Other milestones of note are:
We are about to publish our 3rd industry survey covering the EO services industry in Europe and Canada.
We have developed the concept of a Marketplace Alliance for EO Services and shall launch a call to develop eoMALL in the next few weeks.
We are starting a next round of economic benefit analyses to follow the three cases which we published last year and plan to publish 2 more reports by the year end. These are really quite exciting and I am really looking forward to digging deep into the use of the EO products and services throughout a value-chain extending from the service provider to the citizen in the street. We already have the 2 next cases identified and both have very interesting dimensions to them. You will have to wait to find out what they are!
As there is strong interest in this work, we have applied to organise a side-event on analysing the benefits of EO services at the GEO plenary in Washington DC.
On top of all this, we have recently organised our 4th international event (at the ISRSE in Pretoria last May) where European companies can meet up with potential local partners and we are embarking on at least 3 further visits (to Chile, Bolivia and Washington) during the 2nd half of 2017.
I feel exhausted just writing about it!!
Since we started EOmag, many other professional magazines have been started and we partly wonder if there is still a need for our efforts. But we get a lot of positive feedback and encouragement so we shall continue to publish and consider even to increase the frequency to 6 issues per year from the current 4.
We love to hear from you so maybe drop us a line (info_at_earsc.org) to mark the 50th edition and give us your views on the future of the EOmag e-zine.
I am now off for a summer break and to return in September recharged and ready to continue our efforts to help develop the European EO industry.
Geoff Sawyer
EARSC Secretary General