The Ninth Annual Middle East and North Africa Conference for Esri Users was hosted by InfoGraph, LLC, Esri's distributor in Jordan, at the Le Royal Hotel in Amman from October 31–November 2, 2006.

A large number of users of Esri software from the Middle East and North Africa attended the conference. The event provided a wealth of information from Esri staff, exhibitors, users, and business partners. In addition, the conference was an ideal platform for collaboration and interaction between GIS professionals who shared their experiences and discussed technology trends, emerging applications in GIS, and related technologies among other subjects. A number of Esri-authorized training courses were also offered both before and after the conference, which provided an opportunity for users to develop new GIS skills or refine existing ones.

Esri president Jack Dangermond delivered the keynote address in which he discussed GIS industry trends and presented his vision for GIS technology. Commented Dangermond, "Over time, GIS will become more widely used in collecting, categorizing, refining, and communicating our collective human knowledge and experience. This will provide many benefits to our global society by helping us better understand and direct our shared future."

A highlight of the conference featured a discussion of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2, which include improvements in data correlation and editing, better tools for feature extraction, better integration with CAD systems, new rule-based tools, and new COGO editing/construction tools.

While the main tracks focused on topics such as transportation, utilities and energy, health and human services, cadastre, education, defense and homeland security, and emergency services, many other sessions appealed to a wider range of attendees interested in planning and resource management, community-wide mapping projects, and technology in general.

More Information

For more information, contact InfoGraph (e-mail: info@infograph.com.jo, Web: www.infograph.com.jo).