The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) 2001 User Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, October 17-19, 2001. Attracting users from throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, approximately 600 users joined to share ideas and experiences in a conference whose theme was "Geography Creating Communities." This year's conference was preceded by a GIS workshop headed by GIS founder, Dr. Roger Tomlinson, and Larry Sugarbaker, GIS manager, Washington State, Department of Natural Resources. The seminar focused on how to implement GIS and was attended by 200 people who learned valuable lessons that will be applied in their organizations.

The three-day conference that followed was opened by Vitor Dias, director of Esri Portugal, who welcomed users to the beautiful City of Lisbon. Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, followed with the keynote address, "Geography Creating Communities--The Vision for GIS," in which he outlined how GIS is moving to help humankind manage its difficult problems using GIS. This was followed by David Maguire, Esri director of products, and senior Esri staff who presented new developments in Esri software.

This year's conference provided two tracks, utilities and location services, in addition to workshops and training sessions. The utility track featured case studies by major users in Europe such as PIDPA of Belgium, STEWEAG of Austria, and Jordan Water Authority of the Middle East. Technical workshops that addressed topics of particular interest to the user community were presented by Mitch Garnett, Esri electric and gas utilities solutions manager, and Miner and Miner, an Esri Business Partner.

The session on location services provided a wealth of information on how GIS is being utilized in consumer and enterprise location services. Presenters included Oracle, which summarized the integration of GIS and database technology for e-Business applications; mobilePosition, which delivered the location services keynote address highlighting its deployment of new services including yacht position and bike position; and Ian Koeppel, Esri location services industry manager for the EMEA region, who opened the location services track with a presentation on Esri's vision for this emerging industry.

The 2002 European Conference, themed "GIS: A Common Language Integrating Europe," will be held in Brugge, Belgium, and will be hosted by Esri BeLux. For information about the call for papers and poster submission, contact Esri BeLux (tel.: 32-2-460-7480, e-mail: euc2002@esribelux.com.