When It Rains...

US stocks have been pushing higher and words like optimism, confidence, and even growth have been used to describe our current economy. This week at the Location Intelligence Conference in Westminster Colorado, several companies repeated the same story to the question "How's business?". The story included how difficult the first quarter of 2009 was and how the second quarter was equally bad. Then, sometime near the end of the third quarter orders started being generated and then business started to develop. For many, the third quarter matched the revenue for their 1st and 2nd quarters combined. One exebitor said that "With all this water in the atmosphere, it means its going to rain!" (Joe Francica, Conference Chairman pictured above)

GeoSearch provided the conference employment workshop where industry executives and employment specialist provided job seekers strategies to find employment in this tough job market. During this workshop, weekly initial jobless claims fell to the lowest level since the start of the year, signaling an improvement in economic activity.

One breakout session discussed location tracking and the mobile workforce. The three presenters included Robert Laudati from Trimble, David Hemphill from ObjectFX, and Ziv Baum from Zipano. The discussion detailed workforce tracking systems technically comprised with a combination of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile phone technology using the internet and digital mapping to display data in real time. Each presenter discussed the topic from different perspectives. Trimble highlighted the hardware involved and some feature/benefit capabilities for workers in the field. ObjectFX discussed the 3D location abilities and the public safety vertical market that is interested in expanding this technology. Zipano focused on the social network applications of tracking friends, coworkers, and family and the privacy issues involved. The interest in this topic is hot. Interest in all of this technology is hot and these companies are adding staff. The CEO of Zipano - Zip Baum put it bluntly when he said "We need people".