Day 3 kicked off with the plenary presentation at 9am. Previous Esri videos during the week have been very internationally focused, it was great to see an Esri South Africa created video showcasing the more local aspects of their offering within our country. Esri South Africa have partnered with schools, businesses and conservationists in offering assistance with GIS.
Peace Parks
Craig Beech was on stage to explain how Peace Parks came into to being and what their efforts are focused on. The Peace Parks dream is to re-establish, renew and preserve large functional ecosystems that transcend man-made boundaries – thereby protecting and regenerating natural and cultural heritage vital to enabling and sustaining a harmonious future for man and the natural world.
Through the use of the latest technology such innovations as camera traps connected to cognitive services will allow camera’s to pick up guns being carried pass the lens. Allowing rangers to free up time previously spent combing through thousands of images, instead now being alerted when this occurs. Turning reactive into proactive. Making use of cloud storage has allowed many institutions that previously jostled for attention to start working in unison.
Esri have optimized the workflows for multiple conversations efforts allowing data collection and analysis between the above efforts to more easily communicate.
Industry 4.0 and Human 2.0
Gary Lane broke down the actual promises of what industry 4.0 is going to bring. And that is Human 2.0 – Never underestimate the power of human beings. System intelligence and thinking is about taking the complex and simplifying it into an effective way to make decisions.
“Simplifying complexity gives you effectiveness”
A good laugh was had by all with Gary’s precise explanation of meetings being a time management struggle for many of us. The wrong people being invited, off topic conversations and the sake of having meetings for meetings sake. A great tidbit for meetings given was ensure every meeting has:
- Purpose
- An Objective
- Clear results that you want to achieve
- Only invite people who can make decisions on the topic.
What do humans need to attain human 2.0?
- System Thinking skills and capabilities
- Data based decision making
- Cross functional experience
- Facilitation Skills
- Agile and adaptable to change
Gary runs SiMINE, a physical Mining Simulation used to expose and build Systems Thinking capability. It is also the platform for testing Mining 4.0 technologies and organisational design.
The Esri Named User Journey Dance
Esri South Africa made a song and dance about their licensing, literally. It was brilliant to watch and hard to look away from. Explaining the different types of user agreements through interpretive song and dance had everyone wondering just one thing…who was under the masks?
The Esri Partners Hall
Esri South Africa hosted the Partner Expo. With Geospatial services taking many forms, this hall had everyone on display with the aim of showcasing the individual offerings at the conference to learn more about the companies making use of Esri software in their businesses.
The Esri South Africa 30th Birthday Dinner
What a night! With a gold and black theme, it felt as though the Oscars were in town as Patrick and his team at Esri South Africa celebrated 30 years in business the best way they knew how – with their users and customers. A special thanks from the team at Swift Geospatial for a fun filled eve and the great insight into what has gone into 30 years in the GIS business and more importantly…what is still to come.
We took the dress up very seriously!