in my team, so it’s great to come and meet others. I always go away with more ideas to try.”
“It’s informative and it’s fun. You see what’s possible and you see what’s coming.”
As David says, “You learn more when you’re having fun.”
The fun stuff
Paper snowballs and mullets (the hair, not the fish) filled the air, while Safe Software’s Lizard and Zipster filled the screen in the 1980s computer-game-themed event.
There were competitions to enter, discounts and prizes to win, and swag to be had:
- Two passes to the FME International User Conference 2020 (valued at $3,600) is the grand prize in Safe’s World Tour contest
- A free day with one of 1Spatial’s Certified FME Professionals was on offer in our prize draw
- £100 discount voucher for FME Training in the attendees’ event pack
- Swag bag prizes throughout the day for quizzes and “friend finding”
But, maybe even more fun were the deeply engaged conversations happening at every break. Our FME doctors were available for consultation and everywhere people were talking data and exchanging ideas.
The voice of experience
People love to hear other users sharing their experience and results. At the London event, we heard from people using FME at Transport for London (TfL), Halliburton, Anglian Water, Jacobs and Atkins.
Use cases ranged from 3D modelling for motorway networks, to deciding the location for pressure sensors across a water network.
TfL mapped 8 million points of origin and 4 million trips to analyse car and taxi journeys across the capital. The resulting heat-maps helped prioritise investment in public transport to improve the environment.
“You need maps to see where you should focus our attention.”
Results shared included:
- A 3-week manual process reduced to just 20 minutes with FME
- “Days of work” reduced to “just one minute per site”
- Large batches of complex Civil 3D and Revit files transformed and loaded in less than an hour.
What’s new in FME 2019?
Maybe the biggest draw was learning about the new features in FME 2019. After all, it’s “the most significant release of FME since Workbench was introduced 18 years ago", according to Safe Software’s President, Don Murray.
It’s enterprise-friendly and performance-enhanced to “save hours, not minutes.”
Mote than that, FME 2019 has hot new features to address the ETL needs of today and tomorrow.
“The need for BIM data and integration is now,” says David. Whether its indoor navigation, 3D-visualisation or X-Reality, all areas of business are exploring BIM data. On the World Tour, attendees saw examples of AR and 3D modelling that exploit FME’s new features.
FME 2019 includes one-step support for BIM Revit files and for the Unreal Engine enabling dynamic new ways to explore data.
As attendees heard,
“Don't just inspect your data… experience it!”
Among the other improvements that the audience saw were:
- Performance and usability improvements for Workbench
- Visual preview – see your changes live in the Workbench
- Animate mode – ideal for visualising temporal changes
- Share Workspaces with colleagues, customers and even M2M
Throughout, performance is improved, automation and scheduling become simpler.
FME also announced a new approach to delivering updates and new transformers, giving users even faster access to the latest features.
FME Cloud
FME Cloud is a fully cloud-hosted and managed version of FME Server and 1Spatial are very proud to announce that we are a global premier FME Cloud MSP.
The decision to go to the cloud or stick with a traditional, on-premises deployment is a big decision for every organisation for every application. Yesterday, we heard two presentations on cloud vs. on-prem for FME.
1Spatial’s Dale Parkinson outlined the factors to consider, ranging from organisational hardware procurement preference to usage patterns and billing preference.
Halliburton’s Oliver Morris then spoke about his team’s decision to choose cloud, highlighting the benefits of processing and storage flexibility and data location.
Are you booked?
Feel you missed out? We haven’t even mentioned David’s future-focused New Data Ventures presentation.
Don’t worry, there are two more dates on our UK tour;
- Monday, 10th June – Leeds
- Wednesday, 12th June – Edinburgh
Register for your place, here.
We look forward to seeing you there.