ABOUT LOCATE

Locate is the national conference of the Geospatial Council of Australia, and each year attracts national and international delegates from within and outside the geospatial industry. As Australia’s premier geospatial conference, Locate provides guests with a unique opportunity to learn about the latest trends and applications in geospatial technologies.

Locate was the first step to unify the Australasian geospatial industry. Before Locate came into existence in 2014, there were multiple annual spatial national conferences, including spatial@gov, the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Conference, and the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards events.

It was at the 2012 spatial@gov conference that Helen Owens, Assistant Secretary of Spatial Policy at the Department of Communications, announced the unification of the industry: “This conference will be a great turning point for the spatial community,” Owens said.

“We want this conference to have industry-wide representation and to offer the spatial community an opportunity to work collaboratively. But even more than that, we hope it will be an opportunity for the Australian spatial industry to connect with their markets and sell their products and services into new industries and countries that are only now recognising the trues value of that spatial information can bring to their business.”

And since then, that is what Locate has done. Each year we have been able to encourage greater overall attendance, embrace the needs of delegates by offering professional and business development workshops, address policy issues for government, across multiple industry sectors and, of course, amplify networking opportunities.

The value of Locate as our key national conference has been expressed by the industry but more importantly, can be seen in the strength and unity of our industry since 2014.