A GPS chip will be in every device. That was the take away from the first People Tracking & Location conference held in Chicago June 22nd - 23rd. The title of the conference was controversial and certainly played a role in attracting approximately eighty industry executives. People will be tracked voluntarily or involuntarily for a variety reasons: GPS in sneakers to track wandering Alzheimer’s patients, wristbands on kids in the event they are lost or stolen, to track assets and stolen vehicles, to provide navigation services, e911 services, and for social networking and location-based advertising as some examples.

Despite the disruptions caused by the volcano eruptions in Iceland 2 weeks ago, approximately 140 attendees from across the LBS ecosystem made it to Amsterdam for the Location Business Summit April 28th and 29th, including over 40 senior-level presenters from T-Mobile, Orange FT, Vodafone, Intel, Qualcomm, Ogilvy, BBC, Dell Computers, Google, Yahoo!, Nokia and others.

The location industry is convening to discuss the winning profit models on April 28th and 29th in Amsterdam at The Location Business Summit - Europe's largest LBS conference. With more than 200 attendees, this conference will be the business epicenter for high-ranking members in the LBS ecosystem. The fast-evolving competitive landscape will be dissected by the leading industry figures, partnerships formed and vital decisions made on the future direction of companies.

The ACG Rocky Mountain Conference held on March 17-18 attracted over 600 attendees from the Rocky Mountain region. Where 2.0, held March 30-April 1, attracted over 900 attendees. These are both particularly impressive conference numbers in the current economic climate, which is always indicative of the relevance and importance of a topic. The ACG conference is a business conference, while Where2.0 is a geospatial technology conference. So what’s the connection between these two conferences?

Big change is coming to the GIS/Geospatial industry. Walk through the crowded halls of any of the GIS, GeoWeb, or Gov 2.0 conferences around the country right now and you will see it. There is a groundswell of . . .

Imagery—photos taken from satellites and airplanes—is now ubiquitously available through a number of Internet, desktop, and mobile applications. As a result, imagery is becoming a defacto communication tool as it finds its way into all sorts of applications and reports, from navigation to title insurance to site selection to market research.

In 2003, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku declared that time travel, “…once confined to fantasy and science fiction… is now simply an engineering problem.” Today, from the standpoint of operations improvement and top-line growth, it’s an engineering problem that’s been solved.