Geographic Information System professionals, educators, public safety officials, economic development groups and natural resource managers will discuss advancements in geospatial applications during the East Texas Geospatial Conference Jan. 26-30 at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Jim Scott, director of Texas Natural Resources Information Systems, will be the keynote speaker at the conference. Scott, an environmental design graduate of the University of Georgia, is a landscape artist who has focused on the application of geographic information systems to environmental planning and analysis throughout his career. In 1990, he founded one of the largest Landsat imagery services providers and has served as director at Texas Natural Resources Information System since 2005.

An exhibition of large format globes of the Earth and the hemispheres of Mars, produced by Todd Ullrich of RealWorldfx.com, will be on display in the Baker Pattillo Student Center Grand Ballroom. The exhibit is open to the public from 2 to 6 p.m. Wednesday and from 10 a.m. until noon on Thursday.

Conference topics include infrastructure applications, heritage tourism, cartography in geospatial products and public safety applications. Technical workshops will also be offered in areas such as Advanced ArcPad and geocoding in ArcGIS 9.3.

Registration for the conference can be completed online at www.crgsc.org/etgc. The cost is $50. For more information, call (936) 468-6100.