This year at the ESRI user conference we were reminded in the opening plenary session welcome address from ESRI President and CEO, Jack Dangermond that the "Focus is on you". what Jack meant was that he urged us to  focus on each other and to teach each other - after all, "We are a global network of professionals". Seemed like a very appropriate introduction message given the heightened awareness and hype surrounding web services, data sharing, and social networking.

Key Moments
 
A couple of key moments from the plenary I thought were when we heard Dangermond mention that "We are working on all of the worlds challenges and doing very important work {applause} . "We are building an information infrastructure. a new kind of powerful information that will be used for creating a sustainable future".
 
Sharing People's Work
 
Always a treat, the crowded room was then treated to a couple of minutes of slide shows of amazing examples of work being done all over the World using ESRI Geo Technology solutions. Some of the maps from users that were presented included: Maps of air pollution, threatened species, ocean chlorophyll mapping, climate change and the effects of change on the ice shelf etc. planning to respond to natural disasters; human health patterns and issues, housing foreclosures and the effect on the economy, census of populations, and I could go on and on. Many of these topics were mapped in amazing displays of work {or art perhaps} in the map Gallery - always a fun stroll during the conference and a great chance to appreciate the work being done by GIS professionals from the corners of the Globe.

 
Awards Time
 
Dangermond always appreciates the efforts of his clients and this year was no exception as the plenary session then turned to a short awards ceremony - you can tell that Jack really digs sharing stories of some of the fine work being done by his friends and customers.  Cindi Sales of Center Point Energy  (the 3rd largest utility in the USA) was on hand to receive the Enterprise Application Award from Jack - they were integral in getting the population back up and running after several major hurricanes. The Government of India's Dr K Kasturirangan received a special award from ESRI for their role in playing a key role with the integrating of remote sensing with GIS applications. This yea's President award went to the State of Maryland as the State's own Governor Martin O'Malley was on hand to receive the accolades for their role in re-inventing the popular Geo Web Service, CityStat. More than just an analytical tool, we heard how CityStat just might be the linchpin of a powerful new movement. From the Governor. " his may be the most powerful connection that we will ever see. strengthening connections between our hopes and responsibilities. we have the potential to changer the course of our city, state, county, planets history [enter CityStat, BayStat, RecoveryStat].
 
More on StateStat and GIS in Maryland
 
The State of Maryland was given loads of stage time at the plenary and Governor O'Malley took advantage of this to share some details of the work being done in the State. He noted how at public meetings there's always that one person who asks. can you show me my house?  Indeed a good question and one that is ideally suited with a response by us in the GIS profession. StateStat  is about sharing information rather than hoarding it.  it's about timely accurate info, rapid deployment of resources. It helps drive progress. and naturally its about the map - a smart map. StateStat helps Maryland to deploy resources. O'Malley  was eager to share that his state has achieved a 40 percent reduction in violent crimes in just a couple of years and perhaps more impressive, using the Maryland Greenprint solution, SmartStat has been used to assign an ecological value to every land parcel in the State, helping to protect areas and telling State planners and workers "what we should do not what we should not do." BayStat is helping to manage the water resources. helping reach remediation goals, manage sewage. To help address the current economic climate, they are tackling the challenge of home foreclosures in the State by using ESRI technology and looking at where the foreclosures are and trying to determine the effects and topics to address.

Note: See more in this article from ESRI - Governor Martin O'Malley Leads with GIS

ESRI's Jack Dangermond with Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley

  "This is the most exciting time of my life"
 
After the awards we heard Dangermond go on about the topic of GeoDesign, obviously a subject that is dear to his heart! Geodesign is an evolutionary step, he commented, the web is linking us and tying us together into a larger network or infrastructure. Publishing mobile streams, building mashups, enterprise integration, linking departments in an effort to build a spatial infrastructure.  We're seeing  a pattern of web GIS, not a replacement for desktop mapping. According to Jack. "This is the most exciting time of my life and its about to explode."

ArcGIS Online is all about Sharing

From here the plenary session turned from looking at ESRI's customers to a look at the road ahead, in particular, a look at What's next at 9.4.
 
Obviously, ArcGIS 9.3.1 is first and foremost on most user's minds, however, you can't come to an ESRI UC and not wonder what's the next big thing from the next major release. At 9.4, ArcGIS will be more easy to use, will make users more productive - think fast display, integrated search, dynamic table of contents, direct access from desktop to oracle spatial and SQL spatial. Of particular interest, users will experience numerous administrative updates and you`ll be glad to know that concurrent use of  ArcGIS 9.3.1 will be provided. Other noteworthy enhancements and updates at 9.4 include:
 
New UI with dockable windows
New catalog window (hide, dock)
Attribute table to be displayed in a dockable window
New faster search tool
New reprocessing model home button with new model build options.
New undo and redo functions
New layers tab where features that aren't on the map display are hidden from the TOC and update accordingly
Ability to change symbols by doing a search instead of lengthy browsing
A  New time tab in layer properties and time clock for ArcMap to enable faster temporal data selection and viewing - {Yes, ArcGIS is becoming time aware}
Pan with continuous refresh and redraw = FAST

 
At 9.4 we'll see  simplified editing to enable users to get work done faster:
Improved selection
Improved snapping to features for editing
Loads of new search enhancements
User contributed content will explode
Simplifying and advancing cartography. multiple scale mapping and generalization improvements {a tough project we're told}
Generalizing in multi-scale environments
Dynamic text enhancements, useful for map books where updates are given from the DB for labels, system information etc.
Creating multi page PDFs eg.. Using python scripting via ArcGIS server then consumed via ArcGIS web service. imagine a dynamic online web map book ala ArcGIS server sending out formatted PDF map books to non-GIS users.
Python becoming the accepted standard programming language for geographic sciences.
 
New functionality via:
Fuzzy overlay modeling
Enhanced raster performance on large datasets
Integration of time through the whole stack
New tool location allocation
Support for Gravity modeling
Time dependant routes
ArcGIS is a complete 3D GIS at 9.4 {Support 3D and terrain editing, integrate real time video}

 
At 9.4 ArcGIS becomes an image analysis workstation with more image processing tasks available to end users  via single click of a button. ESRI is leveraging the technology of  partners like ITT along with the functionality of the ENVI products.
 
Finally, we are all well aware that mobile GIS is growing rapidly and it will eventually serve to connect everybody, enabling real time situational awareness {I just love that buzz-word!}. At 9.4 we'll be treated to an improved mobile platform with much new functionality, even on new devices like the iPhone (yes we saw ArcGIS running on iPhone!} Also, look for added support for Tablet PC data collection - a huge and important part of the GIS project workflow. 

For photos from the ESRIUC See Here

For live video stream from ESRIUC See our Qik

Notable Quotable from ESRIUC plenary... How do you get a politicians attention if they only have 10 minutes to listen to you?? How about a picture... Or a map! (Source: Hernando deSoto)