How do you advance? Within the GI realm there are many advances. Technological advances are the easiest to identify.

They can be seen and are experienced because they often lead to accomplishing task easier, are cheaper and or provide positive results that can be readily measured in terms of quality.

Advances relating to people when it comes to geotechnology are sometimes more difficult and challenging to assess and measure. How do we know when someone within an organisation is performing optimally in relation to technology? It is easy to state excellence and mastery is being reached, but more difficult to measure it.

How do you identify qualities like passion, excitement and potential where technology and people come together? Are they measurable and what value can be assigned to each?

Recently there has been a large increase in the number of training and education materials within the GI community. Where it used to be that people would be pressed to learn in a more subject related fashion; today, increased emphasis is placed on specific pieces of hardware and software.

Training is important and a critical factor leading toward successful implementation and use. But, the question remains, why do so many people need training? After all, based on the information crossing our desks, software and technology is supposed to be easier to operate than ever before. So what's the deal here? Do you see the irony? This issue of Geoconnexion International contains several articles about surveying technology and discusses some of the issues related to training and education.

Initially, I was going to suggest that there is a disjoint between geospatial technological advance and people, giving rise to a higher need for training. I decided to pull in the reigns slightly given a recent event. Interoperability issues continue to play a role when considering the connection between technology and people. There are ...