Noteworthy Gems from the 2017 Esri DevSummit – Plenary Notes and 10 Favorite Things

From Jack Dangermond,  “You make the apps and maps that run the world.”  Yes indeed, when you think that the room was full of developers who create web apps, web maps, and maps to analyse and manage such pressing issues as climate change, disaster planning and response, urban planning, feeding the hungry, routing transportation, maintaining the smart grid and even helping to get you to your local micro brewery or pizza place it was tough not to get pretty stoked! At the 2017 Esri DevSummit plenary Dangermond went on to share some history and his vision for ArcGIS which is now at V 10.5 and evolved to “ArcGIS Enterprise”,  a complete GIS in your infrastructure. The event, as always, was inspirational and motivating.

A couple of highlights from the opening keynote

  • The Science of where describes what we all do. It is bringing together geography and technology and transforms the world by unlocking the full potential of data within orgs everywhere.
  • DevSummit attracted about 1800 attendees, 30% of them were first timers, and 300 Esri staffers were there to present and support their users. This was the 12th annual event, best described as for developers by developers.
  • Devsummit set the tone for what to expect at ESRIUC… where you can expect to hear lots about the Living atlas – think base maps, imagery, demographic data where the access to these data are integrated into ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS enterprise.

There was much to discuss, see, hear, and learn about at DevSummit this year. Of particular interest were mentions of real time data feeds, the focus on 3D, amazing data visualization particularly via the new Insights, ArcGIS as an enterprise platform, and finally, the roll out of tools and solutions that enable almost anyone to use ArcGIS online and extend the platform by creating custom apps (without any coding). If I had to share 10 topics that resonated with me from the week these are the topics that I suggest you may wish to explore:

  1. ArcGIS Arcade – Dec 2016 for awesome webmap themes and map creation, see https://developers.arcgis.com/arcade/
  2. Living atlas, many basemaps new out of beta https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/
  3. Smart mapping in 3D demo… see the web scene spec documentation http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/smart-mapping
  4. See create a mobile map package for building your own offline map apps, packaged in a compact format of your base map and operational data layers – See more
  5. Building widgets in webapp builder – Build and share your widgets http://www.esri.com/software/web-appbuilder
  6. AppStudio a one stop shop for testing and deploying – http://www.esri.com/landing-pages/appstudio
  7. Collector is maturing, for field data collection. Explorer has “markup” and is very cool and fast to create, share, upload features – http://www.esri.com/products/collector-for-arcgis
  8. Vector base maps – create your own base maps – https://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2017/01/31/esri-vector-basemaps-updated/
  9. Operations dashboard – presents data in an engaging way – http://doc.arcgis.com/en/operations-dashboard/
  10. The new ArcGIS developer subscription – includes Essentials, Builder (make cross platform dev easy); Pro (extend the ArcGIS platform); Premium (advanced data management); Enterprise (the complete platform includes a devsummit reg) https://developers.arcgis.com/pricing/
  11. BONUS: Focus on the User Experience UI/UX!

The Esri UI/UX Poster – download it HERE

Were you at DevSummit? What got your attention? What are you most jazzed about in ArcGIS 10.5? Feel free to drop a comment or send a tweet @geojobegis

Note, if my Top 10 picks aren’t enough for you, Esri, via the ArcGIS Blog, has shared their 20 Tech Session Presentation Videos

See Also:

GEOspatial Evangelist & CMO

Geographer, GIS professional, writer, and fan of all things mobile.

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