FOSE is the largest technology conference and exhibition targeting the U.S. federal government. In 2006 there were almost 21,000 attendees. Hundreds of exhibitors vie for the attention of the feds this week in Washington D.C.’s vast convention center. The public sector is by most measures the largest customer of geospatial systems. The U.S. federal government is large and influential consumer of geospatial technology and provider of data.Why then, was geospatial practically invisible on the opening day of FOSE today? Only six exhibitors listed GIS/Mapping as a focus category. Of those, only one (MapInfo) is well known in industry circles. The largest providers of GIS and spatial systems to the government were absent. No Autodesk, ESRI, or Intergraph. I have not yet asked the vendors about their absence, so can only speculate.

Perhaps the vendors exhibited in the past and found the show to be less than fruitful. There were several booths offering worthless prizes for spinning a wheel and scanning badges. And their lines were long. Serious buyers? Maybe not. Perhaps the vendors figure that the feds already know about them. But Microsoft, Cisco, Motorola, and other big name vendors exhibited. Or possibly the federal government market for geospatial systems is saturated. Maybe people go to vendor federal events instead.

Equally puzzling from a geospatial perspective was the keynote presentation by the CEO of Research in Motion (RIM), Mike Lazaridis. RIM is the provider of the Blackberry, the wireless messaging service with more 8 million subscribers and widely used in government. Mr. Lazaridis focused on security but also touted applications including law enforcement and emergency management. I got excited when the application slides showed maps and diagrams. Plus the slide about the latest model, the 8800, listed built-in GPS as a feature. But there was no discussion of the location aspects.

It was as if someone in RIM marketing who made the slides put in geospatial but the speaker didn’t think it worthy of mention. But Mr. Lazaridis spent a fair amount of time talking about how the newest BlackBerry device has no camera.

One vendor on the floor show is a company called Reverse 911, a provider of notification systems for crisis situations. The system maps phone numbers and lets authorities select areas to call in case of emergency. Automated calling then occurs with feedback to the map showing call status. Reverse 911 is an ESRI partner. The system is an excellent example of integrating existing technologies to serve a new application.

Unfortunately, overall what I saw today, from several perspectives a golden opportunity to highlight the value of location intelligence was missed.