At the lunch break of the first day of plenary sessions at the ESRI UC, I would describe the morning as "a breather." It's as though ESRI has gotten a bit too far ahead of the users and this is a chance for them to catch up. Much of the content was not "new" but rather reinforced ideas and products already introduced or available. That's perhaps a good strategy: in my informal survey only 1/2 the people I spoke to had installed ArcGIS 9.3.
Some "new" items and observations of note:
- Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of Interior, and winner of a "Making a Difference" Award re-announced the availability of Landsat data free on the Web by end of year. He also announced a GIO would be appointed for DOI (originally, in error said USGS). A second award went to the Perezs of Grupo ESRI de Venezuela for their work with GIS on poverty. (More on their work in
ArcNews 2003 and their book in this
press release.) Mr. Perez is the president of ESRI Venezuela.
- John Calkins rattled of the top 10 productivity enhancements for ArcGIS Desktop 9.3. ESRI UC blog has all the
details. I guess this is becoming a standard part of the Day One offerings.
- Web mapping was not mentioned; Web GIS was, quite a bit. GeoWeb? Not that I recall.
- Microsoft got more mentions than Google, specifically on the provision of Virtual Earth via ArcGIS Online and Silverlight. Mentions of cloud computing: none.
- A list of
7 different demo "mashups" of services and data brought little response - until the data was shown on top of Virtual Earth and Google Maps. ESRI seems a bit late to the mashup party, though clearly there is interest in the integration via the new Javascript APIs.
- In a video, a rep from GeoEye was excited to use ArcGIS Server image services to support not just ESRI users, but "OGC users." An interesting term.
- A Flex interface to a Server demo (about what else,
situational awareness after a toxic spill - sort of the "find me the nearest pizza place for data integration) was very sexy but I think took away from the core idea - real analysis was being done on the server.
- The ArcGIS Server/ArcGIS Mobile demo had actual people in the field around the Convention Center gathering and uploading GPS'ed data. Those in attendance are invited to test out the app. Details will be on the
UC blog.
