GIS Conference 2009, Rotterdam

Last week, wednesday 23 and thursday 24 september there was the yearly GIS Conference in Rotterdam, organized by ESRI Netherlands.

In my time as Autodesk Techical Consultant it was unimaginable that I was present. But now as independent CAD/GIS Consultant, with an invitation from ESRI Sales & Marketing in the pocket, I was one of the 35% novices.

Of course I have attended many of these conferences at Autodesk and I was technically responsible for much European Sales & TechCamps, but the audience there where the Autodesk partners, the resellers.
These conferences where ment to explain the Autodesk GeoSpatial strategy to them, so they could evangelize to their customers, the end-users of the software.
Important part of these conferences where the technical trainings in the form of handson workshops.

The ESRI GIS Conference is an end-user conference and for many customers a yearly returning event.
These conferences are a showcase of end-user success stories, with guestspeakers who present GIS technologies & trends in general and from ESRI in particular.
Besides that there is a tradeshow where ESRI partners can show their added value, applications & services and meet with their customers.

There was a lot of interest in the Microsoft Surface Touch Table applications.
Long time ago computers had only keyboards as input devices, the mouse introduced a new way of working with software. Multi touch tables or walls are a new way of presenting data and working with software.

During the mainstage sessions and technical breakouts there where a couple of ( technical ) topics – like using Mashups in JavaScript, Flex & Microsoft Silverlight and the new ESRI NL Resource Center for sharing information – that draw my attention.
In the following posts I will go into more details.

ESRI Netherlands and Geodan signed an agreement to drive the development from the public safety system Eagle to the nex level.