Organized by ARCDATA Praha, Esri's distributor in the Czech Republic, the 12th annual Esri and ERDAS User Conference was held October 30-31, 2003, at the newly refurbished municipal library in Prague with more than 400 people in attendance. The library was damaged during severe flooding of the city center in August 2002.

The conference was sponsored by IBM and Microsoft, while CCB, publisher of computer magazines and books, was a conference partner. A GIS and information technology trade show was also part of the activities.

Petr Seidl, director of ARCDATA Praha, delivered the opening address at the conference, describing the role of GIS in achieving sustainable development and highlighting various user success stories.

Bernie Szukalski, product manager at Esri, spoke about trends in GIS technology, and Rainer Pallaske from Leica Geosystems talked about the use of variable imagery in GIS.

The afternoon included presentations, practical examples, and demonstrations of Esri's software. New and revised products were presented including ArcGlobe, which is incorporated in the ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension; the Maplex extension for sophisticated labeling; ModelBuilder; and the ArcGIS Schematics extension.

In-depth discussions and workshops included the presentation of dynamic 2D and 3D GIS based on photogrammetric images and the next generation of digital photogrammetry, editing topology in the geodatabase, customization of ArcGIS Desktop, and ArcIMS thin client programming. In addition, a number of users presented papers and students gave presentations on their winning GIS projects.

Poster contest highlights included work by the Czech Geological Survey, Military Geographic and Hydrometeorological Institute, Liberec Region, and EKOTOXA OPAVA Company.

For more information, contact Petr Seidl, ARCDATA Praha (e-mail: petrs@arcdata.cz, tel.: 420-2-24190511, Web: www.arcdata.cz).