Just made my reservations at the Wyndham and it looks like the 19th and 20th are just about booked up. If you haven’t made your reservations and want to stay at the Wyndham, better get on the phone now. The two conferences overlapping is causing the middle to be quite a premium.
Ron Bruder emailed me to point out the lack of love that Desktop developers are receiving at the Dev Summit. I’ll be honest Ron, my first reaction was, “WOW, they actually have Desktop sessions”. Last year there was a huge hole where Desktop should have been as most of the focus was on server. I’m guessing it is too late for more Desktop only sessions to appear, but the best thing ArcGIS Desktop developers can do is pack the sessions and make ESRI sit up and take note that Desktop Devs are people too. A prefect opportunity seems like the “ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS Desktop Panel Discussion”.
This panel discussion is your opportunity to meet the ArcGIS Engine and ArcGIS Desktop team leads and ask technical and product-related questions for .NET, JAVA, C++, and COM. Panelists will address questions ranging from current patterns to future enhancements as well as product-related questions like licensing.
Yea, that isn’t much but let those folks know how you feel.
I’ve been traveling the last few days so I’m very behind. Anyway I’m not sure how many noticed that there are some big changes to the ESRI Business Partner Conference. An email that I’m sure many received reads:
The ESRI Business Partner Conference (ESRI BPC) will have a new emphasis for 2007. The conference will focus on targeted sessions for sales, marketing, business development, and product positioning. These are designed to give you real-world strategies and skills critical to drive new business. You will come away with greater insight to help you align more closely with ESRI and drive more business to your company.
In the past the BP was more technical than the UC was in general. Now with the very successful Developer Summit, it appears ESRI is going to refocus the BP on business development. Now the twin conferences (Business Partner and Developer Summit) complement each other, rather than overlap. If you aren’t interested in marketing or “product positioning”, you can now safely skip the BP and go skiing at Big Bear. Just another sign that the Dev Summit is huge and will be getting bigger this year. Better get off the bench and make my reservations!
I seem to have stirred up a couple of ArcGIS Desktop developers. They want to know why ESRI isn’t having an ArcGIS Desktop Code Challenge like the Server contest. I don’t know either and it seems a little weird to me how Desktop is getting pushed aside lately. I’ll say this, I don’t know too many developers really getting into ArcGIS Server 9.2 so I’m guessing you’ll have a great shot at winning a prize if you enter some code.
I see Brian Flood has posted some more screen shots of the latest Arc2Earth Publisher. Yes it is easy to create simple maps on the internet with ArcGIS Desktop. The beta continues to roll with a new build out yesterday.
Taking a gander though my referrers, I see that a new Manifold “fan blog” has started up. Manifold = God? has the tagline “Searching for the Ultimate Truth about Manifold GIS, the Best GIS the World has Ever Seen, and Ever Will See…”. I’m subscribed!
Looks like I wasn’t the first to notice this gem. That is what I get for being in the field all day.
ESRI has a contest starting up in conjunction with the 2007 Developer Summit. The ArcGIS Server Code Challenge wants you to submit your best AGS code samples that can include any creative solution s using ArcGIS Server 9.2. Entries will be judged by the developer community based on creativity, applicability, and originality of the code sample. The first 15 submittles will receive ArcGIS Server Administrator and Developer Guide book from ESRI. Now for the prizes:
Just upload your ArcGIS Server 9.2 code to ArcScripts and then complete the entry form by 5:00 p.m. PST on February 28, 2007.
The developer community will vote on the code samples and winners will be announced at the Developer Summit this March in Palm Springs, CA. This should be a pretty good opportunity for any AGS developers to get some recognition as not everyone is working with AGS 9.2 code (though this contest might get some people to start) yet.
Now this is a camera I would have asked Santa to bring me!
I won’t bore you with Press Release garbage so you can read it on your own time. The link to the brochure is here. This is the first “true” GPS camera I’ve seen and I hope it is just the start of something big.
I’ve been beta testing A2E publisher for the past week and I have to say I’m in love with it. The ability to take ANY ArcMap view or layout and publish it to Google Maps, Virtual Earth (3D Included), OpenLayers and of course KML. Just publish and A2E creates a webpage to send to users. They can choose if they want Google Maps, Google Earth, Virtual Earth or even Open Layers.
One of the problems with just sending KML is not everyone can use or has Google Earth as an option. While it is true you can use Google Maps to view KML, it still needs some work. A2E Publisher allows you options (you don’t have to offer all the choices if you don’t wish) so that you can be pretty sure people can view the maps. I think I’ll find myself using PDF and ArcGIS Publisher much less when this gets out of beta, that is for sure. Check Brian Flood’s blog for some screenshots and more information about A2E Publisher.
Chad pointed me to the Worldwind-dev Email list (I had unsubscribed because not much was happening) thread where it appears that ESRI is interested in collaborating with Worldwind. Patrick Hogan put it very well:
Whoever accomplished this would certainly be deserving of world class notoriety. “This” would be getting the ESRI tools successfully implemented. I believe this is possible through ESRI output to formats that World Wind could pick up. The tighter the integration the better. But it does have ESRI support.
Now there are no details whatsoever as to what this “integration” might be as no one has even though about how it should work. It is easy to put the cart in front of the horse here because generally ESRI culture subscribes to “not invented here”. It will be interesting to see what happens here, but it might take a long time if it happens at all.
