The Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) has announced the 2003 Speaker Award winners from its recent Conference 26 in San Antonio. The award recognizes the top five percent of session speakers, each of whom were rated by session attendees in the areas of quality of presentation, visual aids, session content, and relevance of topic.

Recognized as the leading educational association dedicated to geospatial information technology, GITA has developed a reputation for bringing together industry leaders to present papers, take part in panel discussions, and participate in seminars at the association's annual conference. Using their industry knowledge in addition to effective presentation skills, these speakers share their knowledge with GIS professionals.

The recipients of the 2003 GITA Speaker Award include:

• Eric Ackerman, Edison Electric Institute, "Electricity Restructuring: New Opportunities and New Challenges for Geospatial Information"
• Pat Drinnan, Aquila Networks Canada, "Data … The New Life Line for the Field!"
• Nancy Lerner, EMA, Inc., "Using Business Case and ROI to Justify GIT Spending"
• William Meehan, ESRI, "Forget the Intangibles-GIS Improves the Bottom Line"
• Jennifer Nieland, Wisconsin Public Service Corp., "Using Change Management to Achieve Success in Second-Generation Mobile GIS Implementation"
• Ed Parsons, Ordnance Survey, "The Role of Web Services for Spatial Data Delivery"
• Christopher Tucker, IONIC Enterprise, "Designing Open GIS Conformant System Architecture for the Enterprise"

Conference 26 featured 88 educational sessions organized in 14 tracks, ranging from data management to system integration. The conference, which attracted 2,256 attendees, also included 13 seminars and three industry panel discussions, as well as a 100,000-square-foot exhibition hall with 137 vendors.

GITA's Conference 27 is set for April 25-28, 2004 at the Washington State Trade & Convention Center in Seattle.