Two of this year’s events for Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) subscribers, hosted by the Geospatial Commission and Ordnance Survey (OS), have now taken place. Here’s our review!
What’s on the agenda at PSGA 2024?
There are four events this year: Edinburgh, York, London and Cardiff. Each follows the same format. In the morning, delegates are welcomed by the Geospatial Commission and OS before hearing about the latest evolution of OS’s product offer and its future roadmap. This is followed by PSGA developments and updates and an interactive workshop demonstrating the value of using OS NGD data.
After lunch, delegates hear customer stories, find out what’s new from Aerial Photography for Great Britain (APGB) and receive an update on the PSGA’s future capabilities.
During breaks, attendees can visit OS partners, like Astun, in the exhibition area.
PSGA event review: Edinburgh
This was hosted at Dynamic Earth, a science centre and planetarium in Edinburgh on November 5th. As David and Andrew set up the stand, visitors filtered into the light-filled conference room in readiness to enjoy a day of presentations and interactive workshops.
Both our representatives were impressed with the number of delegates, with Andrew noting that there was lots of footfall in the breaks in the exhibitor hall and the session he attended had more delegates than seats. He describes it as a “great day for networking and raising Astun’s profile in Scotland”. Of course, we’re no stranger to Scottish GIS, having worked on high-profile projects for the Scottish Government, a stone’s throw away from Dynamic Earth.
As befits an exhibitor at Scotland’s largest interactive visitor attraction, we hosted a competition on our stand. Simply answering a few questions about planning software was enough to enter a draw to win a sizable Lindt chocolate ball. David says that it was “even bigger than my head, and I’ve got a big head” (the picture above shows Andrew (L) and David (R) for scale).
The lucky winner was Deborah, pictured below. Losers didn’t walk away empty handed as they could take one of our branded Christmas-themed map pins, complete with a rather smaller chocolate (shown in the picture above).
“It was great to meet new members of the Geospatial Commission and a good opportunity to explore Edinburgh a little while we were there. Dynamic Earth is a fantastic venue and a really interesting building. With Salisbury Crags for a backdrop, it’s in a lovely location. The highlight for me was the OS National Geographic Database workshop. It was interesting to hear about its progress in recent years, since we first worked on the project, and upcoming enhancements for this single store of authoritative data for all of Great Britain.”
Andrew Smart
PSGA event review: York
David brought the stand and what remained of the chocolates and giveaways closer to home for the second PSGA event. This time he was accompanied by our MD, Mike.
Fresh from our User Group, Mike and David were ready to talk about some new additions to the Astun stable, including the Managed Integration Service (MIS) and iShare Mobile (look out for more news shortly). We were also able to go public about our inclusion in G-Cloud 14, news which we knew would be a relief to public sector clients.
Between events, we topped up our giveaways with some branded wooden Christmas trees and ‘GIS Day’ chocolate holders, both of which were popular with delegates.
The winner of the giant ball was Miquel.
Coming soon…
The PSGA roadshow continues. On November 26th, we joined OS at the Leonardo Royal (St Paul’s) in London. The final event will be held at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff on December 3rd. You can find out more here.