That'd be Qatar which took home six honors at the ESRI User Conference. Oddly the local paper noted they were for "Satellite Mapping." One was the Enterprise Application Award; several others were from the Map Gallery.

- The Peninsula

Thanks to all of you who submitted entries for our contest asking your help in covering the ESRI User Conference. We received a number of interesting submissions on topics including Landsat, the GeoWeb, 3D, crashes, the geodatabase and how to make the conference more appealing, Thanks to Dana, Sik, Greg, Andrew, and many others for their efforts.

The winner penned a well-written piece on a corner of the conference that wasn't covered elsewhere. Here's what Lynn Rosentrater, a research fellow in Geography at the University of Oslo, saw that interested her. We'll be sending her iPod touch and she's accepted an invitation to write for us in the future.

Just two more days to send in your contribution to our ESRI User Conference coverage. The best submission receives an iPod touch. What did you see that wasn't covered? What one thing caught you off guard? What new technology/tip/vision will you implement back in the office?

Write it up or give us a call for a chance to win!

Full details here! Must be received by end of the day Wednesday (tomorrow!)

Here are a few blog posts from blogs you may not read about the ESRI User Conference:

Kevin Mathews: Conspiracy at the ESRI Conference: Eye in the Sky

Matt Penner: ESRI 2008 UC: SQL Server 2008 and ArcGIS

San Chakravorty: ESRI-UC 2008 Blog

VE for Gov: Virtual Earth at the ESRI International User Conference

I sat in on two "non-technical workshops" during the week. As many people pointed out, session quality varies quite a lot at the ESRI User Conference and the two sessions offered that stark contrast.