The Thirteenth Annual Latin American Conference for Esri Users was held October 25–27, 2006, at the Los Tajibos Hotel and Convention Center in the historic city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Founded in 1560 by the Jesuits, Santa Cruz de la Sierra is the commercial capital of Bolivia and boasts many local tourist attractions, which added to the enjoyment of the conference attendees.

This annual conference has grown to become the most significant GIS event in all of Latin America, providing a unique platform for Esri users to share ideas, experiences, and best practices in GIS technology and its many applications throughout the region. This year, the conference was hosted by Geosystems SRL, Esri's Bolivian distributor, and included technology updates, application demonstrations, user presentations, seminars, technical workshops, vendor exhibits, and much more.

Comments Carlos Vidal, CEO of Geosystems, "One of the underlying themes of the conference was to demonstrate how science and geographic information technology wisely used can contribute to achieve an optimal management of all resources available to man in order to build a better world."

David Maguire, Esri director of Products and International, delivered the keynote address, Modern Trends in GIS Technology. He also discussed some of the many new features in ArcGIS 9.2, which include improved tools and interfaces, support for sophisticated cartographic design, advanced modeling tools for image processing and analysis, and enhanced CAD support. Another new feature is geodatabase archiving, which allows the recording and display of changes over time that can be used with the new animation tools to create, play back, and export animations and animated graphics.

More Information

For more information, contact Geosystems SRL (e-mail: info@geosystems.cc, Web: www.geosystems.cc).