Day 2 - ESRI Conference, US

Today was the first opening for the exhibition booths. I was so exhited to meet some guys from Google (Google is one of my favourite companies in the world). After they developed their famous GoogleEarth view, they continue to venture into new fields. Yesterday morning as I was watching CNN news from my hotel room, I learnt that Google has installed PV panels on their campus builds - the energy produced will cater for their electricity requirements. Google also announced a huge grant of $10 Million towards research and development of hybrid vehicles. These guys are doing their bit to act against carbon emissions which is threatening the global climate.

Microsoft is also present with their Spatial viewer, the Microsoft Virtual Earth. I was also shown their new smallest computer called OQO - a pocket laptop. Technological developments do not stop to amaze me. From digital pens, to camera's with GPS, and more. Through attending the workshops in hundreds of break-away rooms, I was impressed by the netCDF tools which allows to display spatial data in multi-dimensions and allows for animations and simulations and videos. Some of the applications for the netCDF is the weather forecasts, wind speed and direction, etc. The netCDF is a powerful that comes with ArcGIS 9.2 that allows you to plot your normal x- and y-coordinates together with altitude above the ground, and a time factor. That's how you can map out the weather simulation as you always see it on TV - it has always been done by Weather Systems, but now GIS is taking ground. (You will understand that GIS is one of the took that has been highlighted to play a big role in Climate Change mapping.)

At the end of the day I attended a an Africa Regional Users Group, where I met representatives from the UN, and members of other African countries. I was a very interesting session indeed. There was a general comment that there is a lot of data in Africa, but it is not well catalogued (meta-data). It was concuded that all African countries should catalog and share their public data at all costs. This was much desired by the researchers. I think I have made good contacts that I will follow up. (Out of 44 South African attendees only 3 were present in the meeting.)

As always I took a walk through the San Diego streets at night. Perhaps I can meet one of the Californian celebrity because they are often spotted in this beatiful and peaceful city of San Diego.