Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Today is turning out to be another busy day at the conference. I've been to 4 1.5-hour long sessions. The presenters were American, Indian, Italian, and Australian! For lunch, I received a call from someone I had known from my days at the Geo Survey. He is a programmer/GIS developer for a private sector company called Ecology & Environment (in Buffalo, NY). He is attending along with 3 other colleagues from his Buffalo office, and we decided to try an Indian restaurant (Royal India) for their buffett ($12/person). It was ok...the items on their buffet were pakoras, white rice, saag paneer, veggie korma, butter chicken, naan, mango ice cream, and an assortment of chutneys. I also had a masala tea. There was another veggie dish which looked like some kind of eggplant curry. It looked oily and very red (= spicy hot) so I didn't try it. It was good to be able to do this with him. One of his colleagues is a south Indian named Jenny Ganendran. I had met her once a few years ago, but didn't see her this year, even though she is around at the conference. They are usually at this conference each year and its the only time I run into them. They also invited me to go golfing with them, but I chose not to. Tomorrow we might try a Brazilian restaurant at lunch. Just across the street fr om the conference center is an area called the Gaslamp District. it is packed with restaurants, bars, and shops of all kinds. You can try cuisines from just about everywhere in the Gaslamp area. Monsoon, Royal India, and another Indian restaurant are all located here.

Tomorrow evening, ESRI is hosting (this is an annual tradition every Thursday at these user conferences) a huge outdoor party for all attendees - 15,000 people!! They provide a lavish dinner, they have bands performing, there is a big fireworks display and many entertainment tents...there is a carnival feel to it. It is entirely outdoor in a harbor-side park, and the ocean is right there! This party signals the end of the conference, since there are only a few sessions on Friday morning, and most people spend Friday traveling back to where they came from. The party begins around 5 pm and goes until about midnight. Since the weather is always nice in San Diego, they don't have to be too concerned about heat, humidity, rain, etc. (they don't have any of it here).

After a day of sessions I walked around the huge exhibit hall, where vendors from all over the world show off their GIS products. ESRI also has exhibits over large sections of this hall, which is just as big as the Steve and Barry's store in Champaign. There were a few vendors from India, including ESRI-India, staffed with Indians. There were also a couple of other large vendor booths staffed entirely by Indians, although I didn't take a close look at them. Two of the sessions I attended today had Indian/Bangladeshi presentors. One was Shitij Mehta (woman), and the other was Nawajish Noman (who I think is from Bangladesh). They are both ESRI employees. The Kingdom of Bahrain was also there and giving away free shoulder bags. I got one. Bahrain uses GIS in a lot of government functions, but they were here to show off their defense applications.

I am done for the day and there is nothing left for me to do here, so I'm returning to the hotel. Btw, today's breakfast was, once again, omlette, bagel, fruit, coffee, orange juice. I also took a muffin and yogurt up to the room for an evening snack.

Tomorrow is the opening ceremony for the Olympics, so I hope you plan to watch it.