Welcome to ESRI User Conference 2007: Amateurs Go Home!
Well, I'm at the ESRI 2007 User Conference for the first time in three years. There's apparently 13,500 people here — there were "only" 10,000 last time. The San Diego conference center handles them all gracefully.
The highlight of the first day was, without a doubt, the forceful and intelligent presentation by The Green Belt Movement's founder, Wangari Maathai. Her discussion of poverty and environmentalism was moving. The GIS demo they managed to wedge into her talk was distracting, but mercifully brief. After hearing the ESRI propganda machine in full roar it's easy to be cycnical about Jack Dangermond, but his dedication to conservation and the environment is genuine. Seeing him highlight social justice and conservation is good.
That aside, the plenary was quite disappointing. While some of the usual suspects have round-ups that make it look like a lot is being added, I find little to be energized about. They are integrating Image Server with ArcGIS server. Wonderful, I can't wait to see how badly hacked together that API will be. They are enabling "mash ups". Welcome to 2005. Thanks. [Update: Breathless cynicism about PostgreSQL support has been removed from this post.] They admitted that their support stinks, but as Dave Bouwman properly points out, their spin ("we were overwhelmed by demand") is hogwash, no matter how pretty their info-porn chart was. Support is overwhelmed because the product has more bugs than a sewer tunnel in summer. Yes, good of you to apologize in front of 13,000 people. Seriously, that's something. But then it was the usual schtick: hours of demos of new features. New features are directly correlated with more bugs, not fewer bugs. Simple as that. It is abundantly clear ESRI is not serious about reliability or usability. (One lame "pause labeling" button notwithstanding.)
They're not serious about speed either. Their ArcGIS Explorer demo was "screaming fast". Well, sure it was. They must have had that blessed thing caching for a day. Dave, go with your gut. Of course it was all cached. Have you ever watched it in real life?
Dangermond's discussions of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft seemed just as ginger as they were at the Developer Summit. He admitted they were broadening the reach of GIS to the public, which fits nicely into his "I'm just in it for the science, what I'm a billionaire too? " spiel. Of course he must be terrified by companies who make more in a few months than he has in his whole life. The attitude at the moment seems to be, "If you're using Google or Microsoft for anything, you're clearly an amateur, and you can go $*#& yourself." Of course Grandpa Dangermond would never say that — he let his attack dogs do it on stage, but the effect is the same.
True "professionals" will make "authoritative" data and "publish" it to these "free, consumer" services. Now don't get me wrong: the authoritative legal boundaries for the lot my house shouldn't be created by a bunch of click-happy MySpace kids through Google Earth. True. But dismissing the entire consumer-based renaissance (and simplification) of GIS strikes me as a bit silly. Like Microsoft, ESRI has no choice but to continue focusing on adding more features to win ever more select enterprise deals, defending their monopoly. They are too hidebound by backwards compatibility and their own elitist echo chamber to participate in the mass revolution.
You know what, if I ran ESRI I might do the same thing. After all, running further and further up the value chain makes money. Building applications the rest of the industry has had for decades (e.g. the much-lauded "ArcLogistics" demo) and calling them new GIS software must be satisfying as a programmer. (Seriously. Scheduling? This is a new problem?) But as an attendee of the show, and especially as a programmer, I don't see the wonder and sparkle in it. I see endless corporate sales drivel and really really pretty graphics.
Let's hope the presentations of the real software reveal some more satisfying detail underneath this depressing propaganda. And thank goodness for the wonderful presentation by Dr. Maathai.
14 Comments:
Well I guess that's one take of the plenary, although I think it is sounds fairly biased on "loving to hate them". Why is it that people always are so paranoid towards the biggest players? I mean they usually get big for at good reason.
I don't really get that you first rant about that there is not really any big news, and then rant about that they are putting too much into 9.3. Which is it?
Btw, as far as I know (and on the contrary to what Dave posted), SDE will support the native PostGIS spatial type - you might want to confront the SDE team on that and let us all know.
Sebastian, I can almost hear the steam coming out of your ears. The UC is supposed to be a relaxing time. Did you know that Fred's serves half-price margaritas before 5pm? The afternoon sessions are a dead zone anyways. I find a half-dozen margaritas on the patio really helps me deal with a generally recalcitrant universe.
I think you got most of it right, but area little off on a few things. As a programmer, none of that news was useful to me either. Quite frankly, I'm just here this year to corner some SDE developers and collect business cards so I can bypass the front-line support.
Up front, Jack admitted they weren't adding much to the product suite for 9.3. And the demo's reflected that--a few usability tweaks here and there. And, of course, a reminder of a few products they haven't showcased in a couple years in case you had a few grand to spare.
New features? I think I saw about six new features. Everything else was a reminder of already-done features. I was able to very several of the features already existed in 9.2 (which were not called "new" BTW).
You keep perpetuating this notion that ArcSDE won't support native PostGIS types (i.e. "shooting the bird to the entire PostgreSQL spatial community by not adopting their spatial type"), even though nothing has been announced to support this claim. The ESRI reps and devs I've talked to pre-conference have all stated that native PostGIS will be supported.
Some of the "spin" that you've put on the ESRI comments and demos I think are a bit one sided or simply don't make sense. Amateurs can go #$() themselves? I'd definately call ESRI pretentious and arrogant, but I don't think they sent that message.
Tell me--has anyone ever PRODUCED data using Google or Microsoft? And if they have, can you point me to a tutorial on producing data?
When we talked to Google a few months ago about their over-priced fusion server, they flat out told us to go somewhere else--GE can't "produce" data. So amateur or pro, I don't see how "publishing" data to not-really-free-consumer services is telling a huge segment of their customer base to go #()@( themselves.
Maybe I'm just slow... or maybe I've just drunk too much kool-aide and am now brain-damage.
I've been taken to task for exaggerating to make my point. Fair enough. If the nasty little PostGIS spatial rumor is false, I will be delighted to have been proven wrong in perpetuating it. As for the comment that I ranted both about there being no big news and that they're putting too much into 9.3; gosh, that's not what I said. I said they were adding a lot of stuff that didn't excite me. I don't work for the land office or the army. The CAD and real-time stuff might have really blown my socks off. Fair enough. I just said I could care less and that they were not exactly out there solving new problems. (Then again, as a colleage pointed out at dinner tonight, what's the deal with rubbersheeting cadastral data? Some foot-to-meter coordinate inaccuracies may not matter much when figuring out flood plains, but when it's my property line I'm not so excited about some Friday-afternoon rubbersheeter stealing my flowerbed!) And yes, it looks like I should head for some margaritas.
Sebastian, you've clearly been to these conferences before. My rule with anything Jack says is "I'll believe it when I see it ... on my workstation".
On the SDE-on-PostGIS meme, ESRI has been pretty clear for a while that yes, it is going to happen in 9.3. The downside is that they are also going to build their own ST_GEOMETRY spatial type.
True... ESRI has stated they will have their own ST_GEOMETRY implementation in addition to supporting PostGIS types.
I think you may be right on ESRI's willingness to embrace technology from "hostile" entities. Though, I think the proprietary type for Oracle has more to do with Oracle's broken implementation than anything else... Excuse my language, but it's a total piece of shit.
At the 2005 UC we were told that ArcGIS 9.2 was feature complete and would be released within 6 months. A year later at the 2006 UC 9.2 still hadn't been released and Clint Brown told us (on the main stage during the planery session) that the delay was to ensure delivery of a high quality, bug free product. As we know, the final product had numerous new features, data models, functionality, APIs, and associated bugs.
Keep this in mind when setting your expectations for the 9.3 release currently scheduled for Q1 '08.
Just got back from talking to the SDE folks. They've confirmed that both PostGIS and the ISO ST_Geometry types will be implemented. I should also be on the beta so hopefully I get to try it in the fall.
They commented that their internal testing showed better performance with their spatial implementation than PostGIS... Whether or not that's true (I plan to do some testing), I think it tells us what we already know...
They're a private company and have some IP they want to keep under their control. Would we expect anything different from any for-profit?
Sebastian--
Have you seen how surveys were done before GPS... or for that matter, with GPS?
A couple feet lost due to rubber sheeting is the least of your worries.
Sebastian, are going to the meetup at Mr. Tiki? Is there any other IRC going on besides planetgs?
David.
Indeed surveying with and without GPS in the CAD world is a bit of a mess. I just bought a house whose lot was literally 18 inches narrower than the (previously) official survey. I shudder to imagine this already-imperfect business being further distorted by repeated integrations. I suppose this is one of the reasons "amateur" data doesn't scare me as much as "professional" data. It's all totally unreliable!
I'd love for my lot to shrink just a bit. It makes the expensive fence repairs the neighbor's problem, not mine. :-)
I think with just a little education (or willingness to learn), amateur data could easily out-perform pro data.
That said... how can convince my coworkers that with GPS, "3 meter accuracy" means "UP TO", not "GUARANTEED"... Argh!
Check out my photos!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Nonie3234
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