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SPAR International 2013: An exciting year of industry insight

Once again, the annual SPAR International Conference, which was held at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs this year, was an absolute “must see” event for anyone in the laser scanning, lidar or photogrammetric mapping industries.

From collecting data through alternative means like “crowdsourcing” to new programs that stream point cloud data into design files, SPAR provides insight into how our industry continues to evolve.

Check out my observations at this year’s conference in Professional Surveyor Magazine. Read more

Going to SPAR International?

We are getting ready for the SPAR Point Group’s 10th annual conference “End to End 3D: Capture, Process, Deliver” in Colorado Springs, Colorado, April 15-18. This is the main event of the year for people in the 3D laser scanning business.

For starters, every manufacturer and software developer in the 3D laser scanning world is sponsoring the event and will be in attendance. We can expect to be dazzled by live demonstrations of the latest and greatest scanners, software, and technology. If you haven’t heard, many announcements have been made in the past few months about breakthroughs, innovations, and technological advancements.

The conference will also be a comprehensive educational opportunity with lots of classes and workshops. Just about every aspect of 3D laser scanning will be presented and discussed.

Attendees can also choose to concentrate on one of the offered tracks: Industrial Facilities, New Technologies, Civil Infrastructure, and Forensic & Security. We will try to check out some of them all. Please let us know if there is a specific topic you would like us to look into. After all, if you need it, we need to know about it!

The topics listed on the website include 3D laser scanning, structured light, LiDAR, photogrammetry, reverse engineering, 3D/4D GIS, Kinect, indoor/portable mapping, autonomous vehicles, mobile survey, point cloud processing, airborne LiDAR /terrestrial integration, open source, web sharing, VIM, augmented reality, 3D printing, simulation, and visualization.

Did I mention that one of the keynote speakers will be Michael Jones, chief technology advocate for Google? That one will certainly be well attended.

With all of these events, we just hope to be able to enjoy a little of Colorado Springs and the stunning Broadmoor Resort that is hosting the conference. Hopefully, we’ll get some better Spring weather!

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David Headrick has over 20 years of experience in the surveying, engineering and legal industries, both as a project manager for LandAir Surveying and as a lawyer in private practice. He has represented numerous land surveyors, designers, architects, contractors and other industry professionals throughout his career. Today, David serves as an executive and project manager for LandAir, focused on developing and managing the company’s 3D Laser Scanning department. Contact him at dheadrick@lasurveying.com.