GXP Xplorer Desktop
Dan London, GXP® vice president of sales, marketing, and support, kicked off the 2010 BAE Systems GXP International User Conference and Professional Exchange, welcoming a crowd of nearly 300. Dan discussed the new GXP training centers opened in 2009 to provide free training for all current GXP software customers, as well as supplementary on-site support for large military operations. He also was thrilled to report that based on input from last year’s conference, and additional feedback received throughout the year, BAE Systems is poised to launch GXP Xplorer™, the Visual Coverage Tool (VCT) replacement with an expanded feature set. GXP Xplorer makes it easy to find and share geospatial data on a local network and across an enterprise. The application is ideal for users in work groups who are searching for images, terrain, features, videos, documents, and other files.
Jeff Allen, GXP general manager, continued with an overview of briefings scheduled for the week, including keynote speeches from distinguished industry colleagues, new GXP products on the horizon for forthcoming releases, and a variety of customer presentations.
Mark Sarojak, GXP director of sales and marketing, offered an overview of the XA™ Cup tournament, new on the agenda this year. The XA Cup is a friendly competition that enables software users to share geospatial knowledge. Conference attendees are encouraged to learn new skills that will help them become more familiar with the eXtreme Analysis™ concept, which bridges a spectrum of image analysis and geospatial production capabilities. The winner of the XA Cup is named 2010 eXtreme Analyst™ of the Year.
A poignant moment during the opening session was a heartfelt tribute to Art Gunn, an esteemed GXP colleague who lost his battle with cancer earlier this year. To honor Art’s memory, the annual GXP golf tournament was renamed The Arthur C. Gunn Memorial Golf Tournament.
The morning keynote speaker, Kevin West, Deputy Director ISR Enterprise Programs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA, discussed his mission to team together at the technical levels to build an effective, seamless intelligence enterprise, and emphasized the need to:
- Work towards expediting full-motion video processing
- Secure additional linguists and partner with other nations’ linguists
- Integrate combat and command within the larger environment
- Implement 3G and 4G technologies
- Find a way to provide video data on small, handheld devices
- Build a multi-layered intelligence architecture
Dr. A. Stewart Walker, GXP director of product initiatives, hosted additional keynote and customer sessions throughout the day. He provided a brief history of GXP, its vision, and continuing mission to work with customers to build powerful software tools to integrate and automate workflows. The SOCET GXP eXtreme Analysis presentation highlighted current enhancements in the v3.1.1 release, and new features coming soon in SOCET GXP® v3.2 and v4.0.
Many product and customer presentations throughout the day included software demonstrations using Haiti earthquake data to illustrate how the GIS and geospatial-intelligence communities provide a valuable service for recovery and relief efforts.
