 Hi is InterGTV live from 2022 in Essen and right now I'm really happy to have Barbara Ryan. She is executive director at the World Geospatial Industry Council here with me at my little TV stage. Hi Barbara, how are you doing? Hello Denise, how are you? So thank you very much for joining us and it's a real honor because this year for the first time it is that the WGIC is collaborating with DVW, the German Association for Surveys who's organizer here of InterGEO and yeah for people or the audience who do not know you just make us a short introduction of the WGIC and what's your role in general. Yeah thanks Denise and and let me just say this is my first InterGEO or InterGEO. So many of our WGIC members I think have been longtime partners here but as a relatively new young organization it's the first time we've had this collaboration. The World Geospatial Industry Council is a not-for-profit trade association working on behalf of the private sector so you have to be a private sector company to join WGIC okay but we are a not-for-profit organization and we've got just three really pretty simple objectives we we want to make sure that all the data the services the tools the products the contributions that this community this sector makes to the global economy and to society at large are leveraged to the greatest extent possible. Number one okay contribute to the global work by non-profit association. Absolutely the second one is to just advance policy matters undertake policy studies and advocate on behalf of the industry and then of course the third one is to create additional business opportunities either within the WGIC family or between the WGIC family and those outside for additional work that this phenomenal community can provide. It is a phenomenal community. Oh it's unbelievable it's really international so I think it's a blast this year that also after two years or over three years after the pandemic yeah so many people from different countries are here or companies representing their technologies and innovation so what's your impression when it's your first time. No I mean it's overwhelming actually one I really appreciate the partnership that we've had with DVW and Hinté because we've really had a really nice and we've had a lot of really nice engagement whether it was the opening ceremony the first night whether it was our board meetings and receptions yesterday we had a technical digital twin event this morning where five of our members came in and spoke the press conference and then of course the announcement of our trailblazer awards tomorrow I mean we've had so much going on in fact I was just commenting to someone I've either got to get here a little earlier or stay here a little later because I still haven't done the walk up every single aisle across every single cross section for all the exhibitors that are here I mean I've seen a handful of them but it's immense it is immense so you bring an extensive knowledge with your organization from programs of geospatial policies climate change which is also part of the conference diversity equity and inclusion which will also be represented at the trailblazer awards that we will have at the third day of in the expo stage and yeah you make industry academia collaborations and when we grab for example the climate change topic which was also part of the conference or topic of the conference a few minutes ago what do you think is the contribution an organization as WGIC with all the hats and the companies in it can contribute to well improve that topic for working better with that topic in administrations and politics so what's the contribution you can do thanks for that question so a couple things first of all over the last year year and a half the the organization adopted climate and climate change is an overarching topic for which many of our programs could feed into and then we also decided just within the last six or eight months to do a little bit deeper dive into digital twins and particularly spatial digital twins so there's an overarching policy umbrella and then there's a deep dive on a technical particularly for climate change we've done some work that shows the contributions that the private sector can make to this topic and we showed the conference of the parties this is the united nations framework convention on climate change so it's the international global governance mechanism where all parties to the convention all countries go every year to something called a COP a conference of the parties okay last year we were able to gain access as an industry association speaking on what our members as well as the public sector are doing to monitor greenhouse gases from space that laid the groundwork for a prize that we're going to be awarded at COP 27 in Egypt to do even a deeper dive on what the private sector is doing to help mitigate climate change there's tremendous I think I said it before they're tremendous data services tools products that the private sector has but they aren't getting meaningfully incorporated into government solutions in a systematic way of course there are really good examples this country that country but you know what worst if we don't do it globally we're sub-optimizing what our sector and what governments are sub-optimizing the climate solution we've got to bring all the tools in the toolbox if we're going to address one of the greatest challenges that's facing the earth right now and has been for many years and that's the study of climate change we will hear a lot of more about your ideas and your work because the work just started and the collaboration so we wish you good luck and thank you so much thank you and thanks to just thanks to the whole organization thank you very much Barbara Arie bye bye