Inspiration - Trends in GIS technologies - ESRI UC first day
2005 was the first time I attended the ESRI Users Conference, always in the same location: The San Diego Convention Center, with the large banners hanging from the arches of the long clear glass corridor. Bumping into sticky-bearded Arabs and white coats, brunettes from the African continent with smiles of chalk corn and isolated Hispanics hoping not to spill out to take a new selfie to show off on the Face.
Three things I remember very well of that date, of which already does exactly 10 years:
1. Life is an adventure.
Each stage of our days brings its own anxieties, satisfactions and learnings. I remember those days when my work was 80 kilometers from home, my son jumped with excitement and looked for the ball when he heard me arrive on Friday night, while my daughter, just two years old, looked at me with big eyes wondering who that uncle was that disappeared the rest of the week.
The other year my son goes to the University, and my daughter does not take more explanations than that smile to warn me of fears that I have not lived yet.
Such is life of exciting. I remember that in that year I went for the first time to the ESRI User Conference. It was just my second trip to the United States and we were going through a crisis of fear in the project in which I was involved. They paid us but we didn't know exactly what month it was because we had been towed for like three months and the credit card provider had us on the list for the Central Risk Bureau. So one Monday Raúl had to lend me 50 pesos to buy lunch and take the bus to Tegucigalpa to look for the travel expenses.
The afternoon of the following day was eating a delicious breaded seafood in a piquetero Restaurant of the Embarcadero of San Diego.
2. Inspiration is among the people.
Being in the midst of 35,000 people, in an auditorium with gigantic screens arranged to see in acceptable size what is barely seen on a distant stage, is inspiring. But not because of the environment, but because of the people. Seeing Jack Dangermond present what his life is, made me change my mind regarding my sectarian criteria between one brand and another, between the proprietary and the open source that in those years barely appeared.
We may disagree on many things, but we must not forget that companies of this size built the market in which Free Code now coexists with the box closed. To prove that they were the ones who brought to the masses the specialty of gurus, the complexity of my geodesy laboratory that I could barely understand, to people who passionately enjoy it in their hands, between the contempt of the knowledge behind and the complicity of opening doors to us. who live from the geospatial context.
It was so inspiring to see that pile of cheles with their disheveled manes, like the stretched out faces of the English at Infraestructure Inspired in London, like the dark circles under the eyes of the gvSIG Free Days. Extreme in postures, but cloned to the measure in inspiration for what they do, between mixtures of the complex and the practical that seem to be part of the same behavioral script that not even they can express themselves.
Remembering it right now gives me chills, seeing the admiration and expectation for innovation competitions. All of them are the same, inspired both by the Be Award of those years, and by the Europa Challenge that those of gvSIG have now won. Royal!
I saw him again one day with equal intensity, when Hugo Chavez came to my country to insult businessmen in the middle of the Presidential Square. Life made me stop believing in almost all of the things he said, not because of ideology but because of lived experience. But boy, I was surprised by how inspired I was by his idea, nothing to do with the caricatures of revolutionaries from my country who had been left wearing green Fidel Castro-style caps and wearing Che Guevara shirts. That afternoon was a lesson in disrespect for the extreme right and an inspirational chair for the impersonations of those who believed they were on the left side.
Inspiration is in people ..
3. The secret is in knowing where things are going.
But if there's one thing you learn from being at an event like the ESRI User Conference, it's understanding where things are going. At these conferences you will not learn a new trick, there is not even time for repetition in slow motion of a question, much less if we are from a Hispanic context that we prefer to understand the message than to waste time in a translation by finger. It is understood in a flash what will happen in the next two years, not only in the software of our preference, but in a pattern that is irreversible in the world market.
When you return to your own land, it is possible to enjoy the same community in miniature format; between Raúl's homophobic jokes, Chamaco's strange taste for Rock Crunch, Jorge's carnivorous abilities, Melissa's pretty eyes, Manuel's good bitches, Wilson's moon shift, Bárcenas's space puffs. That world where it is difficult to be serious and where another laugh never hurts. There, without realizing it, common sense leads us to prepare the way for the trends we saw; aware that what is seen in the United States will happen here in five years, that what is seen in Spain could take three years, and that what was seen in Munich could never happen here.
But it is there where the puffs materialize, landing from astral UML models to basic steps that municipal governments occupy. Those who cannot be taken to GIS while they do not make a good CAD, who care little about the 3D GML if its basic aspects are to combat tax evasion from the outside and not be so smeared with corruption from within; there, where they see little interest in the WFS-T while their fear is that the Superior Court of Accounts will raise a list of responsibilities for not having applied the cadastral values agreed for the last five years.
So it's true, an ESRI User Conference shouldn't cause a brand fanatic to stress, or an aversion to the open-source Taliban. It is an event to be inspired with an open mind, to see where things are going, half of them copied from ideas of free software, as the other half on this side were born there.
And as a sample, I leave the 5 videos of the best we have had today in San Diego.
Opening Video
GIS around the world. Part 1
ArcGIS Earth
Vector Map Tiles
Big Data & GeoAnalytics
