I've been moderating sessions today at the Location Intelligence Conference. I'm very pleased all my speakers have stayed within their time; it makes my life so much easier. It also means we have time for a good number of questions. The session on Embedded Geospatial Capabilities in Enterprise Computing and BI Solutions included presentations on how the FCC implemented its enterprise solution, how the Dept of Defenses is working with open source geospatial in the imagery arena, a new international geocoding offering and well, one speaker who simply wrapped up what the others said. When we got to the Q & A part of the session I could not imagine where things might go... but go they did!

• We talked about the challeges of geocoding in Turkey - which renamed all of its streets and hence has two different geocoding data sets.
• We talked about the challenges of geocoding in Russia - where municipalities and regions use different coordinate systems.
• We talked about if its possible to provide a confidence level for geocoding in different parts of the world.
• We talked about what happens when open source software gives you the "wrong" answer.
• We talked about if you should start with open source or non-open source software if you expect to have a hybrid solution in the end.
• We talked about the open source sofware in the iPhone (look it up if you don't know)

Two things stood out for me when the questions started popping:

• Several were from our student volunteers (go students!!!)
• Presenters who focused on other topics in their presentations, took up and addressed questions outside their realms and added greatly to the conversation.

Sometimes the presentations do not forshadow the fun and excitement to be had in the interactive part of the session.