- Author: Shane T Feirer
The first day of the 2024 ESRI User Conference was filled with exciting announcements and innovative stories of Conservation and GIS. With around 21,000 attendees in San Diego and an additional people joining virtually, the energy and enthusiasm were palpable.
Plenary
Jack Dangermond and the ESRI team highlighted several new offerings in their plenary session. Notably, they introduced new datasets in the ArcGIS Living Atlas, including a national tile service of parcel boundaries and a feature layer of iNaturalist species observation data. These additions promise to provide users with even more comprehensive and valuable data for their projects.
The Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, a former high school Geography teacher, delivered an impassioned plenary speech on the importance of GIS in solving the challenges we face today. He emphasized the critical need for maps, data, and the work that GIS professionals do to address global issues.
New Apps and Features
ESRI also showcased a range of new apps in ArcGIS Online:
- Portfolio App: Designed to help users highlight key maps of interest, making it easier to share important insights with others.
- Web Editor App: This app offers a web-based editing experience similar to editing in ArcGIS Pro, making it more accessible for users to update and manage their data.
- Generative AI in AI Assistants: The inclusion of generative AI enhances the capabilities of spatial analysis, providing users with more intelligent and responsive tools and apps.
Additionally, several new story map templates were introduced, adding more options for users to create compelling narratives with their data.
Looking Ahead
With so many exciting developments on the first day, attendees can look forward to even more innovations and detailed sessions over the next three days. The future of GIS is looking bright, and the tools and features unveiled at this conference are set to drive the industry forward.
Stay tuned for more updates and insights from the 2024 ESRI User Conference in the coming days!
- Author: Shane Feirer
Have you ever wished you had your own geoportal like ArcGIS Online within your own ArcGIS Online Organization, now you can with Esri Arcgis Hub. ArcGIS Hub and the Sites it can create will allow you to do just that. Now within UCANR we can create sub sites within our organization account. We have the ability to create sub sites for other groups in UCANR like Integrated Pest Management (IPM), 4H, Master Gardeners, to name but a few. I look forward to rolling out these Sites to other groups and team within UCANR.
- Author: Shane Feirer
Day 1 at the User Conference was dominated by the Plenary talks of ESRI Owner Jack Dangermond and others. The morning plenary by Mr. Dangermond and other ESRI Staff is where they highlight the newest technology that we now have access to from ESRI. In the past I have heard of the User Conference as the “Show” and it continues to live up to that name. This year they highlighted the new machine learning and AI tools that have been integrated into ArcGIS and the new capabilities of ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Portal, and ArcGIS Pro. Over the coming days I hope to highlight these technologies and more in greater detail.
- Author: Shane Feirer
The third day at the ESRI User Conference was a good day with serveral great sessions about Web Scenes (online 3d scenes), think google earth with ESRI data and ESRI Story Maps. What are ESRI Story Maps?… to quote ESRI “Esri Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content. They make it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story.” To see many examples of ESRI Story Maps submitted by other GIS users following this link to view the Story Map Gallery .
I think that this technology could be used extensively by IGIS and UCANR to communicate what we do to our internal and external audiences. We could use Story Maps to highlight the UCANR Research and Extension Centers, the UCANR Statewide Programs, the UCANR Strategic Initiatives, and the list could go on. To use these technologies to their fullest we will need to collaborate with many different groups within UCANR including Communications Services, Marketing, and Digital Media groups. As I stated yesterday, I look forward to implement these technologies in the near term as well.
Beyond these sessions I met with many ESRI developers to discuss different GIS tools, GIS apps, GIS workflows, and solve some of the technical challenges that IGIS has been facing with ESRI tools in the GIS Service Center in the past year.
It was a good day and I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings.
- Author: Shane Feirer
Today was the first day of the ESRI User Conference in San Diego. It was a day filled with new software, apps, and inspirational talks by special people. The plenary talk today, as always, highlighted the newest and greatest software and tools in development at ESRI. These tools included ArcGIS Professional, this is a new desktop gis platform developed from the ground up to be a multi-threaded 64-bit application for the windows platform. This new application has new and more intuitive workflows for GIS professionals. Beyond the new software ESRI highlighted several new tools for building web and mobile apps that we can build with little to no programming. These apps ranged from new web apps that are available from within ArcGIS Online to new native application builders such as App Studio for ArcGIS that will allow for the easy design, implementation, and deployment of native applications for iOS, Android, Linux, and Windows phone devices. After the initial talk by Jack Dangermond and his team we had the pleasure to hear from the former Governor of Maryland about how local and state government have changed by using GIS. We also heard from the President and CEO from National Geographic Society and his vision for a geographically enlightened youth in the United States and the world and the role that GIS plays in this vision. Last, we heard from a head doctor within the World Health Organization (WHO) and the important role that GIS played in the control and the continued fight against EBOLA in the past year. I am sure that we will hear a lot more about these new software and apps in the days ahead.
To view videos from the Plenary Sessions they can be viewed and shared from the following link:
- Keynote from Jack Dangermond
- R&D at Esri
- Southwest Florida Water Management District - A Mission-Critical Approach to Water
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport - Web GIS Delivers Safety and Efficiency
- Beck's Hybrids - Feeding the World: Precision Agriculture Simplified
- State of Victoria, Australia, Government - Proactive Rejuvenation: Ignite Your Potential
- World Health Organization - The Battle against Ebola and Polio
- National Geographic Society - Understanding Geography
- Mentoring the Next Generation - Connecting GIS with Education
- Keynote from Martin O'Malley - Smart Government: Reduce the Distance between People