FedUC

ESRI Federal GIS Conference Wrap-up

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After arriving a little late on Day 2 due to needing to push updates to an application we’re building for an NGO, I was able to catch most of the session about deploying ArcGIS Server in the cloud. James was sitting in the front and has already blogged that session so I won’t go into detail about it here. One thing that did jump out at me came during the Q&A, when someone asked about certification and accreditation (C&A) of AWS deployments.

If you work in the Federal space, you know that C&A is a huge issue for the deployment of any information system, regardless of platform, for the Federal Government. Since hosted deployments essentially mean outsourcing your physical infrastructure, information security types have understandably proceeded with caution here.

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#EsriFedCon Day One – Users Will Be Happy

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I didn’t catch the first half of the Esri Federal GIS Conference plenary but James did a good recap of it on his blog. I did, however, catch the second half and the opening of the exhibit hall.

GIS letters from the road

This year was a departure from previous years in that it wasn’t a litany of the new things coming in each component of the Esri stack. The “GIS letters from the road” theme drew attention to problems that can be solved by leveraging the entire stack as a unit. It was a good twist that made it impossible to just drop in, hear about your favorite Esri product, and drop out. I have to give kudos to Esri’s marketing team for taking it in this direction.

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Esri Fed Conference

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I’ll be attending the Esri Federal User GIS Conference this week. For various reasons, I’ll be attending on the “Increased Carbon Footprint Plan” and commuting to and from the conference each day. I’m looking forward to the reprise of the DevGeo session this year as well as a number of the sessions and also meeting … Read more

My Day At the 2011 FedUC

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For a variety of reasons, I only spent one day at the FedUC this year. I chose Thursday because that was the day of the DevGeo session, as well as the National Security Session and a SIG in which I was interested. As a result, I did not see the plenary or any of the big-screen demos. With a few meetings crammed in, my day was a whirlwind. What follows is my view of the FedUC but it is by no means comprehensive. To get a more complete picture, I suggest checking out Adena’s updates over at Directions.

#FedUC

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DevGeo Session at the Esri FedUC

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We are approximately a month away from the Esri Federal User Conference. It is probably the largest geospatially-themed event in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area each year and has gotten bigger each year. I have documented this conference in the past and have pointed out that, despite its name, there is a lot of information that can be of value for state/local and other non-Federal users of Esri products. Given constrained travel budgets, it’s a good option for people who may not be able to make it to San Diego.

This year, Esri has added something new to the FedUC. It was somewhat innocuously tweeted by Jim Barry last week but is, in my opinion, a significant addition. If you check the agenda, you will now see that Thursday, January 20 now includes an all-day DevGeo session. This is a follow-on event to the inaugural DevGeo session put on in Silicon Valley in November.

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Browsing WeoGeo Market Using the ESRI Silverlight API

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Updated: This demo application now running here. I will update this demo periodically, as time permits, so keep checking back.

At the 2010 ESRI Federal User Conference, WeoGeo announced the availability of a toolbar for interacting with WeoGeo Market and private libraries from within ArcMap. This, combined with Dan Dye’s series of posts showing how to use the WeoGeo REST API with Python got me thinking about how easy it would be to integrate with ESRI’s clients for the ArcGIS Server REST API. All of my clients (it seems) are using the Silverlight API these days so I am spending a lot of time with it and decided to use it as my testbed.

My goal was simple, I wanted to browse the WeoGeo Market for any data sets in the current map extent, be able to select one from a list, and have its preview image display in the proper location on my Silverlight map.

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First Thoughts on ArcGIS 10.0

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The announcement that ArcGIS 9.4 is being re-christened as 10.0 leaves me feeling somewhat bemused. I have seen the new version of Desktop and it is nice and will finally update the current Office-97-feeling UI. The list of changes coming in 10.0 (published so far) is impressive but I haven’t seen any discussion of the changes coming to the ArcGIS architecture, which is of greater interest to me as a developer and integrator. Given the past history of ArcGIS, calling this release 10.0, in my mind, implies a significant architectural shift. ArcGIS 8 was a clear departure from the previous releases of ARC/INFO. Indeed, it not only came with a new version but introduced the name “ArcGIS.”

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