October, 2023 – During the 22nd GeoSpatial Visions conference guests lectured on current topics, clients presented our solutions, and the IT Olympics was attended by all who enjoy light sports with business partners in an informal atmosphere.
The conference was opened and participants were welcomed by the chairman of the supervisory board, Mikuláš Szapu. He introduced the new owner of YMS, Róbert Franček, who is taking over YMS after 33 years from the hands of Mikuláš Szapu’s family. Until now, Róbert Franček has held important management positions in IT corporations such as Hewlett Packard, S&T Slovakia, Oracle Slovakia, and Sféra, a.s. YMS is a specialized IT player with a highly specialized portfolio, which it plans to advance further in the fields of industry, transport, and energy.
Michal Brichta, keynote speaker of SARIO and the Slovak space office, presented an interesting view of the benefits that freely available satellite data brought to the economy. “Thanks to the European Space Agency and satellites, we have a huge number of views of the Earth from space, and every industry can find what they need in them,” explained Michal Brichta.
Martin Senčák, director of the cybersecurity certification department of the National Security Office, and former longtime head of the Slovak National Accreditation Service, revealed the plans of the NBU in the field of cyberspace security. “A state-initiated cybersecurity certification is being prepared. It will not be required by law, but it will become an investment for the certified institution, which will be returned in the form of meeting higher safety standards,” he said.
The presentations of the invited guests were followed by a block of practical electronization, where four representatives of YMS client organizations spoke.
The block was opened by the head of Eustream’s commercial dispatching, Jaroslav Macák. He introduced the international gas trading dispatch that is competing for the IT project of 2023. “yCapacity is at the top technological level, has high performance, and is stable and safe. It already contains approximately half a billion technical and business data points/observations and processes more than 150,000 data points/observations per day, 90 percent of them automatically,” explained Jaroslav Macák. It is connected to all three European business platforms and on the public portal it presents current data, for example gas flows through Slovakia or a calculator for calculating the price of gas transportation.
After gas capacity, the topic of railway capacity followed, and the presentation of the project to make rail transport more attractive across Europe. The national project manager for ŽSR, Jozef Dudák, explained the scope and point of the European harmonization and the results of the feasibility study on the conditions of Slovakia, which was carried out by YMS. “Railway transport is highly ecological and affordable, but problems with accurate and timely capacity allocation and differences in tariffs and technical background between countries make it difficult to fully utilize it. Harmonization at the European level and new IT systems should overcome these problems and help railways compete with roads, especially in terms of freight transport,” said Jozef Dudák.
The program continued with an online lecture by the head of the IT Department of the Dionýza Štúr State Geological Institute, Štefan Káčer, who looked at historical maps with the participants. These are available to everyone today in the geological digital archive. He read the notes to the participants, which were recorded by a traveler many centuries ago on his way through Slovakia, from Bratislava through Trnava to Vyhne. “Anyone who is interested in history found in maps can explore it from the comfort of their home thanks to the extensive digital archive of geological heritage from all over Slovakia,” adds Štefan Káčer. Despite the disadvantage resulting from presenting online, Štefan Káčer won the vote for the most interesting lecture with his engaging topic and took home the audience award.
The director of the informatics department of the Central Control and Testing Institute of Agriculture in Bratislava, Marek Molnár, presented the ongoing project of digitalization of the entire agenda of the institute. Among other things, he assured the participants that “In Slovakia, the level of soil protection is very high and we can rely on the quality of our crops. The flow of control processes will be even more modernized and efficient by the transition to electronic form,” he concluded the block of presentations of professional systems from the YMS software laboratory.
At the end, the president of the non-profit organization Partnerships for Prosperity, Milan Ištván, spoke and summarized the current developments in the area of European funds and the Recovery Plan. Together with YMS business development director Radovan Hilbert, they addressed the topic of new project preparation, whether from the point of view of European funding or the overall professional preparation of project proposals. In the discussion with the participants, they agreed that although it is a demanding process with a result not guaranteed in advance, it is important to enter it repeatedly, because the benefit in the form of ready-made solutions and functional electronicization is always worth the effort and resources expended.
After the demanding professional program, most of the participants enjoyed the popular IT Olympics. A light sports competition in four disciplines, which helps long-term business partners relax, once a year together.