Since 1995 B.C. forest companies, government and consulting firms have held meetings to discuss activities, challenges and trends in the area of information systems with respect to the forest industry. These meetings have been held under the banner Forest Information Systems Workshop (FISW), this year the banner is changing to Forest Information Management Workshop (FIMW). A tradition has been established that companies take turns in sponsoring and organizing this event.
The first event was held in 1995 in downtown Vancouver in a basement boardroom, and had representatives from about a dozen forestry companies and Timberline. Weldwood and Timberline sponsored this event. Everyone at the event spoke to the forestry information systems at their organizations.
The next event was held in 1997, at the SFU Vancouver downtown campus. This time we had a good cross section of BC forest companies, the provincial government was well represented, and some forestry consulting companies attended, around 65 people in all. The format was a fixed agenda with presentations, followed by questions and answers. Weldwood and ESRI sponsored the event.
The next year, 1998, the event was held at The Grand Okanagan Resort in Kelowna. This 2-day event was sponsored by Riverside and ESRI, and included a related trade show. We also had concurrent sessions running with different topics, to maximize the benefit from attending this conference, organizations needed to send multiple attendees. A cost recovery fee was charged to all 200+ attendees.
In 1999, FISW was held at the Prince George Civic Centre and was sponsored by Canfor and ESRI. This 2-day event included a trade show, and featured panel discussions, in addition to presentations. A cost recovery fee was charged to all attendees.
In 2006 FISW changed to FIMW and our workshop was held in Richmond, BC. 120 attendees from industry, government and the vendor/service sector attended the two day workshop. Forest companies, CoFI, MoFR and ILMB and the vendor community stepped forward to share the cost of the workshop along with attendees.
