Tag: edn

Link – EDN Videos

Brian Goldin has posted to let us know that ESRI has posted some really interesting videos up on EDN. If you’ve ever seen a video on Microsoft’s Channel 9 you’ll have an idea about how Brian did these. I love them because they are raw, just ESRI employees talking about what they love. There are times that ESRI feels like such a closed environment, but with videos you get to see behind the scenes on the ESRI campus in Redlands. Don’t let the EDN site scare you because one of the new videos is with Corey Tucker who is lead product specialist for the geoprocessing analysis team so even GIS analysts will get value from these videos. If you are new to GIS and want to know more about what GIS analysts do, you should check out that video with Corey Tucker also as he gets into building models to perform analysis. On top of all this, Brian is soliciting feedback on his blog and he’s open suggestions for new videos.

How about an ArcExplorer video?

Link – EDN Search gets a tune-up

Brian says that EDN search has been improved. Honestly though, I can’t recall how the old search worked because I’ve never used it (I just don’t like the interface at ESRI’s support site). As a developer though I’m glad they have gotten this working because anything that causes me to go to EDN is a good thing as the only value to EDN right now is the software. If you work for a company that already has all the licenses, EDN doesn’t give you anything more than you already have. Now that the search is working, maybe we’ll see some more enhancements such as an improved ArcScripts and maybe more ESRI posted code samples to play with.

Link – Value of GIS

I can’t bring myself to actually watch that video, but I hope this is the start of something similar to what Channel 9 is doing over at MSDN. I think video is a great method of showing what ESRI is doing behind the curtain. It is so hard to figure out what is going on over there that a behind the scenes view would be great.

No more PR videos though on EDN, I’d guess most of us going there already know the “Value of GIS”.

Brian Goldin has some news about updates (dead link) to the ESRI Developer Network on his blog. I’m interested to see how this plays out over the course of the User Conference and I’m hopeful people will take advantage of the new comment features. I like the idea as it is much quicker to get feedback this way than wait for that post UC email survey we all get after the conference. Just login to EDN and post your comments right after each Technical Workshop. Hopefully someone will mention it during the Plenary Session on Monday.

Brian also points out that EDN also has a survey on blogging (dead link). I’m going to go fill it out right now and hopefully everyone who has a blog that talks about GIS/ESRI/Programming will do so too. Also don’t forget to comment on the lack of RSS feeds at EDN. I’m sure Brian would love to hear about that.

Rob Elkins asked me in my previous post about EDN for any suggestion I might have.

• ISO downloads – I’ve come to rely on this for MSDN. Many time while traveling I might need something and I always know I’ll have access to the complete MSDN catalog. I could see where I might want to install another server product on my laptop or reinstall one that screwed up my system. While I love the EDN binder, I can’t imagine carrying it around with me. Also updates could be gotten much quicker than waiting for UPS.
• ArcGIS Desktop – I can see why ESRI didn’t include it with the EDN, but I think to get the full functionality out of ArcGIS Server or ArcGIS Engine, you need ArcInfo/ArcEditor/ArcView. My company has ArcInfo and ArcView, but no ArcEditor. Many of our clients do have Editor and I’d rather have an ArcEditor license to test my applications on. I’m not really sure how this could be implemented, but I do think ArcGIS developers need access to ArcGIS Desktop.
• ArcPad and ArcPad Application Builder – EDN seems to focus on ESRI’s server products (well ArcGIS Engine aside), but why not mobile GIS?
• MapObjects and MapObjects Java – Yea, it isn’t sexy, but MO is and still will be very popular. Adding this to the EDN can only help existing programmers get more out of the products by sharing code and samples via EDN.
• Python – What about scripting? Python is used quite extensively with ArcGIS and I can only assume will increase in the future. The EDN web should focus much upon this to get people caught up who are stuck on VBA and Avenue/AML.
• EDN Magazine – I’d love to see more detailed articles than those that get published in the current ESRI publications.
• Additional EDN website enhancements – I’m sure these will come, but more RSS feeds (so I know when to download those new ISO CDs), webcasts, columns or blogs by EDN staff and “power programmers”. The start is good, but don’t let it slide over the summer. With the User Conference around the bend, the traffic at EDN will grow. New content will keep them there and improve the community for all of us. Heck, who wouldn’t like to see http://blogs.edn.esri.com or something similar. ESRI has very bright people, let them tell us what they know about the development tools and some great new ideas they have come up or have seen.
• EDN User Conference – Why not? Could be just held at Redlands as long as you don’t continue to have earthquakes right under the campus. This would be more technical that the Business Partner Conference.

EDN is still early in its life and I’m sure ESRI has thought long and hard about most of my suggestions before I even knew about EDN. Personally I love it so far as we have finally gotten into ArcGIS Engine development and we’ve only had it for a little over a week.

I’m quite impressed with ESRI and their EDN. For a first time effort, they really did a great job. I haven’t seen any pictures of what it looks like so I thought I’d upload a couple of our copy. I apologize for the quality of the pictures as the only camera we had left in the office today was quite old.

The front cover of the EDN

Getting started with EDN

The GIS Servers section

Information about GIS Servers

A close look at some of the tabs of the EDN