|
River Nile is the heart of Cairo and the conference venue is naturally
next to the river.
Local organising committee during a break at the ESA headquarters.
Cairo Tower is one of the landmarks in Cairo.
President
Holger Magel and Dr. Alan Stevens during the
courtesy visit to HE Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Communication
and Information and Technology.
Prof. Magel and Dr. Nazif.
One of the LOC meetings was combined to the visit to RCTWS (Regional
Center for Training and Water Studies), lead by Dr. Dalal Al-Naggar.
RCTWS will be one of the sponsors of the conference 2005. |
Prof. Holger Magel, President of
FIG, Dr. Alan Stevens, Secretary General of GSDI (Global Spatial
Data Infrastructure) and Markku Villikka, Director, FIG Office
visited Cairo February 20-26, 2004 to visit the venue of the FIG Working
Week 2005. It will be the first time when FIG is organising a Working
Week together with another bigger international association. The Working
Week 2005 will be organised together with the 8th International
Conference of GSDI at the Intercontinental Semiramis Hotel in the city
centre of Cairo April 16-21, 2005. The organisers of the conference
the Egyptian Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ECSM) and the Egyptian
General Survey Authority (ESA) together with FIG and GSDI are convinced
that the conference in Cairo will be one of the biggest FIG Working Week
ever. When also local meetings like the national GIS conference will be
linked to the conference it can be expected that more than 800
participants will attend the conference. Especially the commercial
exhibition will be biggest ever in the history of FIG Working Weeks.
During the visit to Cairo the delegation had several meetings with
the local organising committee, chaired by Prof. Dr. Ahmed Elsheikh,
Chair and Chairman of ECSM and Gen. Eng. Hisham Nasr, Vice Chair
and Chairman of ESA. In these meetings the theme of the conference was
confirmed to "From Pharaohs to Geoinformatics" covering the
history of Egypt in surveying but at the same time referring to the role
of geoinformatics in today's world. The organising committee has been
establishedby the Prime Minister of Egypt under the Ministry of
the Water Resources & Irrigation. After GSDI conference was integrated
to the programme also the Ministry Communication and Information and
Technology is highly interested to contributed. During a courtesy visit
to HE Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Communication and Information
and Technology (MCIT) the co-operation models were discussed.
In addition the themes of the conference were discussed in detail so
that they now cover the expectations of local participants, FIG
commissions and GSDI. The updated website with call for papers will be
available by the end of March at
www.fig.net/figtree/cairo.
The conference will be held at the Intercontinental Semiramis Hotel
which is located on the river Nile within walking distance to the
Egyptian Museum, shopping areas and other tourist attractions. It offers
excellent meeting facilities and is reasonable priced. This offers good
opportunity for conference "spirit" when most delegates can stay at the
main venue. Conference fee will be reasonable because it includes
lunches and coffees.
The draft technical programme includes almost 40 technical sessions -
to satisfy both cross-professional topics and specific topics of
commission interests. The joint conference will allow high-profile
international and regional speakers to the plenary sessions. As
mentioned the professional and commercial exhibition is expected to be a
reason to visit FIG/GSDI 2005 on itself.
But you cannot visit Egypt and Cairo without seeing the history of
this homeland of surveying. The social programme includes city
sightseeing and visit to the pyramids in Giza and the social events will
bring you to the river Nile and the cultural secrets of Cairo. The
technical tour include the smart village and professionally interesting
places in Cairo and close by.
Post conference tour can be made e.g. to Luxor or Sharm El Sheik.
More about the conference, call for papers etc. is available on the
conference web site: www.fig.net/figtree/cairo by the end of March.
 
President Magel and Ms.
Ansi Magel at the pyramids in Giza
together with Al Stevens. |
