Day 4 - ESRI Conference, US

I started my day by visiting an Internet cafe sponsored by ESRI at the San Diego Convention Center. Checked my email as I always do in the morning and afternoon.

Today, I spent most of my time attending the demo sessions at the ESRI Exhibition Pavillion. Exhibitions on netCDF,. I attended a session on ModelBuilder - Dynamic Simulations with demos on Wildfire simulation and flooding. Another session attended was on optimising visualisation and performation of ArcIMS web maps. Yesterday I entered for many competitions including one for Apple's iPhone. The lucky draws will be done today and tomorrow. I hope to win something really good!

Tonight there is a Night Party. I am looking forward to enjoying the American night party, starting at 17h30 to 23h00. I will see how it goes....opportunity to network, perhaps make good friends. And you don't know which country I may end up visiting next.



Pics...lifting hands in the party mood

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.

Day 1 - ESRI Conference, US

I am having good here in San Diego...a friendly city. After I retired last night, I woke up refreshed ready to network with other GIS users.

The conference was opened by ESRI's president Jack who highlighted some of the success stories of implementing GIS to solve real-life problems, from disaster management to humanitarian reliefs, hospital tracking systems to . I was much fascinated by a demonstration of a picture camera that has an onboard GPS, that captures an image and geographic co-ordinates that can be used in an online mapping systems. They is so much development in technology that is readily available through the web provided by ArcGIS online Explorer, Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth...and these three are looking at co-operating to create seamless online maps.

I was also impressed by the keynote speaker Prof. Maathia from Kenya, the founder and president of GreenBelt Movement (a Non-Governmental Organisation that plants trees and creating economic livelihood from rural women in Kenya). She was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize from her contribution to the environment and contributing to peace efforts (especially fighting for the rights of women and the environment). She has personally planted 3 million trees through her programme. She believes that for every person who lives today, 10 trees need to be planted to offset carbon (carbon sequestration). She challenged everyone to do their best as long as they live to make this world better for our generation and future generations.

Pics...