lindsyhalesbentley.blogspot.com

The first class this morning was Introducing Coordinate Systems and Transformations.  It was taught by an awesome man that you could tell this was his life's work and he knew everything about it.  He really got into the weeds, and it was fascinating. He had some awesome graphics. Coordinate systems tell us distance, location, and direction.  There are two types of horizontal coordinate systems - geographic (spheroid) and projected (flat map).   Vertical coordinate systems defines origin for height or depth.  There are two kinds - geometric model (base on elipsoid) and gravity related model (geoid). There are 80 projections ESRI support. There are 4 types of distortions going from round to flat - shape, area, direction, and distance. The define projection tool doesn't change the datum. Transformations means changing datum.  There are 33 transformations in North America.  The transformations list drop down are [supposedly] listed in the order

This morning was the Keynote Session. They started with an animated video about "how does our data feel."  Um.... The winners of the dodgeball competition get free entries into next years Dev Summit. I forgot to mention that upon checkin, they did not give an encyclopedia of marketing material and schedule.  Nothing but my name tag and a notebook.  They wanted everyone to download an app.  The app was glitchy but ok.  Come 2 o'clock, the plugs were jampacked with people fighting to charge their phones.   I deleted it.  I was glad I printed a copy beforehand and happened to bring it.  Thank goodness.  I think the app is a fail. The keynote speaker was Joseph Sirosh, the Corporate VP of Artificial Intelligence and Research at Microsoft. His speech was more of a marketing ploy.  He said AI is exciting because it's the opposite of natural stupidity.  He wants to infuse AI into every Microsoft product.  He tried to demo one of his projects ON AN IPAD... Someo