Day 5 - Leaving San Diego for the Grand Canyon, US

Yesternite we have lekket time with the Americans. The ESRI night party ended at about 22h30. There was lots of live band performances from all the corners of American - Hollywood, New York, Luisville, New Orleans, and more.

This morning we are leaving San Diego to the Grand Canyon. (Looking forward to seeing this world national wonder.) We will fly to Phoenix and then to Flagstaff where we will hire a car. (I will be driving a left-handed car on the right side of the road - Wow!) We will drive up from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon-South Rim.

Few minutes before leaving San Diego. This pic I took from the 2nd floor at the San Diego Convention Centre.

Pic of Phoenix, a desert city in Arizona, taken from an aircraft window view.

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 3 - ESRI Conference, US

Today, I started my day by using a treadmill to keep myself in good health. I met a US African-American gentleman by the name Desroy Gordon who's from Florida. He works for the engineering division of the Florida Government. He has an IT background but was introduced to GIS. We had a talk about Africa - he wants to visit Ghana and Zimbabwe (and probably meet Mugabe) - he is not keen to visit South Africa because he says it is developed just like any other country.

I attended my first session on GIS and Learners Programmes where I learnt about TheDigitalBus of Hawaii. This is what I would like to see in South Africa - a mobile class on a bus with laptops, GPS and other Science tools. TheDigitalBus is used for specific projects that require the students to go out to the field to capture information and then return to the bus to do analysis and mapping, and the present the findings.

Soon I will be attending some sessions of GIS and Business Intelligence, and other interesting sessions. You just can't have enough of the exhibitions. I was fascinated by a GIS/video/streaming solution that is also used by GoogleMap Streetmaps.

I did not visit the Waterfront as planned, but I took a walk in San Diego Downtown until I reached the FreeWay to Los Angeles. On my way there I met a lot of people walking very fast. I decided to follow them and see where they are heading. To my surprise, there were heading to the Baseball stadium where some big teams were playing. I am not a Baseball lover and I was not prepared to spend money and time to watch the match. However I took some videos and also interviewed one lady about the Baseball game.

Different timezones...
I haven't got used to the different timezones of San Diego and Cape Town. I wanted to remind my wife to take some thing to her workplace, so I phoned her at 08h30 (San Diego time) in order to reach her at 05h30 (Cape Town time) just before she goes to work.

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...

Attending an ESRI Conference in San Diego USA

I will be blogging my day-by-day activities during my trip to the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, California, United States of America.

I am so excited to be selected to attend this International GIS conference in America. It's my first time leaving South Africa. Wow! "America, here I come!"

The conference will be hosted at the award-winning conference and exhibition facility, the San Diego Convention Centre on the 17-22 June. On the 22-24, I will definately be visiting the Grand Canyon, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. (Grand Canyon is number 1 on the must see list of places you
must visit in your lifetime, published by Jim Shahin in American Way Magazine
) I also intend to visit the famousSan Diego Zoo and, only if I can miraculously get extra bugs I can visit, the DisneyLand Park in Anaheim, CA (2 hours drive from San Diego).

Visit my blog daily for an experience of my American Trip.