Friday, July 17. 2009

#ESRIUC: A good show for exhibitors?

Most every user conference and other major conference that I've attended this year...and I've been to many of them (GITA, PBBI's user conference, Intergraph's user conference, ESRI FEDUC, Map World Forum [India], Geodiffusion)...has experienced the pinch of the recession. The attendance has been reduced by as much as 30% in some cases putting extra pressure on exhibitors to thoroughly evaluate the return on investment of their sponsorship both now and in the future.

With respect to the ESRI User Conference this past week in San Diego, I heard mostly glowing reports from the exhibitors with whom I spoke. While the number of attendees "seemed" less, especially during the Map Gallery on Monday evening, the numbers both reported and rumored of the attendance was still exceptionally high...probably on the order of 12,000+. That number was perhaps flat or a little below from previous years. But this year, flat is good.

I thought one exhibitor put it well: "The noise was gone" referring to the fact that the leads they received "exceeded expectations" and were of a high quality. This was echoed by several exhibitors. Another exhibitor told me, "I gave my team a goal of 500 leads and by Wednesday we had 560." So, all in all, the investment in the UC paid off this year.

And for some reason, everyone was jumping on the bandwagon of giving rides in GPS-enabled vans. Topcon, Trimble, and NAVTEQ were canvassing attendees to show off their technology. (see images below)

Hard-working NAVTEQ marketing guy

Yet Another Local Mobile Search Play: Aloqa

Aloqa "sends you information about events, friends and other data based on your location." That's how VentureBeat describes the new product available for Android. The company has $1.5 million in first-round funding and taps as CEO, Sanjeev Agrawal, an ex-head of product marketing from Google and former vice president of products at TellMe Networks (now owned by Microsoft).

So, what's new an different in this play? It uses whatever location tech is available (doesn't need GPS). That's not new. The company is looking at white-label services as well as retail operations. That's a little new, I guess.

Recovery.gov Updated: OpenLayers, OSM...

Recovery.gov's maps got an update on Thursday. There are still glitches (like overposting noted by the Philadelphia Business Journal) but it's a step. Per recovery.gov:

The Recovery Board is introducing a new mapping capacity that will give the American people a road map on stimulus spending. For users' convenience, we have placed our maps on a single landing page.

In the coming months, you will see state-of-the art mapping technologies allowing for even better tracking of spending. For now, use our enhanced State Map to track how much your state is receiving in stimulus funds. And take a look at our new Recipient Map detailing major awards to companies in your communities.

Also nice: use of OpenLayers and data sourced to OpenStreetMap with rendering by Cloudmade.

I'm thinking that since ESRI won the latest Recovery.gov mapping contract, things may look different in the coming months.

More coverage:

NextGov
OMB Watch

Mapping Drug Use by Sampling Wastewater

That's what they did in Oregon. Ninety-six communities in the state shared water samples with researchers to look for the "waste" from drug use.

Researchers from the University of Washington, McGill University and Oregon State University collected single-day samples looking for evidence of methamphetamine, cocaine, and "ecstasy" or MDMA. The analytical tools were developed at OSU.

"This work is the first to demonstrate the use of wastewater samples for spatial analyses, a relatively simple and cost-effective approach to measuring community drug use," said Caleb Banta-Green, lead author of the paper and epidemiologist at the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute.

The results: "...the index loads of BZE were significantly higher in urban areas and below the level of detection in some rural areas. Methamphetamine was present in all municipalities, rural and urban. MDMA or ecstasy was at quantifiable levels in less than half of the communities, with a significant trend toward higher index loads in more urban areas."

- Escience

Top Tweets from Thursday #ESRIUC

14 new 3D analyst functions in ArcGIS 9.4 including use of vector geometry in LOS but apparently viewshed tool is raster based.
@chirrupinsanjay

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