Nora Parker interviewed members of GITA's organization about the major changes the organization is making to its flagship annual conference. This year there will be a significant focus on infrastructure - an area that is screaming for attention, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers 2005 report card. "There is a huge need for technology to solve our current social and economic problems," said GITA's executive director, Bob Samborski, and this year's conference aims to provide the resources to do that. He was joined in the interview by this year's GITA president David Nemeth of Panhandle Energy and the 2008 program chair, Mike Cerkas of GeoAnalytics. This podcast is sponsored by GITA.

The system uses location technology to identify where the cart is in the store. It then directs 7- to 15-second ads and product offers to consumers based on items nearby. Nabisco, for instance, could target shoppers in the bakery aisle with an ad and coupon for Oreo cookies.

Google Earth, Autodesk and a host of other platforms offer possibilities limited only by the imagination. But do these applications threaten the demise of traditional GIS? It might seem like these new, user-friendly manifestations of GIS data would spell the end for ESRI, CARIS and other traditional GIS solutions providers. But according to those using new-school applications, the opposite is true.

This week editors Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica tackle a question and why it's so hard to answer. The question is: How big is the geospatial market or a part of it? That's often followed by: Who has the definitive numbers on how much money is to made and how many users and potential users are out there? They take a look at some resources and tease out why definitive numbers are so difficult to acquire.