some pics and a video at 2008 ESRI UC

Hi, today is Tuesday, 8-5-08, and this place is jumping with activity. There's people everywhere and the internet and email connections have already slowed to a crawl because of the amount of traffic going through their servers :-( I don't have much time at all so I'm just loading a few interesting pics and a short video. Three individuals of note are: Jack Dangermond, the founder, owner, President of ESRI (the software company that is putting on this entire convention); Scott Moorehouse (bearded guy), who is the Lead Technical guy-in-charge of all software development at this company -- Jack calls him one of the best software engineers in the world; and Peter Raven, the keynote speaker who is the world famous botanist with 30 honorary Ph.D.s (and a real one, too!). The video is that of a musician who performs at this conference each year. He "name" is Lord of the Cello and he plays this home-made electric cello. He is actually pretty famous and has appeared in movies, TV shows, has CD recordings, and has performed all over the world.

This place is such a melting pot of nationalities, becuase it is a global conference. There are all kinds of languages being spoken, and many of the presenters are Chinese or Indian, or East European, etc (all software development engineers).

Pics...
Jack Dangermond


Scott Moorehouse


Peter Raven



Lord of the Cello (the upload times are so great that I'm not going to upload the video becuase it is a large file...so here is a picture of the musician)


funny car



Ok, I'm running late for the afternoon session, so I'll be off now.

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...

Sunday, August 4, 2008

Today, I had a good hot breakfast at the Embassy Suites, and it was complimentary! They serve all kinds of omlettes made to order, french toasts and pancakes, scrambled eggs, lots of varieties of fruits, juices, cereal milk, coffee, donuts, pastries, etc etc. It is pretty major. And you can eat your fill downstairs and then take a full tray of food to your room if you like.

Next I walked over to the convention center for my 8:30 AM workshop on ArcHydro Groundwater - Managing groundwater data in ArcGIS. the walk to the center was very comfortable as the weather was cool and there was a nice breeze in the air. I met up with an Indian lady from Bangalore, who has been teaching Biology for non-majors at Ball State Univ in Indiana. She's beginning to use GIS software in her curriculum and is here to attend the parallel GIS educators' conference. She has been in the States for 11 years. She is also staying at the same hotel.

For lunch, I walked several blocks to a grocery store - Ralphs - where I had the best turkey salsalito panini, for about $7. I then had a nice walk back to the convention center for the start of the afternoon session.

The session was interesting but not very applicable to what we do at work. But the work that these people are doing is amazing. And there were so many nationalities among the presenters today, including American, Indian, Chinese, Serbian, German, Australian, and probably others I don't know about!

I tried to post my zoo pics (I have about 75-80) on my picasa web album but I cannot because the conference organizers have decided to control some amount of internet traffic so attendees don't create major bottlenecks in the network. And since uploading pictures of a personal nature can do that, I'm not able to access picasa web album from work. I will try later from the hotel. Btw, for others who may/may not read these posts, I also cannot access the vpn server at my workplace from here...turns out the organizers only allow connections to some very basic/mainstream vpn servers and block attempts to open a lot of different ports (I hope I'm making some sense here). Fortunately, I can still use webmail to access work-related email, so all is not lost.

I'm done for now. I just spoke to Eliza, and she is already on the LEX bus back to Urbana. Her plane was over an hour late so she missed the bus she was originally scheduled to be on, and had to catch the later bus for an extra $10 fee :-( doesn't sound fair that airplane delays are passed on to the customer in the form of extra fees. LEX already imposes a $5.50 fuel surcharge on their tickets, which makes them much more expensive than the Amtrak!

Ok, I will try to load my zoo pics and some misc pics from today to picasa web album later tonight and send you the link somehow. Got to go now.

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

It is about 10 PM (PST) and I am beat. I woke up at 5:30 AM (CST) this morning to get ready for my journey from Urbana, IL to San Diego, so I've had a long day. On our arrival a couple of us decided to go out to the zoo at Balboa Park. We took a couple of buses (#2 followed by #7), despite the advice from the hotel folks to take a cab for the same price. They were clearly wrong on that because Balboa Park was quite a drive, and all-day unlimited bus passes can be had for $5, a price that would be easily exceeded by cab fare to and back from the zoo.

The zoo was very nice and the weather was even nicer...warm and sunny but definitely not unbearably hot and humid like in C-U. This zoo is reknowned for its panda exhibit, which drew huge crowds today. Tickets to the zoo were $24.50 per adult (without bus rides or the air safari), and food inside the park was very expensive as well. We hiked (up and downhill) for at least 6 hours and then caught the bus back to Broadway and Fourth, from where we had another good 20 minute hike to the hotel. Along the way I picked up a chicken shawarma sandwich and a yogurt drink from an Iraqi restaurant in the Gaslamp District (very touristy nightlife area). I counted at least 3 Indian restaurants and a Brazilian steakhouse which smelled delicious from the outside. Other restaurants included a few sushi joints, Turkish, southern Spanish, Mexican, steakhouses, Irish, seafood joints, etc. There was a very beautiful hotel along the way too, although I forget its name now.

The Embassy, where we are staying is fairly close to the convention center (like a 10-min walk), and there is a 24-hr grocery store and restaurant nearby as well. The hotel also has a Starbucks and a seafood restaurant, although the restaurant is pricey!

I will end here today. The flights from Savoy to Chicago, and from there to San Diego were pretty uneventful. The teeny puddle-jumper we were on from Savoy to Chicago was very cramped and uncomfortable. Even the overhead bins were so tiny that my carry-on would not fit in the bin. I had to place it between my feet, and my feet then had nowhere to be placed. Luckily the flight from Savoy to Chicago only took 23 minutes! The next flight took about 3.5 hrs, and we flew over the mighty Mississippi River (to Moline, IL), then IA, KS, AZ (Phoenix), and CA. The landscape in AZ and CA was very dry and rocky/hilly. We saw numerous circular irrigated fields and irrigation canals that stretched for many miles.

Ok, more to come tomorrow (maybe). Good-night.