Tuesday, January 9. 2007

Fed UC: Keynote - Carrots and Sticks

Congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania gave the keynote. I think everyone got a sense of this fellow from Jack Dangermond's introduction. Dangermond explained how Kanjorksi called him up out of the blue to learn about this GIS stuff.

He offered up a few themes and one big challenge. The themes:

- We in government don't user all the tools we have; GIS is underutilized

He cited how in one mine reclamation project (he's from the mining area of Pennsylvania) using GIS cut professional expenses from 34% of a project's cost to 12%. He felt the 34% was out of line to begin with and noted how using GIS got more done in the office than in the field.

- There is a lack of willingness and incentive to share information. The federal government needs to offer carrots and sticks to move this forward.

He was not speaking only of GIS data, though he knows about that, having been involved with the Pennsylvania GIS Consortium.

The challenge:

- There is a great opportunity to reform government (espeically spending/allocation based on geography) and GIS can be a part of it.

He asked the assembled to "be part of the army of reform, join me and Jack to reform the US government."

I confess while I listened I felt like it was quite a political statement. Kanjorski noted he was in the minority party and is now in the majority party in Congress. Still, the talk reverberated with attendees with whom I spoke; numerous individuals pointed back to one or the other of the points I noted above later in the day.

Fed UC: So, what's an enterprise?

Before things got going at the first day of the ESRI Federal User Conference 2007 (the seventh annual) I had a chance to speak with Jeff Peters. He let me know the conference had about 1,500 pre-registrants and he expected several hundred people to register on-site for the three day event.

Since Peters heads up both the federal and non-federal parts of the office, I thought he was a good person to answer my question about the definition of "enterprise" something I've not been comfortable with for some time. He pointed to three characteristics:

- thought is given to architecture (might be SOA or something else), but there is thought about it
- the aim of solutions, not just software
- integration of GIS with other aspects of the organization, not just "GIS by itself"

Update: Who can download ArcGIS Explorer now?

Update 1/9/07: I blew this. Instead of contacting ESRI to get the answer to the question, I took the easy way out and believed something I read on the Internet that said that ESRI was somehow checking to see if those trying to download the software were up-to-date on maintenance. Every time I tried to download the software I was unable to do so, so I believed what I read. It is not, however, true, per Bernie Szukalski, with whom I spoke today at the ESRI Federal User Conference.

After our conversation, I tried one more time to download the software today, thinking that maybe my pop up blocker was getting in the way. I failed. Then, on a whim, I tried a different browser (I was using Internet Explorer, then tried Firefox) and it worked. I was able to download the software.

To be clear, ESRI has only invited its users to download ArcGIS Explorer. Why? Szukalski offered these reasons:

1) Opening downloads to all invites further comparison with Google Earth and suggests ArcGIS is aimed at the same user base. It's not; it's for a different population.
2) A large number of users would challenge ESRI's ArcGIS Online servers, those that provide the data for ArcGIS Explorer.
3) The current data available via ArcGIS Online is limited and includes for example 15 meter imagery.

In February ESRI will move ArcGIS Online into beta 2; it will include 1 meter imagery. At that point, the company will invite more people to download the software, with a public download page.

ArcGIS Online is another part of the ArcGIS family. That family includes software (ArcGIS desktop, server, the free ArcGIS Explorer) and ArcGIS Online (the content and capabilities, aka data and services). Some of the data will be freely available, some will require subscriptions, and if you want to republish data in a value-added service or internally, there'll be a fee. And, there are some new additions to ArcGIS Online in the works. There'll be a free online sharing program, where data creators can submit data to ESRI to host in its globe. If ESRI wants it, it will host it for free. It it's not a fit, data creators can pay a fee to have ESRI host the data. ESRI will also provide hosting for applications.

Szukalski also shared another offering related to ArcGIS Online: it's the core data all cooked, tiled and rendered for users to host on their own server. He describes it as "Globe in a box." When I asked how ArcGIS Online relates to ArcWeb Services I was reminded that the former is for users, the latter for developers.

---original post from 11/19/06 follows------

Not me, as I don't fit any of the categories. ESRI has always said that ArcGIS Explorer would be free to anyone to download, and I'm sure that will be the case, in time. For now, we can all read about it on blogs from Stefan, James (on ArcGIS Online), and Scrappad.

ESRI has made ArcGIS Explorer available first to customer sites with current maintenance on ESRI's server products (ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, and ArcSDE). As a result, ESRI has e-mailed download instructions to the maintenance contacts at those customer sites. Shortly, we will also e-mail download instructions to the maintenance contacts at sites with current subscriptions to the ESRI Developer Network (EDN). In addition, we will ship ArcGIS Explorer on DVD to sites with server products and EDN subscriptions.

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