Lizards and their families gathered at Gas Works Park yesterday for the company’s annual summer picnic. Our activities team supplied the burgers and pop, while the troops brought the dishes, dips, chips and salads …and desserts!…that made the potluck picnic a success. We closed the office a couple of hours early and headed to the north end of Lake Union.   

The day was beautiful, and the lake looked like a kid’s drawing of a lake; every kind of floating vehicle – kayaks, canoes, sailboats, seaplanes, yachts, even the Ducks tour boats made from converted World War II amphibious landing craft — was passing back and forth in front of us. 

Our sales engineer Robert won the Best of LizardTech Eats contest with his “Big Apple Pie”, a recipe he filched from some hoity-toity New York City restaurant (Serendipity) and totally nailed for us here in Seattle. Way to go Robert!

A special shout out to Genie, who started flipping burgers with a cardboard box before the utensils arrived, and cooked ‘em right!
 

The latest issue of LizardTales has metaphorically hit the street. For a glimpse into what lies ahead here at LizardTech, where you can catch us live, information about our latest product releases and more, follow this link:

http://www.lizardtech.com/company/newsletter/2009-07.php 

Our director of Engineering, Michael P. Gerlek, attended and participated in GeoWeb 2009 in Vancouver last week. The annual GeoWeb gathering is a forum for new ideas and technologies that help shape the discussion of what it means to bring geospatial support into the Internet. 

Michael trio’d up with Galdos’ Ron Lake and the OGC’s Carl Reed for an all-day, tag-team relay session called GeoWeb 101. Each of the three presented about different technologies underlying the geoweb.

Other presentations throughout the week proved interesting, too. Michael’s “trip report” was published by GeoConnexion. Here’s the link:

http://www.geoconnexion.com/geo_online_article/GeoWeb-2009-Trip-Report/322

This year’s ESRI conference was a satisfying mix of fun and overwhelming customer interest for our Lizards manning the LizardTech booth.

For customer interest, the release of LiDAR Compressor 1.0 garnered a steady stream of inquirers about the breakthrough of being able to compress huge quantities of LiDAR data in a MrSID file, and we gave away 500 trial DVDs.

For fun, we held another lizardy contest.

We invited users to submit a photo of their favorite plastic LizardTech lizard doing something interesting or posing in an exotic location, the favorite to be chosen by popular vote. The results were creative and often hilarious. Clark Siler of Pflugerville, Texas (shown above with Justyna Bednarski, LT’s marketing communications manager) won the contest and took home a handheld GPS for his trouble. Clark’s photo entry (below) won the most votes on our online voting page.

We’ve always been amazed at how much people enjoy the LizardTech plastic lizards we give away at trade shows. But they are loads of fun. Ryan Burley, northeast regional account manager, and Kelly Downs, director of sales, demonstrate just some of the possibilities.

Voting is over, obviously, but to see all the photos from the contest, visit our Flickr web page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizardtech/sets/72157619211930889/.

As we mentioned some months back, LizardTech has been involved with the GeoWeb conference series for a number of years.  Our own mpg is on the program committee again this year and has asked me to remind you that GeoWeb 2009 is only a couple short weeks away.

There is a special focus this year on the intersection of GIS with the urban modeling and building design communities.  As the past few posts on this blog have shown (here, here and here), LizardTech is now a player in the LiDAR and 3D GIS space so we’re excited to see more people learning about and working on this “industry convergence”.

On the first day of the conference, mpg will also be part of team presenting a workshop informally titled “GeoWeb 101“:

“Do you have a clear understanding of the GeoWeb? Do you know where it is headed? Can you see business opportunities? Do you see it impacting the delivery of government services? What is the GeoWeb anyway? Is it more than Virtual Globes? What standards and technologies does GeoWeb include ? How does BIM fit in? What is the connection between SDI and the GeoWeb? What is new about neogeography? Everything to always wanted to know about the GeoWeb but were afraid to ask, GeoWeb 101 is the perfect introduction to GeoWeb 2009 - Cityscapes. The course will be taught by leading experts in the field, including Ron Lake (Galdos), Carl Reed (OGC) and Michael Gerlek (Lizardtech).”

Consider joining us at this annual event in sunny Vancouver, British Columbia and be sure and say hello.