Friday, September 27, 2013

2013 PCI Reseller Meeting - Summary

2013 PCI Reseller Meeting Summary
"Leveraging the Geomatica Platform"

September 27th, 2013

As the week winds to a close, I thought I would take a few moments and provide a summary of a very exciting week for PCI Geomatics - the 2013 Annual Reseller Meeting was held here in Ottawa from September 23rd to 26th at the Lord Elgin Hotel.


2013 PCI Reseller Meeting - Countries represented in the meeting
PCI was pleased to have the opportunity to host its International Resellers and Partners over the past week for a very fruitful meeting which included a full three-day program of presentations, discussions and training centred on PCI Technology.

Our first day started with an opening address by PCI Geomatics President and CEO, Terry Moloney who welcomed our international guests and outlined the vision for PCI Geomatics over the coming years. 


PCI's President and CEO, Terry Moloney
addressing 2013 Reseller Meeting Attendees
A key theme included PCI's continued technological innovations that has fueled customer success, including performance (GPU), flexibility (Cloud implementations) and functionality (new innovative DEM editing tools). Additional presentations from Mr. Moloney as well as Mr. Arnold Hougham, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, positioned Geomatica as a powerful platform that has been leveraged by customers and partners around the world to address complex geospatial challenges. Mr. Moloney and Mr. Hougham presented on the future trends in the geospatial industry and how PCI Geomatics is poised to respond by providing its flexible and powerful Geomatica platform to develop innovative software solutions in response to customer requirements. 

Presentations were provided by PCI's Product Management team on new items for Geomatica, including true ortho and the added availability of 2.5D DEM Editing, which are already available within GXL. Presentations were also provided by key partners including IAVO, Rolta, Digital Globe, the Satrec Initiative and Forest Sense - who presented case studies on how their respective companies use the Geomatica platform on a daily basis. In addition, presentations on upcoming earth observation technology that will be deployed in the short, medium and longer term were presented.


Geoff Zeiss, keynote speaker, "Between the Poles"
The day concluded with a fantastic evening at a local eatery in downtown Ottawa. Digital Globe graciously sponsored the evening dinner which included a keynote address by a geospatial thought leader, Mr. Geoff Zeiss from Between the Poles. His address was enthusiastically received by the audience who learned about the growing need for "real time big data processing", and how PCI and its partners are well positioned to answer to growing customer needs for innovative solutions to upcoming big data challenges. 

The second day of the Reseller meeting featured additional presentations by PCI staff on GXL technology, a high-volume image processing system powered by the Geomatica platform. One of the most exciting presentations was that of Beijing Space Eye Innovations (BSEI) President and CEO, Mr. Xiaoyang Cheng, who summarized short, medium and long term Chinese goals for Earth Observation - which include plans to launch over 20 new earth observation satellites in the coming years. 


BSEI President and CEO, Mr. Xioayang Cheng, 
presenting at the 2013 PCI Reseller Meeting
BSEI, as PCI's exclusive Reseller in China looks forward to providing innovative solutions to process high volumes of imagery for customers by offering the GXL capability to the Chinese market. In addition to BSEI, Christopher Patterson from Esri Canada provided a case study on Esri's use of the Geomatica platform to map over 50 million square kilometers of 1 m imagery through the use of the GXL, which was deployed on the Amazon Cloud. Mr. Patterson discussed the wealth of imagery and other types of geospatial content available on ArcGIS.com.



Ms. Minnyo Hong, Satrec Initiative
Dinner Sponsor
Additional presentations were provided, including a presentation by PCI SAR expert, Ms. Sandra Bolanos, who provided an overview of the capability within the Geomatica Platform to work with SAR imagery. Key innovations and additions for upcoming compact polarimetry satellite missions were presented along with many application examples using Geomatica and SAR imagery. A second dinner was held at the end of the second day, which was sponsored by the Satrec Initiative.

The dinner also provided an opportunity to recognize the excellent efforts made by PCI's Resellers - in recognition of their contributions to PCI technology and to celebrate their success. The following Resellers received awards:
BSEI (China) , CGI (Germany), Jurupro (Malaysia) and Rolta (India).

2013 PCI Reseller Award Recipients

The third day of the PCI Reseller Meeting included more in-depth training and discussion on PCI Technology, including Geomatica, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Historical Airphoto Processing, and 3D FeatureXtract. One of the main highlights on the final day of the meeting was a presentation by Mr. Nils Erik Jorgensen from Terranor, who presented a very innovative project where underwater imagery was automatically corrected and mosaicked into a continuous data layer using Geomatica.
The solution included taking raw imagery from an Underwater Unmanned Vehicle (UUV) and processing it within the Geomatica platform to automatically correct and color balance the imagery. This innovative technique promises to offer other companies who capture underwater imagery of their infrastructure a solution that allows them to visually inspect and detect problem areas underwater, without the expense and risk associated with sending highly trained underwater divers.


2013 PCI Reseller Meeting - Group Photo

If you are interested in joining our growing network of International Resellers, or would like to partner with us, please contact us to discuss the benefits of working with PCI Geomatics.
Email us at marketing@pcigeomatics.com or head to www.pcigeomatics.com.

In closing, we would like to thank all PCI resellers, partners, and all of the PCI Staff who supported the 2013 Annual Reseller Meeting, which was indeed very successful.

To view a complete Picture Gallery captured throughout the week, click on this link:
2013 PCI Reseller Meeting Picture Gallery

Kevin Jones
Director, Marketing and Communications
jones@pcigeomatics.com