ESRI UC 2020 Day 1
What a year! Because of Covid/the Corona Virus/The Rona, the UC this year unfortunately was virtual. I was super sad about this. The UC is a fantastic reminder that I have a seriously cool job. Being able to attend the UC in person, you are overwhelmed with people from around the world that also do GIS, which is a stark contrast to doing GIS in Utah and being one of very few. That being said, ESRI did a FANTASTIC job with the UC! Being virtual, I had ZERO issues with connecting to classes, listening to speakers, I never lost a connection or was kicked out or had lagging issues, and that is a huge feat! So, great job!
Because it was virtual, there were only a handful of class offerings each hour, and all from ESRI staff. They also split the plenary sessions into one hour segments each day, instead of all day Monday. I think that was a great idea.
So Monday started with the Plenary. There were over 80,000 people attending virtually! From around the world. Can we take a moment to reflect on just how many people that is?? Wow. The most attendees in person at an UC I've been to was 27,000. Good ol' Jack started us out. I immediately noticed his curly q's, probably from the lack of haircuts in California during quarantine. He showed us a video titled "GIS in Covid." It was fantastic. The super famous covid case map released by John Hopkins, was created by a student. It has had over a trillion views to date. Way to go!
This was the 40th UC conference. I can't imagine the celebrations (and swag) we missed out on! Jack said the first UC had 11 people. He was a little intimated by our numbers this year, until he remembered we were happy, friendly nerds.
Some maps highlighted were covid air pollution change, which was just plain crazy. Our air is so much cleaner and skies clearer when we all stay home and work from home.
Jack said he was proud of our work; it's meaningful. He gave the "Making a Difference" Award to the John Hopkins map. Well deserved!
This years theme for the conference is "GIS Interconnecting our World," which means creating understanding.
Some new features to look forward to in the next software release is using dot density in online maps via map viewer, world hillshade in living atlas by using "blending," new color ramps for the color blind, new suitability modeling in Pro, Jupyter notebooks integration in Pro and AGO, Voxel in Pro (3D visualization, CO in the atmosphere, can show x,y,z and time), new field maps app, new auto save!! (woo-hoo!), and a new version of enterprise released in the fall. Fantastic!
Some fun stats -
Watch my award-winning and uber creative UC Day 1 video here.
Because it was virtual, there were only a handful of class offerings each hour, and all from ESRI staff. They also split the plenary sessions into one hour segments each day, instead of all day Monday. I think that was a great idea.
So Monday started with the Plenary. There were over 80,000 people attending virtually! From around the world. Can we take a moment to reflect on just how many people that is?? Wow. The most attendees in person at an UC I've been to was 27,000. Good ol' Jack started us out. I immediately noticed his curly q's, probably from the lack of haircuts in California during quarantine. He showed us a video titled "GIS in Covid." It was fantastic. The super famous covid case map released by John Hopkins, was created by a student. It has had over a trillion views to date. Way to go!
This was the 40th UC conference. I can't imagine the celebrations (and swag) we missed out on! Jack said the first UC had 11 people. He was a little intimated by our numbers this year, until he remembered we were happy, friendly nerds.
Some maps highlighted were covid air pollution change, which was just plain crazy. Our air is so much cleaner and skies clearer when we all stay home and work from home.
Jack said he was proud of our work; it's meaningful. He gave the "Making a Difference" Award to the John Hopkins map. Well deserved!
This years theme for the conference is "GIS Interconnecting our World," which means creating understanding.
Some new features to look forward to in the next software release is using dot density in online maps via map viewer, world hillshade in living atlas by using "blending," new color ramps for the color blind, new suitability modeling in Pro, Jupyter notebooks integration in Pro and AGO, Voxel in Pro (3D visualization, CO in the atmosphere, can show x,y,z and time), new field maps app, new auto save!! (woo-hoo!), and a new version of enterprise released in the fall. Fantastic!
Some fun stats -
- AGO has over 9 million users
- over 1 million web apps made
- 120 ESRI books
The first class I attended was "ArcGIS Pro Road Ahead." In the next release (2.6), there will be a trace network (targeted for hydro), the ability to edit portal webmaps in Pro, project recovery/backup (auto-save), new imagery change analysis, Voxel (3 or 4 dimensional cubes), and this should be released in the last week in July 2020. The 2.7 release will include an eyedropper tool that is being developed. There are over 1500 geoprocessing tools.
There were over 1600 people in this session. The presenter finally admitted what I've been saying for years - that Pro cannot do everything that ArcMap can. ArcMap will be supported through March 2026.
The second class I attended was "ArcGIS Story Maps: What's New and What's Coming." They suggested we explore with GIS on National Geographic's website. We had the pleasure of hearing from Allen Carroll, the founder of Story Maps in 2010. He said there are 1.3 million story maps hosted. Upcoming releases include half and half side cars, floating panel sidecar layout, slate theme (newspaper inspired. 6 themes available), tidal these (light blue to dark blue as you dive deeper into your story), guided tour story map, swipe block story map, navigation links at top bar has a 30 character limit, as of June you can now add audio to story maps, you can disable map navigation (making it a static map - but why use this instead of a jpg or pdf?), you can change mapping displays in your story map, you can now print story maps, you can group story maps and create collections, 10.8 story maps available on enterprise, new transparent floating panels, on guided tour maps you can now choose your own map!!, and coming soon you'll be able to choose your own color template. 750 people attended this class.
Watch my award-winning and uber creative UC Day 1 video here.
