FIG President Stig Enemark attends the Survey & Engineering GIS Summit, San Diego, USA, June 2007

San Diego, USA, 16-19 June 2007

Prof. Wangari Maathai giving her keynote At the ESRI User Conference	The ACSM booth at the exhibition with Curt Summer, Ilse Genovese, and John Hohol.
ESRI Presiden Jack Dangermond and FIG President Stig Enemark	Old Town in San Diego

President Stig Enemark was invited to attend the Survey&Engineering GIS Summit, San
Diego, USA, 16-19 June 2007 as keynote speaker. The Summit was held in conjunction
with the 27th Annual ESRI International User Conference that attracted more about 15.000
visitors from throughout the world.

The Summit was the 5th of its kind where surveyors come together to discuss, share, and
learn about applications of GIS to land surveying. This particular conference was for the
time expanded to include engineering. The Summit attracted around 400 participants from
22 countries but mainly from the US Surveying and Engineering profession. The Summit
included more than forty sessions dealing with a range of surveying topics and provided the
opportunity to learn about using GIS for managing operations and products and services to
clients. Proceedings are available at
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/survey07/index.html.

President Enemark also gave a keynote address at the ESRI Education User Conference
that was held in parallel to the Survey Summit. Another keynote address was presented by
Curt Summer, Secretary General of ACSM. Proceedings from this Conference is available
http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/educ07/index.html

Most participants of the Survey&Engineering Summit also attended the following ESRI
International User Conference. The highlights were the opening session with a keynote
presentation from Jack Dangermond, president of ESRI, showing how GIS has a profound
effect on our society through the use to design and manage our resources and help improve
our world. Another keynote was presented by Professor Wangari Maathai, Nobel Prize
Winner and Founder of the Green Belt Movement, and internationally recognized for her
persistent struggle for democracy, human rights, and environmental protection. This
powerful keynote showed how making the world a better place can start with just one
person, one idea, and the will to transform this idea into a solution. The mission of the
Green Belt Movement, founded 1977 in Kenya, is to help communities to worldwide to
protect the environment and promote good governance and cultures of peace. As a result
more than 40 million trees have been planted across Africa that have improved the
environment and living conditions for hundreds of thousand of people.

The User Conference included about 300 technical sessions with around 1000
presentations. In addition a huge exhibition offered variety of GIS solutions and services. A
highlight at the exhibition was a presentation of the NILS project (the National Integrated
Land System) developed by the US Bureau of Land Management that provides a parcel
based information system for management state land and their natural resources. Another
highlight was the Map Gallery exhibition where users from throughout the world display
their techniques of GIS solutions and creative mapmaking. Proceedings of the User
Conference is available at http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc07/index.html.

• Stig Enemark´s keynote presentation at the Survey&Engineering Summit: “The
  Changing Role of Surveyors in Support of the Global Agenda”
• Stig Enemark´s keynote presentation at the ESRI Education User Conference: “The
  Surveying Curriculum of the Future”.