NV5 Geo Sessions 2026 is built around a question a lot of geospatial teams are quietly stuck on: how do you turn all this data into something you actually act on?
NV5 has announced Geo Sessions 2026, a virtual thought-leadership event focused on turning geospatial data into operational decisions rather than simply collecting more of it. The event brings together geospatial technology providers, researchers, government organizations, and end users to discuss how remote sensing and analytics are being applied to real-world problems.
Dan Gruidel, Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at NV5, framed the shift driving this year’s event around outcomes rather than volume: success is now measured by “how quickly you transform that data into action,” he said, rather than by how much data an organization has on hand.
Four Tracks, Global Reach
Geo Sessions draws thousands of attendees across more than 100 countries. This year’s program is organized into four tracks — SAR, spectral, lidar, and GeoAI — and features more than 20 speakers spanning technology vendors, data providers, service firms, academia, government, and end-user organizations.
Event organizers have emphasized practical application over vendor pitches. Geo Sessions Committee Chair Ors Kovacs described the event’s intent as bringing together different perspectives specifically because technology only becomes valuable once it solves a real problem, steering sessions toward application-based content rather than deep technical demonstrations.
A Dedicated GeoAI Track, For the First Time
New for 2026 is a dedicated GeoAI program, addressing what NV5 describes as one of the industry’s most pressing open questions: how to move AI from pilot projects into standing operational use. A GeoAI panel will focus on operationalizing the technology and extracting measurable value from it, alongside additional sessions on emerging approaches such as agentic GeoAI.
Gruidel connected this to a broader pattern he sees across geospatial organizations — a move away from treating lidar, imagery, SAR, GIS, and AI as separate, siloed technologies, and toward workflows that connect collection, analysis, decision support, and action into one continuous process. He pointed to a common set of questions that transportation agencies, utilities, environmental organizations, and emergency managers all end up asking in different words: what’s happening, where, why, and what should be done about it.
Built From Real Customer Problems, Not Product Demos
Geo Sessions’ planning cycle reportedly begins roughly ten months before the event, with NV5 staff working directly with end users to identify emerging themes and narrow them down to the most broadly relevant issues. Speakers are deliberately drawn from a range of industries to bring varied perspectives into each session, and the format mixes presentations with panel discussions, audience Q&A, and three follow-on focus webinars that let attendees go deeper on specific topics after the main event.
The organizers describe the event as accessible to both newcomers and experienced practitioners — a structure meant to let people already working in SAR, spectral, lidar, or GeoAI dig into new techniques, while giving those newer to any of those areas a broader grounding in how the technologies are actually being used. Monica Montoya, Senior GIS Tech at Forsyth County, cited the chance to see how other organizations are solving similar real-world problems as a highlight of attending in 2025.
Registration
Geo Sessions 2026 is a free virtual event; registration is available at nv5geospatialsoftware.com/Geo-Sessions.
Source: NV5, September 15, 2026 — https://www.nv5.com/news/online-thought-leadership-event-to-explore-the-future-of-geoai-and-geospatial-data-analysis/
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