Latest Contributions by ChrisCatania

Hi everyone - We're here in Washington, D.C. and excited to get started at the FedGIS Conference! Attendees are making their way in and grabbing their Esri swag bags and heading into the plenary. We'll be live blogging the plenary here on a separate blog post. You can follow that live blog for Monday morning plenary. Then over the next two days, we'll be starting separate session conversations and sharing updates as the event unfolds. Remember to follow the FedGIS Conference‌ space to get the updates and join the conversations.  Enjoy your time and thanks for following along. We look forward to your contributions! After the plenary, it was time to grab some lunch and listen in on a meaningful You Got The Job...Now What? panel discussion hosted by the Esri Young Professional team. The guest panel, which also included Esri owner Jack Dangermond, shared their collective career wisdom and insightful personal stories about how to build and cultivate productive relationships to further your career.  Feeling inspired and ready for the afternoon adventure, I headed downstairs to explore and see what was buzzing on the Expo floor of FedGIS.  The sires went off as I soaked up knowledge about how law enforcement in Philadelphia is using ArcGIS Pro to map crimes, fires and gang violence to help local investigators discover patterns and make better decisions when fighting crimes. Good to know the good guys in Philly are using the Science of Where and ArcGIS Pro to make their neighborhoods safer.  After the informative fire drill, I headed upstairs to get into data Sciences mode during the Analyzing Multidimensional Scientific Data in ArcGIS"  workshop. I learned a lot about what "on-the-fly rasta analysis using Raster Functions" looks like when you're trying to understand ice concentration anomalies using NOAA CTSR data. Cool stuff! I then slipped on the VR goggles and jumped into an immersive version of downtown Savanah, Georgia created by the team at SCAD who made this virtual world in 5 weeks using city engine. The project is a first step in figuring out how virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D printing can help improve data sets and create a more accurate digital version of the world around us. It was a pleasure talking with the SCAD team about their project because our chat led to a fantastic discussion that covered GIS and emerging tech, digital parenting and how the GeoNet Community has helped other SCAD student solve geospatial problems.  Day One ended with a great workshop about how citizen apps are growing in use and helping to crowdsource and fund the development of citizen science.  We hope you enjoyed following along as we cruised through Day One of FedGIS 2017! What were your highlights and favorite moments? What did you learn today? Thanks for sharing!  Stay tuned for more tomorrow and check out other discussions in the FedGIS Conference space.   ... View more

We're excited to announce that next week we'll be onsite at the FedGIS 2017 conference in Washington, DC.  During the week we'll be live blogging, sharing updates and starting collaborative session conversations here in the FedGIS Conference space and other groups throughout the GeoNet community.  Whether you're attending the event or following along virtually, we invite you to join the FedGIS conversation on GeoNet. What topics, sessions and conference events are you most excited about?  Thanks for joining and we look forward to seeing you and your contributions!  ... View more

Hi GeoDev Meetup group members!  We'll be sharing highlights and experiences from tonight's GeoDev Meetup at HackerLab in Sacramento, California.  In addition to the usual planned events and lightning talks, I'll also be sharing updates on the GeoNet Community strategy and how GeoDev Meetup members can get involved and begin their GeoNet Community journey.  As the evening unfolds and afterwards, we'll post photos and highlights from the talks and we invite all GeoDev Sacramento meet-up attendees to share your experiences, ask questions and join the conversation in the comments below. Thanks for joining us tonight and stay tuned for more updates!   UPDATE  I had a fantastic time experiencing and presenting at my first GeoDev Meetup and taking the GeoNet Community on the road. Good times were had for sure as I shared our Esri community strategy story with a very happy and mappy gathering of GIS pros.  It was a great night of sharing, connecting and conversation with the Esri GeoDev and GeoNet Community! From drones and water mapping to #GIS history and trends, it was inspiring to hear the lightning talks and learn what everyone is working on. And, as always, it's a pleasure to meet and hangout with such a smart group of geo geeks. You're all doing impactful work that's really making a difference in the world. Thanks for an excellent time, everyone! Here's a few pics from the event and be sure to check back for more info and links to presentations and lightning talks. What did you enjoy the most about the event? What did you learn? Share in the comments below!  If you're new to GeoNet, we encourage you to check out https://community.esri.com/docs/DOC-8961-geonet-community-guiding-principles?sr=search&searchId=7ed521c2-cad1-4138-b402-332d99dc58ff&searchIndex=0‌ for "Getting Started" quick tips and community guidelines.  ... View more

What a fun, fascinating and inspiring experience it's been at UC 2016! Whether I was getting inspired about the future of Esri during the plenary, discovering new trends in the expo or learning more about the power and possibilities of GIS in a technical session, I enjoyed my first UC and I hope you learned a lot this week too. We wrap up our daily UC updates with this final post about the closing session which includes highlights of the overall UC awards, the GeoNet MVP awards and the open Q&A discussion. (In case you missed them, a full recap of the plenary live blogging and daily UC updates is listed below.) The closing session started as Jack took time to introduce the team of Esri directors and thank attendees for making this year another valuable time of listening, learning and collaboration. Here's a recap of the numbers and hot topics that were highlighted. UC by the numbers: 16,000+ attendees 1,950 Esri Staff 556 students 138 countries 365 exhibitors 547 Young Professionals 42 Planery speakers 324 technical workshops 109 Special Interest Groups 268 Paper Sessions 354 Demo Theaters 1,262 Maps (Map Gallery) 568 Runners (Esri 5K) 4,000 Puzzle Pieces 51,600 Buttons Hot Topics: What was the buzz about this year? ArcGIS Pro Web GIS Apps Big Data and GeoAnalytics Real-time Insights Python API Content - (DigitalGlobe, Green Infrastructure, Vector Basemaps) Drone2Map Community GIS Have you read the UC Q&A? Jack spoke about the importance of the pre-conference Q&A and how critical it is to getting feedback and customer questions answered. He then handed the floor to Mark Harrower to announce the winners of the UC and GeoNet awards. Award winners (Maps and Application Fair) Here are pictures of some of the UC award winners. What a superb collection of map and application work that I'm looking forward to exploring more after UC. GeoNet Community MVP Awards It was a pleasure to see our top contributors Robert Scheitlin, GISP, Dan Patterson and Rebecca Strauch, GISP recognized for their contributions. Thanks so much to everyone in the GeoNet Community. We appreciate your contributions and commitment to making the community a valuable place to connect and collaborate. To see the other stories and stats from the GeoNet Community UC meet-ups this week, you can download a copy of our meet-up presentation deck here. Open Q&A The closing session wrapped with a lively open discussion between customer and Esri staff as Jack and the directors fielded live questions and feedback about everything from the user conference experience and newly released products to improving license agreements and enhancing marketing initiatives. Addressing a hot topic, Jack did a live in the moment "raise your hand" vote about whether or not there should be a paper pocket agenda made available next year and not only a mobile app or online version. More people voted to keep the mobile app versus only offering paper, but Jack offered an option to print the agenda if attendees wanted to, and Jack's suggestion received a loud applause of approval. Jack highlighted that the agenda and mobile app experience will continue to be improved and he appreciated the honest feedback. (We also invite you to share your thoughts in the comments on this thread: UC 2016 Agenda -- Working Much Better (6/22/2016) In my opinion.) It was moments like this during the closing session where you could see and feel how this final UC 2016 conversation between Esri staff and customers personified the entire spirit of user conference; which is to listen and connect with customers so we can work towards real solutions together to make the world a better place. Growing the community strategy. Let us know what you think of our UC experiment. It's been an amazing week and whether you were at UC or following along remotely, we hope you enjoyed the live blogging during the plenary and the daily updates here on GeoNet. As I mentioned during the meet-ups and in my welcome post, I'm focused on developing the GeoNet Community strategy with the goal of making the community more valuable and integrated into the business, so the UC live blogging and updates was something new that we wanted to experiment with this year as part of the growth of the community strategy, so let's us know what you think so we can improve it for next year. In case you missed it, here's a collection of the live blogging and daily updates we did during the conference. Timothy Hales and I couldn't cover it all, so we invite you to continue the collaborative conversation and post your experiences in the comments on each daily update post. Live Blog: 2016 Esri UC Plenary (Morning Session) Live Blog: 2016 Esri UC Plenary (Afternoon Session) UC Daily Discussion Monday 6/27: Map Gallery Highlights UC Updates Day 2: GIS Managers' Open Summit, GeoNet Meet-up, Education Sessions, Platform Enablement UC Updates Day 3: Esri 5K, Drones, GeoMentor, GeoNet Meet-up, Startups and more UC Updates Day 4: GeoNet Meet-up Recap, Regression Analysis and Nicholas Cage, UC Party Let's continue the UC 2016 conversation... What were your favorite moments? What did you learn and discover? What questions do you have? We look forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas and UC experiences in the comments below. Thanks for sharing and we hope you had a great UC! ... View more

Grabbing some gifts at the Esri store I started Day 4 with a need for some UC swag and I wanted to pick up some gifts the family back home so I explored the Esri store and grabbed a few of the slick "The Amazing Map Man," and The Flash-inspired "Powered by Esri" t-shirts. It was an added bonus to meet and quickly chat with Esri UC student assistant Jessica Leonard who helped to ring up my items as she shared her love for maps and walked me through her impressive UC button collection. Big thanks to all the Esri store staff and student assistants for helping out at UC this year. We appreciate your hard work and support! What swag, books and other UC gear did you pick up in the store? What were some of your favorite store items this year? GeoNet Thursday Meet-up: Inspired and building towards the future The final day of the GeoNet UC meet-ups were all about making new relationships, storytelling and meaningful real-time collaboration. The exploratory Esri rebranding feedback sessions with Christina Sullivan were insightful as community members shared their thoughts with Christina on what they thought of the branding statements. I was excited to watch these discussions unfold because the is exactly the type of collaboration and co-creation we're aiming to have in the community in the future. We were honored to have Joseph Kersti share his success stories from the Education team. "The GeoNet Community provides not only technical assistance, but gives them confidence in their ability to teach effectively with GIS," Joseph said. "It also gives them encouragement to go farther with GIS instruction to foster critical thinking and spatial thinking skills." I walked away from the meet-up feeling, yet again, inspired from what I heard and excited about the opportunity we have to build on the GeoNet Community experience. Did you attend the meet-ups? What did you think? How would you like to see us evolve meet-ups in the future? To see the other stories and stats from the meet-up, you can download a copy of our meet-up presentation deck here. Asking important questions through Regression Analysis I learned a lot during the latest Ten Questions for Esri video, so one of my highlights of the afternoon sessions was building on my understanding of spatial analysis and going deeper into exploring regression analysis via Lauren Bennett. She set the stage explaining what regression analysis is, it's approach and key characteristics: It's a method and model to help us examine and explore spatial relationships It helps us better understand factors behind observed spatial patterns It helps us predict outcomes based on understanding She further explained that, "You should use regression analysis in your work because you can explore correlations, predict unknown values and understand key factors to the data you're collecting and mapping." To make the point of truly understanding your data and making sure that your data is meaningful, useful, accurate and actionable, Bennet used humor to prove her point and shared a couple entertaining slides highlighting data about the misdirected correlation between "Number of people who drowned by Falling into a Swimming Pool vs Number of Nicholas Cage films." Bennet walked us through the equation and variables that support regression analysis. Deep stuff, for sure. And I didn't "get" all of it completely. But I did walk away with a deeper appreciation for the complexity that goes into creating a map that will not only lay out data but will help a customer, audience or organization make a critical decision. Here are my big takeaways: Before you sit down to gather and then map your data you should make sure to ask the right questions and have a good understanding of context. Be open to exploration. What you think you are going to find out and what you discover along the way might be very different. So use analysis to check in and see if you're on track. Have a solid framework or idea of the story you want to tell before you tell it. Always be thinking about the context of your data and what it means in the broader story you're aiming to tell. Big decisions require big thought. Critical decisions require critical thought. Esri UC Party Time After a busy day of drinking from the glorious and beautiful firehose of GIS and doing lots of big thinking, a big celebration sounded like a perfect end to the day.  I jumped on the bus and headed to Balboa park and embarked on my first UC Party.  It was a remarkable experience, to say the least, so I grabbed a few pics as the festivities unfolded around me. I cruised the park and museum grounds munching on tasty treats and taking in live music, opera singers, dazzling aerialists, life-sized Jenga games, art galleries, illuminate foosball matches, and munching on tasty treats. How was your UC Party? Share your experience in the comments below. ... View more

Esri 5K Run/Walk By Chris Catania Welcome to Day 3 of UC!  We kick off today's coverage with a shout out to the runners of the Esri 5K run/walk. The festivities got going early at 6:30am as more than 500 conference attendees ran, jogged and walked their way around the marina. It was a perfectly cool morning and a great start to the day as everyone celebrated the 3.2 mile journey with high fives and post-race selfies as they triumphantly crossed the finish line then headed to the showers to gear up for another exciting day at the User Conference. Nice work, everyone! Special thanks to the Esri Startup Program for the race photo! Stay tuned for more updates today as we continue to explore User Conference. What are you looking forward today? What have been your favorite experiences and moments so far? Drone Zone!!! by Timothy Hales The drone zone was a popular spot during the Esri UC Expo. Every time someone fired up a drone people gathered around to catch a glimpse of the action. Partners presented various applications that used drone technology to inspect structures, compile imagery, and collect LiDAR. As mentioned in the Plenary, Esri recently released Drone2Map (Drone2Map for ArcGIS)   which turns raw still imagery from drones into professional 2D and 3D imagery products. The desktop app will mean that affordable imagery is available on demand for land analysis, infrastructure inspection, and monitoring events such as natural disasters and environmental changes. AAG GeoMentor by Timothy Hales It was great to meet up with Candice Luebbering who works with the AAG Geomentors. They are working to connect GIS professionals and educators across the world to help teach students GIS technology. Esri has partnered with them to provide resources and support. One of Esri's initiatives is ConnectEd which provides free online mapping for schools. Connect with them on GeoNet - GeoMentors. Inspired by students in the map gallery by Chris Catania I enjoyed touring around the map gallery on Monday and through the conference! This being my first UC it was great to explore all the different maps and talk with the map authors and learn what inspired them.  During the plenary I was impressed by the student presentations so decided to talk with the students from UC Berkley (top left), National 4-H GIS leadership team (top right) and the San Andreas High School (bottom) about their work in GIS.  Reflecting on their work and understanding more about the focus of their maps encouraged me think deeper about the world around me. The future of GIS is bright, indeed. And I'm looking forward to continuing the student conversation in the GeoMentors group. What were your favorite map discoveries and discussions? What did you learn as you cruised through the map gallery? Exploring "what's next" in the Esri Startup area By Timothy Hales The Esri Startup Program (Esri Startup Program) area in the expo was buzzing with excitement and innovation. We spent a few minutes with Jeff Lafrenz from VizworX – Visibly Better Solutions . They offer a product that focuses on in-person collaboration. They provide the capability for multiple people to engage within a single map displayed on a touch screen. Each person has their own viewer to interact with the map. They even have a way for a remote user to interact with the map. I was very impress with use of the APIs and look forward to seeing how their product develops over time. GeoNet Community Meet-up by Chris Catania It was good times and great conversations at our second GeoNet Community UC meet-up! We celebrated the growth of the GeoNet by sharing community metrics and success stories and we talked about the future strategy of the community. Best of all, we had an excellent conversation with our members and it was a pleasure to hear from top contributor and MVP, Rebecca Strauch, GISP about the value of the community to her daily GIS work and what she's learning: “I’m amazed at how much I learn when I browse thru the various posts. It’s incredible how many times I see something that could help me improve the project I’m working on right now, or something I want to look into later.” “I am a GIS analyst, developer and ArcGIS Server administrator and also manage the licenses, provide user support and troubleshoot in our department. When it comes to issues I come across, I typically don’t have anyone in the office that I can talk to. GeoNet is like a very large, extended peer group. There is almost always someone that has come across the same issue, and even if not, there are many other users that are willing to help or giving things I can try out myself. Even if I end up calling tech support, I’ve typically already done research so I can expedite the conversation by letting them know what I’ve already ruled out.” To see the other stories and stats from the meet-up, you can download a copy of our meet-up presentation deck here. We're looking forward to the last meet-up tomorrow at 12pm in 33A. See you there! Traveling, Mapping the world at the GIS Kids Fair By Chris Catania Later in the afternoon we made our way to the GIS Kids Fair. During the conference more than 200 kids and parents had attended the fair and it was a joy to see families having so much fun working together and virtually traveling around the world and using GIS to make memories as they mapped out their journey with story maps. Kudos to the Esri training and certification staff for putting together an excellent learning and collaborative experience. Social learning and listening at its best by Chris Catania The day wrapped up as we took in the evening's social poolside festivities at the YPN social and the GeoDev Meet-up. Since I'm only 82 days into my role at Esri, one of my favorite parts of the UC has been to meet and talk with Esri customers and I had many opportunities to ask questions, listen and learn at both events. I've had so many valuable discussions this week and I've appreciated getting a better understanding of how they use GIS in their work and how they currently use (or don't use) the GeoNet Community and how would like to see the GeoNet experience evolve. Each conversation has helped me understand where we should and shouldn't take the community. Best of all, these informal social chats have revealed many valuable nuances of how the Esri platform is utilized across the various industries. And what I've discovered this week has really inspired me to think differently and find ways to connect customers and Esri employees in the community and enable us to work better and collaborate more. And I look forward to sharing more of what I'm learning as our journey continues. What did you enjoy the most about Day 3? What are you learning so far at UC? ... View more

  Good morning and welcome to UC! It was great to explore the convention center yesterday and we're excited to kick off UC in just a few moments. Here's today's UC daily discussion where we invite you to share your experiences throughout day. We'll also be live blogging the Plenary in the User Conference group so stay tuned once the festivities get going.   What are you looking forward to learning today? What plenary stories and talks are you most excited to hear about?   We hope you have an excellent first day and look forward to sharing the experience with you! ... View more

  Hi Everyone - As we shared earlier, Timothy Hales and I will be sharing our UC experience with you through live blogging and daily discussions here on GeoNet. Each day, like this, we'll have a general daily discussion to recap the previous day and kick off the new day. We invite you to share your experience in the comments on each daily discussion thread.   To kick it off, this is a pre-conference discussion to give you a sneak peak at the User Conference before things get ready to roll tomorrow morning. We'll also be live blogging the Plenary and other events throughout the week and you can follow and join the conversations in the User Conference group.   We've both arrived in San Diego earlier today and we cruised around the convention center checking out the scene for UC 2016. This is my first UC and a pretty cool experience to have as a new Esri employee too. It was exciting to see everything getting set up and peek in on the Plenary practice session.  I snapped a couple pictures (below) to share with you and I hope you enjoy them.  We're looking forward to sharing our UC experience with you here on GeoNet. Here's to a great UC and collaborative chat in the community!   Monday informal Meet-up location update: For tomorrow's informal meet-up on Monday in the Map Gallery, we'll be meeting in the front left corner by the Young Scholars area (see picture below) from 4-5pm. See you there! Check out this post for more details about the formal meet-ups Tuesday-Thursday.           The calm before the UC storm. Love the giant globes and detailed map murals! Turns the San Diego convention center into one big connected map.   An "I had no idea" mural infographic! Beautiful and creative way to share lots of info about how Esri helps customers and impacts the world around us. ... View more