Welcome, albeit a little delayed, from San Diego where I’m here along with about 15,000 of my closest friends, colleagues, and GeoGeeks taking in the Annual EsriUC. With such a hectic schedule here, it really is tough to slip away, recharge (literaly) and synthesize, summarize, and digest all the news, announcements, and glimpses of Geo technology that we are all enjoying… honestly I’m not even sure I can decide at the moment where to begin! So, how about social media? Indeed there’s much more to this event than social media, however, there’s no denying that SM once again is playing a huge role in the event. Twitter has become the preferred channel for communication for many folks that are here in my mind. I’m seeing companies promote contests, announce presentation details, offer up free breakfast, push their drive and ride demo times, ask questions, schedule meetups, post jobs, share photos and video from presentations, ask for help, announce a lost item, ask to borrow a phone charging cable, and much more. Twitter truly is valuable while at such a large event. If you’re interested in seeing who’s been tweeting from esriuc you might consider watching this cool service that generates a table of results showing top users and tweeters from San Diego – way cool! And for an even way cooler summary of Social activity from ESRIUC check out this awesome Epilogger page – wow! Kudos to Lizardtech who’ve embraced social media from the event and are providing handy QR codes at their booth so people can checking, tweet, and like facebook right there on the spaot, nice! Finally, speaking of being social at the esriuc, thanks to all the tweeps who showed up to our 3rd annual ESRIUC TweetUP in the Gaslamp at Dick’s Last resort on Sunday. About 40 of us had a great time and thanks to Merrick & Company for their support and sponsorship of the event… much appreciated! See photos from the TweetUp and the conference here on my Flickr.
A few news/PR items of interest from the news makers that got our attention this week from the UC include: LizardTech Releases Plug-in for ArcGIS Desktop 10; Topcon esriuc Tip – 3D Mobile Mapping – Its all about the data! Capturx natural user interfaces for Command and Control from Adapx; ITT Announces Image Analysis Solutions for Industry – look for tighter integration of ENVI within ArcGIS; TomTom Delivers U.S. Census Beta Product to Enable Seamless Data Integration by Industry Partners; Esri Releases New Version of ArcGIS for iOS; Esri Acquires 3D Software Company Procedural – see more PR from the show HERE finally, if you like making awesome maps, consider the cool solution that Avenza solutions has rolled out with their online map store, a great way to create awesome intelligent PDF maps for mobile devices (iPhone/iPad) snd serve them up or sell them online – see avenza.com for more on that solution