Monday, August 4, 2008, PM

Listening to the keynote speaker Dr. Peter Raven was pretty inspirational. The man has won the National medal of Science, has held the McCarthur and Guggenhiem scholarships, authored 20 books and hundreds of publications, has over 30 honorary Ph.Ds!!!!!!!! He was born in Shanghai, taught at Stanford, leads the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which is one of the world leaders in plant studies, and has traveled the world. He quoted Mahatma Gandhi on a couple of his slides. In one of them he had this qoute: "the world provides enough for every man's needs but not for every man's greeds". He was talking to us about being better stewards of our environment (and how GIS is a powerful tool to work with).

Now for some shop talk...I heard about some of the new developments in ArcGIS version 9.3 (released just a couple of weeks ago) and version 9.4 (a future release). Some cool ArcGIS Server 9.3 technologies include Image services, Arc Logistics, Arc Mobile, Mashups, ArcGIS Explorer (480, with 600 being a 2009 Q1 release). Many desktop editing enhancements were also demonstrated.

ArcGIS 9.4 will include some of the following enhancements: better user interface; updated icons; dockable windows; improved rendering; integrated searching in desktop; email map from desktop; streamlined feature editing; improved snapping; mini toolbar; better selection tools; improved layer attributing; GIS design tools, etc. New stuff in Arc Explorer 600 include 2D and 3D integrated services, and many more.

Yesterday, I met a Nigerian-British graduate student from Portsmouth, England (I think). he is finishing a M.Sc. in GIS/geography and is interested in transportation GIS. This is his first trip to the international user conference and his first trip to America. He funded his own way and came to catch up on the latest in tech developments...pretty impressive for a student to come this far!

I took a few more pictures at lunchtime - a trolley, crowds of people, a funny car, etc. and I'll post those on picasa when I get a chance. ok, this is it for the day and I'll be back tomorrow.

Monday, August 4, 2008, AM

Today is the official opening day of the conference. I finished my breakfast and left for my walk to the convention center at 7:45 AM and arrived here in about 15 minutes. The walk was not as pleasant as yesterday, because the day is already very muggy :-( There are a LOT more people on the streets today because most of attendees probably arrived yesterday evening or later. I think they are expecting about 15,000 attendees this year (dwarfed by Comic Con's 100,000+ just a couple of weeks ago at this same center).

The plenary session will run today from 8:30 until 3:30. Many legends of GIS, including Jack Dangermond, the founder and owner of the company will speak. This is their big marketing blitz, when they go all out to impress the GIS world with their latest software products. The show is really impressive, and most of the 15,000 attendees are expected to be here in this massive hall this morning! I'm looking forward to this session, and especially the keynote speakerDr. Peter Raven, is a world famous botanist (you can do a wiki or google search for his name if you want to know more about him).

I will try to go drumming in the evening. The studio is kind of far away and I will attempt to get there on the bus, so it should be an adventure. Tell you more later.

Ok, I'll resume writing during a break later in the day...