For those of us on the organising committee – what a relief! It is all done, except for the financial team who is still collecting, reconciling and doing the things that most of us are relieved not to be involved with!
Looking back, we are glad to say that the conference certainly exceeded our expectations. We had hoped that we would get around 500 people, but we got more than that from South Africa alone! Here are just a few interesting facts:
- A total of 805 people attended the conference.
- 43 countries were represented at the conference.
- South Africans made up 580 of the total.
- Just over 32% of the delegates were female.
- We had over 150 different papers.
- It was the biggest GIS event in Africa, ever.
- It was the biggest conference ever to be hosted by the CSIR - hats off to Amanda and her team!
If you think that, just two weeks before the conference started, we had less than 250 confirmed registrations, and on the day before the conference we had around 380, you realise that the registration team was kept quite busy!
A number of draft resolutions were compiled during the conference as a challenge for the community. These are in the process of being finalised, and as soon as we have them, we will let the community know. To measure our performance, we handed out evaluation forms, and asked people to complete them. Unfortunately, as so often happens, we only received a small percentage back, and the statisticians among us will quickly tell you that we do not have a representative sample. But at least it is a measure and we feel that people should know these results as well:
- Our average score was 3.93 out of 5.
- The venue scored top marks
- Transportation and accommodation were the worst performers, yet they still came in above average.
- The biggest complaint we received was about the construction work at the entrance gate.
Our conclusion was that people in general were happy and that expectations were generally met.
In closing we would like to thank all those who made a contribution, no matter the size. Thank you to the attendees. Thank you also to all of the vendors who supported us; without you, we would not have had a conference!
Last but not least, thank you to all the members of the local organising team – you were great!
Contact Chris Vlok, AfricaGIS, Tel (012) 429-6023, vlokac@unisa.ac.za