- Author: Robert Johnson
The Esri Developer Summit in Palm Springs was, as usual, a very informative look into the resources Esri provides for those who want to take their software to the next level. Although this year's conference was a bit light on major announcements (they're probably saving all the good stuff for the User Conference in July) there were still a few interesting takeaways:
- ArcGIS Notebooks are continuing the trend of tight integration of Python with the ArcGIS suite. While currently available through ArcGIS Enterprise portal, the next release of ArcGIS Pro is going to support Python Notebooks directly in the desktop environment.
- Web apps are becoming lighter, more efficient and more mobile-friendly. Progressive web app standards are making it easier to develop functional, responsive web apps rather than needing to delve into the more complicated world of native apps.
- ArcGIS Pro is finally going to support publishing to standalone servers in the next release! Esri is framing this as a tool for transitioning to Portal servers, but those of us that still use standalone servers will take it.
- ArcMap really has become obsolete. While Esri is still pledging to support it for "years to come", all new functionality will only be available in Pro.
All in all, the Dev Summit is a great resource for keeping up to date on all the cutting-edge technology that Esri has to offer. It's a great learning experience and I look forward to attending again in the future.
- Author: Shane Feirer
IGIS worked with UCANR Advisors Mike Jones, Rick Satomi, and Yana Valachovic to conduct two 2-day training workshops in Northern California the week of March 18th-23rd. These workshops were held in Santa Rosa, CA and Arcata, CA. and they were well attended by approximately 20 participants at each location. The intent of these workshops were to bring the participants up to speed on the latest GIS software (ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Online), best practices in cartography, managing data, and spatial analysis, and mobile data collection (ArcGIS Collector, ArcGIS Survey 123, and Azenva).
IGIS will conduct these workshops two more times in the coming months. These workshops will be held at the following locations and dates:
- Lake Tahoe Community College, April 25 – 26
- Shasta College, May 10 – 11
For More Information: Please see the following website: http://ceshasta.ucanr.edu/Forestry/ForestGIS/
Register now at: UCANR.EDU/GISWORKSHOP
- Author: Robert Johnson
It's that time again! The worlds largest GIS User Conference has returned for its 38th year and the first two days have been jam packed with content. This is my fourth time attending, and I'm always a bit surprised by how much the conference seems to have grown every time I come down. This year's attendance is around 16,000 people and it shows! The halls of the San Diego convention center are filled with an unbelievable human tide and I've been in a couple of sessions that were standing room only.
The first day's plenary session was quite a production as usual, but was lacking in the type of big announcements of new software or major updates that have been the norm in years past. Highlights included a look at how Disney Imagineers developed the city of Zootopia using Esri's CityEngine software and a thought-provoking keynote address from Dr. Geoffrey West about the growth cycles of biological organisms and their links to the development of urban areas.
Some highlights from Day 2 included a session on the continued integration of Python and R into the ArcGIS Desktop environment, particularly ArcGIS Pro. The closest thing I've seen to a major announcement so far is that raster support is coming to the R-ArcGIS Bridge with the release of ArcGIS Pro 2.1. I also atteneded a session on Esri's Drone2Map software which looks like a simplified version of Pix4D which has been very nicely integrated with ArcGIS Pro. I think the biggest takeaway from these first days has been that I really need to start seriously working on migrating to ArcGIS Pro!
I look forward to what's in store for the rest of the week. Stay tuned for more updates!
- Author: Shane Feirer
The ESRI User Conference in San Diego was a great conference to attend this year. We were able to see the new offerings from ESRI that will be available in November of this year. ESRI will be releasing ArcGIS 10.3, this incremental release will have many improvements as well as new offerings that IGIS will be able to make available to the UCANR GIS Community. These new offerings will include ArcGIS Pro http://pro.arcgis.com and Portal for ArcGIS http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisserver/extensions/portal-for-arcgis.
ArcGIS Pro is a new desktop application that will be available to all users of GIS within UCANR. ArcGIS Pro is a multi-threaded, 64-bit, project based GIS system that provides a fast responsive desktop application for the GIS professional. It will allow user to have multiple layouts in one document. It will enable the GIS user to have 2d and 3d layouts available in one project. It is what we as GIS users have been requesting for many years.
Portal for ArcGIS prior to the 10.3 release of the ArcGIS Suite was an extension for ArcGIS Server that had to be purchased separately from ArcGIS Server. In November Portal for ArcGIS will be available for UCANR to install on the ArcGIS Server and it will provide a user interface similar to arcgis.com but within the UCANR intranet. This will open up some interesting options for UCANR.
Beyond these two additions we will be providing access to a new open data extension for ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS for Cad. The open data extension will allow us to provide an open data portal where the UCANR Network and the general public can go to download our data for use in other geospatial technologies. We will provide the ability to download certain data types such as, shapefiles, kml, or csv files. The ArcGIS for Cad extension will allow cad users within UCANR to leverage ArcGIS resources with Autocad. This will allow UCANR to update our cad drawings of our infrastructure and have drawings with the proper coordinate system and additional attributes that are not available with Autocad.
Beyond these upcoming software releases and tools the ESRI User Conference was a wonderful opportunity to renew old and create new relationships with other GIS professionals and to see how others are using GIS around the world. I look forward to putting these new technologies in place in the next year and to hopefully attending the user conference again in 2015.