Dear All

The Department of Geomatic Engineering, University College London, would like to invite all current Manifold GIS Users, as well as other GIS software users interested in learning more about the Manifold GIS, to join us for the third edition of the European Manifold User Meeting.

We have fixed the date in our diaries for the 16th and 17th of February 2009, at the Department of Geomatic Engineering, UCL, London, UK. Even though this means that there will be no London user meeting in 2008, this date was chosen as the best compromise for both UCL and Manifold staff. As you might have guessed, Muki and myself indeed have been too busy lately to organise a user meeting this summer. We thus agreed that given the development cycle of Manifold (update expected end of this year), Q1 2009 would give the user community the best opportunity to feedback on the new Manifold version and influence future developments past Manifold 9.0 (or whatever the next version will be called?!?).

Given that there are still some months to go before the meeting, we are only starting to plan the agenda, but as always, we will need active user involvement to make this meeting successful, be it through presentations, workshop topics to be discussed, ideas for tutorials or even organisational help! Feel free to post here in the thread ideas so that we can discuss them in the community.

As in the past meetings, Manifold representatives, including Dimitri Rotow, product manager for Manifold will be present.

If you are interested in attending this meeting and helping out, you can contact Patrick Weber at p.weber@ucl.ac.uk.

Check out the Manifold Wiki with SQL and scripting examples at http://www.manipedia.eu/

I'm certainly thinking about it. It's just such a long way! :)

Any updates on the subject btw?

I'm looking forward to it. It will be the first user meeting to feature in depth discussion of Release 9, which will be the foundation for the next generation of Manifold products. UCL has superb facilities, very professional staff and a great location. Patrick and Muki and company know how to run a great meeting as well. UCL is easy to get to within London, and London itself is one of the most convenient travel destinations for Europeans, Canadians and Americans.

The web of low-cost airlines flying into Gatwick, Luton and the like as well as more classic airlines flying into Heathrow means that it is easier in many cases for Europeans to get into London than it is to take a train or bus any distance across the Continent. For example, I recently did a round trip from London to Paris on EasyJet for under $100, much cheaper and faster than taking the train. Given the competition on London routes from the US, in some cases it is actually less expensive for some US users to fly to London than it would be to travel to some US cities just a couple of states away.

There are also many users within the UK and in the greater London region so any meeting at UCL gets good participation. Last year in the two day format the first day was aimed more at experienced Manifold users while the second day held some time open for newer users. I think that second day this year would be very helpful to GIS users in the UK and London who are looking to maximize their GIS budgets and for the first time are taking a serious look at Manifold.

By the way, on a personal note, if I seem enthusiastic about London that's because in the last five years it has emerged as one of my favorite cities in the world for meetings, mainly because of the convenience and the role London now plays as a super low cost travel hub. I get there four or five times a year. If you buy in advance the airfares on EasyJet are *so* low that even if you are not sure you will be able to attend it probably pays to buy a ticket now just in case. When the fares are only a few Euros it's hard to go wrong.

They are so cheap because they pay yesterdays shortfall with todays growth which necessarily must lead into catastrophy in a market that is limited in the end - eaven if you go to London 10 times a year. The next economical segment doomed to crash.

Let's hope this will happen in March so count me in.

Thanks Dimitri for the kind words.

I just wanted to reiterate, that the conference is very much user driven, so we need users to be passionate about actively participating in the conference, by way of presentations, to host small workshops on specific subjects, or other ideas for discussion.

I am currently arranging to have a bigger main conference venue,including break out spaces, as last years meeting room was getting a bit small for the growing audience each year. For this it would be great if I could start to get an idea of the number of people attending, so please let me know if you plan on coming.

Check out the Manifold Wiki with SQL and scripting examples at http://www.manipedia.eu/

Barring global economic collapse, I'll be there!

Distributed Geospatial Solutions -- makers of AtlasAlive Geo-Hosting Framework dennis@distributedgis.com

Patrick, I'll be there too!

coint me in as well!

I will be there too!

So will I.

What is the final date when one can indicate if you can do a presentation etc?

And Spoedniek how about coming up from SA? you are more than welcome to come and stay at my place. Email me privately to discuss if you're interrested.

Pierre

Patrick,

Regarding the focus of the meeting...

As this is a rare opportunity to engage with representatives of Manifold.net, I would prefer that the meeting focus on V9 and new-feature development/suggestions, rather than (and with no direspect meant) user presentations about their work. If users want to present about their work, I suggest this be done in parallel or on a separate day.

I agree with Nick

It would make more sense to focus more on V9 during the sessions. But what about one user session (this is just a suggestion) where people can come and:

• give a short overview of a Manifold project they've done
• highlight issues/shortcomings they've encountered

• how they've resolved these.

It doesn't have to be long presentations - plus minus 15min. I may be wrong on this but I think it might also be interesting for the Manifold reps to see and hear how their software is used to solve everyday challenges. It might also give them a bit of a break from all the talking they are going to have to do and allow them to hear of some of the functions users might want to see in a future release of V9x (which might be easily added if not to complex) after submitting it to the sales team as per usual.

I do know that this might not be practical due to time constraints and will take a lot of effort to manage speakers to stick to the time they can talk but it might be an option.

Plans are to use London to present Release 9 in detail. But it's always fun and informative for everyone to see how people are using Manifold. Also, when presenters talk about projects they can talk about real world issues and that naturally can lead into how Release 9 will or will not help with those issues. [Hopefully more the former than the latter! :-) ]

There is no reason why there cannot be both user presentations and development discussion. But view i was expressing was that the time for user presentations should not be at the expense of discussion time with Manifold reps.

I would like to try and come, at least for one day.

Regards

Steve

Hello to all.

Well i plan to go to.

Regards.

Thanks Patrick for mantaining this great initiative!!!

I hope I can go, like many other europeans....

I'm looking forward to be there too and I'm curious about the presentations.

cu BerndD

Could you give us an estimate of the expected audience?

Is the meeting date final?

I wrote couple mails to Patrick Weber at p.weber@ucl.ac.uk , but get no responce at all

Got confirmation from Patric W. - meeting date is final.

UPDATE:

Just a heads up, we are organising on the 12th and 13th of February (Thursday and Friday) another session of ourManifold GIS Training Course. This course is aimed at novice or potential Manifold Users which will be able after course completion to use the power of Manifold GIS to display, manipulate and analyse geographic information confidently and create high-quality outputs.

We think this would be an ideal opportunity for a lot of people interested in learning Manifold to combine the training course,with the subsequent User Conference the following Monday, with the benefit of spending a nice weekend exploring London.

You can find more information about the course on the Manipedia Website.

Again, just email me at p.weber@ucl.ac.uk if you want more information.

Check out the Manifold Wiki with SQL and scripting examples at http://www.manipedia.eu/