Two of the largest conferences of their kind were held back-to-back this year in the United States. The Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference is one of the largest, bringing together high-tech archaeologists from around the world. This year the international conference was held March 22-26th in Williamsburg, Virginia, only the second time the conference has been held on US soil. Although this was the first year CyArk attended the event, through an announcement at the opening ceremony CyArk was able to share its mission and vision with the entire conference. The subsequent CyArk-chaired sessions were very well attended and were host to a series of interesting presentations about the use of laser scanning for heritage and the importance of disseminating this information. While many CyArk partners gave presentations, like Conor Graham of Gridpoint Solutions and Carlo Bianchini of the University of Rome, it was Erwin Christofori of Christofori und Partner who made the biggest impression. Prior to his presentation Erwin distributed 3D glasses to the audience and at the right moment the packed room donned the red and blue glasses to view point clouds in true 3D.

Following the success of at the CAA conference, CyArk headed to Spar in Denver. Where CAA focuses on technical applications in the field of archaeology, Spar focuses on a wide range of 3D imaging technologies and their applications throughout industry. The event started with quite a bang as Hans Hess, former CEO of Leica-Geosystems, gave the opening keynote. In his discussion of geomatics on the move, Hans also pointed out how digital heritage preservation is becoming a market into itself. As digital heritage preservation has become a growing market in the past few years, Spar even dedicated one of its sessions to the topic this year. In addition to the heritage session held Wednesday morning, CyArk also hosted a heritage roundtable Tuesday afternoon. The roundtable featured Hans Hess, President and Founder of Hanesco AG and former CEO of Leica Geosystems; Jerry Allen of Woolpert, Inc.; Tom Greaves, CEO, Spar Point Research LLC; and Lisa Ackerman from World Monuments Fund. The roundtable concluded with a special donation by Sam Diaz of Betchtel. In an effort to help CyArk in anyway possible, Sam donated a unique hand carved parrot sculpture to be raffled off, on CyArk's behalf. Optech sweetened the deal by contributing a few bottles of Chilean wine as a second and third place prize in the raffle. All the proceeds from the raffle will go towards CyArk's mission to digitally preserve our cultural heritage.