Taking place January 13-15, 2025 in Denver, GeoBuiz Summit 2025 brought together some of the biggest names in the geospatial industry to explore a variety of topics. Focused on how sensors and services can drive productivity and the market economy, the event demystified the technology to support scalability and sustainability.
Sanjay Kumar, CEO of Geospatial World, kicked off the event by highlighting how the entire value chain is defined by sensors and services. There are hundreds of different types of sensors being utilized as part of countless services in ways that have created real value, but what’s different is how that information is now being harmonized and manifested. As he mentioned, that effort is what it will mean to embed the power of reality capture to billions of consumers, opening up a new market economy that could be $1 trillion by 2030.
Esri President Jack Dangermond then took the stage to talk through how he interpreted the theme of the event, which he admitted was a bit confusing since “services” can mean so many different things. He contextualized both in terms of how everything in the world is moving and changing, which means that everything needs to be measured. Sensors and services are being utilized to look at the world as an ecosystem, making it an incredible time for the geospatial field.
These new understandings and new approaches are being defined by the power of where, a concept on which he literally wrote the book. He further explained why it’s such a powerful concept to people.
“Where were you born? Where did you meet your significant other?” Dangermond asked the crowd. “You have immediate answers to those questions, which shows you how the dimension of ‘where’ is wired into our brains. Geography sees that dimension realized, and maps are the language of geography. New sensors and services are expanding this language.”
That expansion isn’t just about capability but also interoperability, enabling what had been siloed industries and ecosystems to be newly connected. Those changes are happening across the world, in both the public and private sectors, as thousands of new datasets are created every single day. That data is why the NCDOT knew the flooding in Asheville would be significant before Helene hit, but not enough people took action in time. It highlights the stakes associated with enabling better awareness of the technology to change expectations.
Moderated by Ron Bisio, Senior Vice President at Trimble, the first plenary at the event specifically explored the benefits of what it means to look at an asset in the digital world to make plans and adjustments that can be brought into reality. Burkhard Boeckem from Hexagon AB, Motoyuki Arai from Synspective, Geert De Coensel from Merkator, Thomas Escobar from Google Maps, and Joseph Seppi from Woolpert discussed the opportunities being opened up with data and networks that are better connected, but also outlined the challenges inherent in these processes.
“We’ve been doing reality capture for 20 years, but the simplification process is the challenge,” said Escobar. “As you’re driving you don’t want to be able to see every single thing. We now have much more sophisticated customers [who] also don’t want to be overwhelmed.”
Many teams face the challenge of organizing and interpreting large datasets. While data collection is becoming easier, developing effective strategies for structuring, analyzing, and utilizing this data to drive meaningful outcomes is what matters. Each panelist outlined how they think through these specifics for their organizations. While demand for high-resolution data has never been greater, expectations around how this data needs to create value have similarly evolved.
A fireside chat between Chris Tucker, Chairman and CEO at GeoRobotix, and Brian McLendon, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Niantic, revealed how and why the latter is looking to create a map of the world from the bottom up, which is distinct from Google’s top-down approach. They discussed the lasting impact Pokémon GO has made on the industry and in some unlikely sectors, as well as the use case it’s made for mixing the virtual world with the real one. They also discussed the coming impact of large language models (LLMs).
“They’re incredibly significant because LLMs don’t just solve one problem,” said McLendon. “They represent a fundamental reorganization of information. We still have large sections of data that have not been run through these systems. They can distill and extract this data to find the right models, and that’s going to get us a lot more truth.”
Whether or not LLMs represent a new frontier for mapping will be further explored during a session at Geo Week. This session details the intersections between geospatial data science and the high-dimensional embeddings generated from LLMs.
Those are just a few people and highlights from the event which also saw multiple CEOs discuss the future of sensors, services, and the entire geospatial ecosystem.
