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Geoinformatics-8-2009
event european user experiences esri european user conference vilnius, the capital of lithuania was this year s host of the esri european user conference. for three days, visitors were able to hear all about esri s current and future software releases, as well as european user experiences with the company s products. it was not all about technology though: special attention was given to esri s vision to give gis a more prominent place in the design and planning process, namely the geodesign concept. european presentations showed a growth in the use of web mapping services and initiatives between civilians and government agencies in contributing data and taking action towards a better environment. by eric van rees zymantas morkvenas, managing director of baltic environment his year s capital city of culture was chosen as the location for the esri 2009 european user conference: vilnius, capital of lithuania. the city, with its baroque architecture, was a perfect location for sharing european user experiences with gis. during the three days, participants enjoyed keynote presentations on the latest trends in gis, software releases and local user experiences in a variety of sectors. the official part of the conference started on wednesday october 14th. in the vilnius congress concert hall, a series of keynote speakers gave an overview of the latest developments in gis and a look at the future. in software terms, esri s current status of product development (arcgis 9.3.1.) was explained, as were plans for the future (arcgis 9.4., scheduled for next year). although very interesting, the most enlightening talk of the day was jack dangermond s keynote on geographic awareness, a result of his clear vision on how to proceed with gis technology in the future, not only focusing on technique but also on how to make use of it in the broader context of the design and planning process. t server-based gis for establishing a platform on the web. future releases will take much more advantage of the possibilities the web offers, such as serving data, creating communities of users, resources for online user application downloads, and map editing in arcgis. of course, technology developments change the way people work , but people s work habits also influence technological progress. since the arrival of initiatives such as inspire or the american government initiatives such as data.gov, there has been a tendency to focus on data sharing and creating services to facilitate this. dangermond mentioned citizens themselves as a source for creating geodata, and he predicted the enormous potential of the web enabling geospatial applications for the masses, encouraging a new collaboration between citizens, governments and these groups themselves. the gis professional of tomorrow will have a very distinct role, that can be seen in combination with the aforementioned spatial planning process: mapping the future with a purposeful design of the world, encapsulating gis knowledge. with this, gis will be given a more active role in geographic planning and decision making than it has at the moment. a lot of attention was given to the future release of arcgis, 9.4. and its ability to make this geodesign (as it is called) happen. overall, 9.4. promises to dramatically improve usability, performance and functionality. concerning geodesign, arcgis 9.4 improves the editing experience by making it more simple and intuitive. easy data entry, symbolbased editing and pre-attributed features that are supported by desktop geodesign dangermond sees how people are interconnected with each other by solving problems with gis. by way of technology for instance, people are more connected through online communities, arranging their daily work around it. he proposed a more science-based approach for acting and managing the environment, a more holistic approach that takes into account how different steps in a chain of actions can fit together and lead to environmental change, through measuring, analyzing, visualizing and designing. it s not surprising that esri sees huge potential in web gis, focusing on pupils present their first experience with gis 42 december 2009
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