Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Excellent timing!

The geospatial community is turning attention away from last week's Location Intelligence 2009 conference held in Denver to the GEOINT 2009 Symposium in San Antonio, Texas. These events provide tremendous networking opportunities for both attendees and exhibitors. They highlight the advances in geospatial technology. These events showcase cutting edge technologies that significantly improve performance, productivity, and geospatial ability across industry, academia, government, professional organizations and individual stakeholders.

These particular conferences seemed to have timed the market duri
ng an uptick. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged closer to the 10000 level this week and economists report rising confidence about an economic recovery. Geospatial companies like DigitalGlobe made news when it's new WorldView-2 satellite launched into space last week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Perenco (an oil and gas exploration and development company) just contracted Fugro EarthData, Inc. to provide detailed topographic mapping of a proposed oil pipeline route in northern Peru. Airport technology company Faith Group LLC including Woolpert Inc. was awarded a $378,000 contract to conduct an information technology master plan for the Cleveland Airport System (CAS).

The geospatial community is well positioned to capture its fair share of the economic rebound. I should caution that although many economists now believe the national recession has ended, experts also think the economic rebound will be drawn out over many months. Still, according to The Monster Employment Index, the fall job search season is kicking into high gear at all levels from entry-level jobs on up to management-trainee, technical and professional full-time careers. The Index rose in August, seeing its highest monthly rate of improvement in four years. It dipped slightly in September but the October numbers are expected to ri
se again.

This ongoing economic volatility will continue and it will result in new challenges for organizations that need to be aggressively courting
the best talent available. Organizations will need an updated plan and strategy for recruiting talent as the economy turns around. Experienced, targeted, community specific recruiting firms will be more valuable in planning and developing the next workforce than ever before. The geospatial community is showing off some exciting technology and the development has created some outstanding career opportunities. Excellent timing!

The Monster Employment Index is a monthly gauge of U.S. online job demand based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of corporate career Web sites and job boards, including Monster. http://about-monster.com/employment-index. This month, the GeoSearch job board http://www.geosearch.com had the highest monthly rate of job posting increases since August 2007.

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