Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the 28th Annual ESRI International User’s Conference in San Diego. I have wanted to go to this conference for years, it was the first time I’ve had the chance to attend it.
The sheer size of the conference was astounding; 14,500+ people, 250+ exhibitor booths, thousands of maps on display, and hundreds of technical workshops held in the colossal San Diego Convention Center.
Plenary Session:
On Monday morning, I joined the throngs of other conference attendees to experience the annual pilgrimage to the metaphorical geospatial Mecca to watch (the caliphate) Jack Dangermond speak.
When I first walked into the gigantic, darkened room, Mr. Dangermond’s face was on three massive movie screens. While it did initially appeared slightly fascist (eerily similar to Apple’s 1984 commercial), he talked lucidly for hours about ESRI and the state of industry.
Prophetically. he spoke about the future of GIS applications and how he envisions a “WebGIS” that will take the industry into a new GIS era. WebGIS should act as a “fusion center” (as he termed it) which will help bring GIS applications to the masses, allow GIS users to act more collaboratively, and facilitate integration of GIS into other (mobile) applications.
Furthermore, he spoke of how ad-hoc mashups will provide stimulus to the GIS industry, especially as GIS becomes more integrated into mobile applications. He discussed how consumers will soon be simultaneously using and uploading GIS data.
One of the more odd moments of this first day was when Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne had a presentation on the melting arctic ice caps and the need for spatial data to help tackle climate change. The picture below even has a polar bear in the background.
Later in the day, the Map Gallery opened with over 800 maps on display. The most beautiful maps were provided by National Geographic (of course) and Conservation International. However, one map that did catch my eye was created by an Albany, New York company named AWS Truewind, the map can be found in Google Maps here.
Exhibit Pavilion:
The exhibit pavilion consisted of 250+ booths, it was held in one of the largest rooms I have ever seen. I calculated the size of the room with laser provided by Lasertech and it measured 300 meters x 100 meters; over six American football fields could fit into the room.
It appeared that about half of the exhibit pavilion was occupied by private companies while the other half was inhabited by either by the federal government, defense firms, or ESRI.
Microsoft was one of the primary sponsors of the conference and it appears to be making a concentrated move into the geospatial realm. Google’s booth was much smaller and it seemed to be primarily promoting their Google Sketch product.
While Blackberry (with Motorola to a lesser degree) had substantial presences at the conference , Apple and Nokia were nowhere to be found.
Notably, Garmin was absent. Their decision not to attend the ESRI conference is bewildering, especially with the upcoming release of the Nuvifone. The partnership opportunities seem limitless; the geospatial processing opportunities for any of their handhelds seems obvious.
Additionally, being a frequent user of Erdas IMAGINE, I was disappointed Erdas was not represented, though representatives of Leica were in attendance.
Technical Sessions:
I attended 8 or so technical sessions held throughout the convention center. Almost every session I attended was packed with people, most even had people standing alomg the back wall of the rooms.
Since most of the sessions were only 1.25 hours long, I feel the objective of these sessions was not so much “teach” but to demonstrate how easy it can be to use the applications.
Generally, I found the technical sessions to be rather basic, but that should be expected considering the brevity of most of the sessions.
Incidentally, Image Server demonstrations were a comically slow and during a Modelbuilder demonstration, ArcInfo crashed to great amusement among the audience.
Conclusion:
I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to see the ESRI International Users Conference; it was also great to see former colleagues and people from graduate school.
It’s obvious that the geospatial industry is growing; it appears to be vibrant, thriving and healthy.
It appears a rising geospatial tide is lifting all boats.
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Mecca! There’s nothing like the energy of getting thousands of like-minded individuals in one place, focusing on one common goal, to grow what they are passionate about. And in the case of GIS, this passion has an increasing impact on the population at large via the Web and mobile applications. There’s nothing like seeing a small, scientific niche industry grow and mature to take over the world!
Lemmings