2014 summary

Spatial Information Day 2014 was held on Friday, 29 August 2014 at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Reports

2014 Ignite Your Career Breakfast

Thirty guests started their SID2014 day with breakfast and inspiring presentations from Zoe Bettison MP (Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Social Housing, Multicultural Affairs, Ageing, Youth and Volunteers, Member of the Executive Council), Marika Boelen (FYFE Earth Partners) and Natalie Hamood (Director of People and Culture, Department for State Development).

2014 Spatial Information Day

The objective for SID2014 was to build on the achievements of previous years conferences with the ultimate goal of supporting all members of the spatial sciences sector as they build their careers and contribute their skills to the development of economic and social prosperity across geographic and demographic boundaries. To accomplish this, this years conference agenda was designed to encourage discussion of today's many spatial challenges and issues and then to explore potential solutions, actions, policies and programs to overcome them. If SID2014 has been successful, our delegates will take all the things they have learned back to their studies, workplaces and communities where they will implement them to the benefit of their own development as well as that of their colleagues and clients.

We were delighted to welcome a total of 22 organisations in their support of SID2014 through various Sponsorship and Exhibitor Packages. These organisations made the SID2014 Exhibition an excellent opportunity for Delegates to make new contacts and renew acquaintances, to have discussions and exchange ideas, suggestions and opinions with decisions makers, practitioners and researchers from all over South Australia and across the country.

We were also very fortunate to have had a large group of well-known experts in their fields participate inSID2014. This group included Professors, Directors, Managers, Researchers, Consultants, Members of Boards and other authorities from spatial science fields as well as from municipal management, education and executive development. The direction of the conference was established early by our first Key Note Speaker, The Honourable Lord Mayor of Adelaide Stephen Yarwood who made the poignant observation that while progress is widely praised, change is equally widely resisted. The benefits of challenging the status quo and applying the spatial sciences creatively were then aptly demonstrated by second Key Note Speaker, Associate Professor Lian Pin Koh, who described his application of spatial information to addressing emerging environmental and socioeconomic challenges facing tropical developing nations.

Four streams of concurrent sessions continued to inform and challenge our delegates, culminating in the final Key Note presentation, by Professor David Cropley, who offered a reminder of the innovations on which modern spatial science is founded and suggestions for how every delegate can actively increase their creative and problem-solving capacities.