Organized by the local Esri distributor, Marathon Data Systems, the 21st Annual European Conference for Esri Users was held in Athens, Greece, November 6–8, 2006. The Hilton Hotel was the setting for this event, which attracted approximately 1,000 participants.

The program consisted of an opening day presentation with speeches by Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, who shared his vision on the status of GIS now and in the future, and David Maguire, Esri director of Products and International, who discussed the latest features in the 9.2 release of ArcGIS. The Honorable Jeremy Harris, mayor of the City of Honolulu, Hawaii, delivered the keynote address. Other distinguished speakers made presentations, including professor Roger Tomlinson, the "father" of GIS, who conducted a workshop for GIS managers.

The second and third days of the conference were primarily filled with technical workshops and many parallel sessions combined in several tracks. The tracks focused on utilities/energy, transportation and logistics, cadastres, national mapping agencies, agriculture, defense, education, physical planning, and e-government.

An exhibition with more than 30 business partner booths and a poster session completed this event. Training courses about the latest Esri products were provided after the conference.

"It was not difficult to entertain the participants in Athens, which underwent a huge facelift for the 2004 Olympics," says Adonis Kontos, president of Marathon Data Systems. "Antiquities and modern architecture could be admired along with the new underground transportation system."

More Information

For more information, contact Marathon Data Systems (Web: www.marathondata.gr).