It was a glorious Wellington day as more than 80 people from all around the country, from the private, public and academic sectors, gathered for the CRCSI symposium on 3 August.

CRCSI stands for the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information. Its focus is to connect organisations who wish to work together on geospatial research and innovation projects. LINZ is responsible for coordinating New Zealand's CRCSI activities.

Participants came along to be informed by some of the latest thinking from New Zealand and Australia on a national spatial data infrastructure (SDI). They also had the opportunity to contribute their own ideas for potential research projects in CRCSI's SDI research programme.

LINZ Chief Executive Colin MacDonald opened the symposium, drawing our attention to the advantages of working together for the common good of New Zealand. He said that New Zealand's competitive advantage is that we're small so we can be much more agile and responsive than larger countries, and get things done quickly.

The great turnout was very encouraging, as were the excellent conversations that took place during the breaks. In fact sometimes it was difficult to get people back into the room for the next session; they were so busy talking about all the innovative things happening in their organisations to do with geospatial.

The high point for many was the group breakout time. Five possible projects were identified and people were able to comment on what they saw as issues and possibilities. This information was then fed back to the group as a whole who identified common projects that could be worked on now, such as how the geospatial industry might manage crowd-sourced information, and the development of a common framework for addresses.

Both Bruce Thompson (Chair of CRCSI's Spatial Infrastructures research programme, based in Melbourne) and Kylie Armstrong (Program Manager for CRCSI's Spatial Infrastructures research programme based in Perth) suggested ways of turning these ideas into research programme proposals.

I will be producing an "Outcomes" document which will be available on this site along with copies of the presentations.  It was gratifying to hear from so many that they appreciated being given the opportunity to spend the day with such a large group of people with a common interest in SDI.  Several mentioned that it was the first time in a long time that government, private sector, and research and educational professionals were together in one room to generate ideas for collaborative proposals.

Speakers included:

• Kevin Sweeney,Geospatial Custodian, NZGO
• Mary Sue Severn, Director CRCSI New Zealand, NZGO
• Isabella Cawthorn, Science Advisor, MoRST
• Mike Ridout, Communications Director, CRCSI
• Bruce Thompson, Director, Spatial Information, Victoria Department of Sustainability and Environment, Melbourne, and chair of the CRCSI Spatial Infrastructures Programme Control Board
• Wendy Lawson, Head of Geography, University of Canterbury and Associate Director of the Geospatial Research Centre
• Kylie Armstrong, Branch Business Consultant, Landgate, Perth and Programme Manager of the Spatial Infrastructures Programme
• David Swann, Chief Executive Explorer Graphics (who recently worked in the NZGO on the national SDI framework)
• Simon Jellie, Chief Executive, e-Spatial and member of 43pl (New Zealand and International representative on the board of CRCSI's industry consortium 43pl)

Mary Sue Severn
Director CRCSI NZ