Monday, July 8 2002 @ the ESRI International UC

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The first day at the International ESRI User Conference is traditionally a day for ESRI President Jack Dangermond and his senior product managers to “wow” attendees with what’s new and what’s to come and Monday they did just that. During the morning plenary session and introduction, the crowd was captivated (as usual) by an introductory video and image slide show depicting the geography of Earth. This was followed up by a lengthy greeting by Jack Dangermond. Jack welcomed what is expected to be more than 11,000 conference attendees from 135 countries who will be taking in more than 1,000 presentations & sessions during the week. He set the tone by stating the purpose of the event – getting together to share experiences, ideas, information, and values… oh, and to have fun! Those in attendance were then asked to meet someone new sitting near them in order to break the ice – my neighbor was a senior manager from a company called Pasco in Japan. He was there with 40 of his employees. Once that was done, Jack presented details of this year’s theme – Sustaining Our World. As you can imagine, Mr. Dangermond travels extensively and often shares tales of his travels around the Globe. He noted that over the past year during his travels he had become very excited to see how fundamental GIS is to sustaining our planet and in meeting our present needs without compromising the future… hence this year’s theme. I think most of us realize how necessary GIS is, however, what’s very cool the fact that everyone around us is now realizing it is! Next, Jack quickly presented images of GIS applications giving us a look at some of the users and uses of GIS that have caught his eye… the list is too lengthy, however, some of the examples included the depiction of Census data in Philly, the Sacramento County online GIS, Timberline resources forest simulation, GPS tracking of milk trucks in South America, and of course, applications in New York post 9/11. This prompted Jack to share some of the ideas that he got out of his time spent in New York as he surveyed the rebuilding around ground zero: GIS is fundamental in environmental management, GIS communities are fantastic and necessary, GIS is fundamental to homeland security, and implementations require an integrated enterprise approach. Jack went on to offer up his view of the industry as a whole and briefly touched on what we can expect from the latest software releases and future releases. Some key comments: Important issues in software development: Morphing of software to server centric services Networked services Distributed services g.net – the architecture for distributed services As large raster data sets are now much more commonly used, it will be necessary to implement image processing tools for analyzing and classifying these data. I think this is a pretty good clue as to what will be coming in future releases of ArcGIS. So what can ArcGIS users expect in 9.0 and beyond (BTW, ArcGIS 9.0 is expected early in 2003): the ability to integrate survey measurements Conforming more to industry standards (ESRI is actively involved with 12 standards organizations. Smart phones (these are PDA/cell phones) will run ArcPad 3D GIS and 3D feature symbolgy Improved raster data handling and processing Numerous new extensions Improved geoprocessing and handling of topology The convergence of ArcSDE and ArcIMS This list is by no means complete, however, it does give you an idea what to expect. Throughout the week I’ll have a chance to meet with individual product managers and see focused presentations that will go into much more detail about these expected enhancements. After going over the products, Jack discussed the company and its people. The company sells software, provides education, provides technical services, and advances the use of GIS in society. He pointed out the purpose of ESRI – to advance the use of GIS, support its users and partners, develop a professional workforce, and support its employees. Key to ESRI’s success is the company’s stability and zero debt – of course you know the company is privately held and does not need to respond to share holders. Financially, the company grew 22% in 2001, there are now more than 100,000 users with more than 1 million seats of software. ESRI is extended by a network of more than 1400 business partners and now has even more offices located around the Globe. New and important collaborators include the SAS institute, IBM, AP, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. He discussed the company’s role in education and how the company now offers some 40 virtual campus courses which were completed by more than 68,000 students last year. ESRI extends its support for the educational community by publishing more than 40 titles through ESRI Press and has plans for many more. Support for education is very evident as Jack described relationships with National Geographic, the AAG, and the company’s involvement in events such as GISDay, the EDUC, and the efforts of MyCoe – an effort to expand the use of GIS in k-12 programs. Something I found particularly interesting is that Jack pointed out that GIS is a science, providing a foundation for action and building a spatial database. Interesting that when I posed this question to the Community via a poll, the responses by you were vastly different and as users, some 80% of the respondents viewed GIS as a tool. Jack reaffirmed that tools alone are not enough. Since I’m running out of time, I’ll briefly touch on some of the other highlights from Monday: ArcGIS 8.3 coming soon will be about editing and data compilation ArcScan will enable raster editing, batch clean up and conversion, r2v 8.3 most important change will be the handling of topology within the geodatabase Survey analyst will provide support for the use of survey data within ArcGIS ArcGIS and ArcPad will be supported by numerous new platforms and devices Release series 9.0 will come in spring 2003 Greatly improved support for 3D will be provided ArcGlobe will enable users to “fly” around the Earth in fascinating ways all in the ArcGIS environment. More detailed information will be presented to us throughout the week. Monday evening conference attendees took in the Map gallery where more than 1,000 maps were put on display. Always interesting I had to wonder how one can select a winner out of all of these fascinating works of art. Also on display was the ArcPad challenge. Visitors to this saw demos from Voice Insight who were showing off their voice assistant for ArcPad (second place) which provides ArcPad users the ability to manipulate ArcPAd with voice commands. Winner of the challenge was a product called Hydroply GIS from Electronic data solutions. The product provides an interface between any Windows CE computer, Hydrolab water quality probes, and GPS. Users can collect field data like water and air quality samples and quickly integrate the data into their GIS… very nice! I can’t help but recall the times I spent in the past collecting water samples around the Queen Charlotte Islands using a CTD probe, handheld GPS, and a laptop. This solution would have made my job a breeze! (A hint to my old friends at AXYS!). Also taking place on Monday evening was the education fair – a chance for Colleges to promote their GIS course offerings and programs. The number of schools seems to grow every year and this year representatives were available from PSU, Rio Hondo, San Diego State U, Nova Southeastern U, Rutgers, Tennessee State U, Rice, UCLA, and many more. Those of you who are California residents may be interested to know that you can take courses at Foothills College for a mere $7 per course unit! Tuesday will bring the opening of the exhibition hall and start of technical presentations… always fun trying to pick which presentations to attend when 1,000 are being offered! Stay tuned for more from San Diego. (Note images from day 1 will come later as I’m running a bit late!) One last thing, apparently Intro session slides, videos etc... will likely be made available on the esri.com website in the near future. Cool Bookmarks www.windpowermaps.org worldcampus.psu.edu www.oasisnyc.net nationalmap.usgs.gov www.nationalgeographic.com Quotes i'm involved in GIS cause its fun and challenging This conference hall is HUGE I love the video Buzz Words g.net web services MyCoe XML Glenn the restaurant critique! No breakfast and having 3 20 oz coffees prior to the opening session was a big mistake! Lunch at Dick's. A great place to drop in for a quick lunch - allow yourself about 1 hour if you go at peak time. Burger was fantastic, bathrooms were disgusting! Cost for lunch $14 with tip. Dinner, Fish and chips at BWs lounge in MArriott. Great deal on 16 oz. Fischer Amber beer but my fish was kinda burnt... I was so hungry by 9:00 PM though that there was no way I was sending it back! They get an "OK but not great in my book. Cost $15 with tip. Cool marketing idea Surdex Corporation had coozies available on the tables at the Map Gallery... great idea! 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