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The 2011 Esri International Developer Summit is this March 7-10 in Palm Springs

http://www.esri.com/events/devsummit/index.html

We are thinking the public launch of this site should correspond with the March 7 date.

But more importantly, we would like to sponsor someone from the gis.stackexchange.com community to attend this summit!

That means we will cover your airfare, hotel, and travel fees to make it to the summit, so long as you spend a little bit of time speaking at the summit, and of course mention our fine, fine GIS community here. :)

So, the question part of the question:

  • Does this make sense? What else should we be thinking of for the conference?
  • Who would like to go?
  • Who is willing and able to speak at the conference?

Robert Cartaino, our community coordinator, will be following up.

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    I personally think this is a great idea and very, very generous of you guys. What about having a booth/table/poster/human setup at the EXPO social on Monday night? Can you say free beer?
    – Chad Cooper
    Jan 7, 2011 at 16:43
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    So where's the Stack Exchange meeting and party gonna be? :-)
    – James Schek
    Feb 15, 2011 at 5:28

3 Answers 3

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I know this is a tough assignment, but I'll volunteer to do this.

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    +1 Based on your long history and visibility in the ESRI community, I think you would make a fine choice.
    – whuber
    Jan 9, 2011 at 17:41
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    +1 from me as well: Kirk has standing in this community.
    – scw
    Jan 9, 2011 at 22:03
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    Kirk it looks like even if you change your mind about undertaking this tough assignment you won't be allowed not to go. :) Do us proud will you?
    – matt wilkie
    Jan 18, 2011 at 0:31
  • Thanks, Matt, I'll do my best. If selected I'll ask the gis.se community what the talking points should be.
    – Kirk Kuykendall
    Jan 20, 2011 at 20:49
  • Big +1 from me, hope to see you there
    – Britt Wescott
    Jan 25, 2011 at 21:20
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    Congratulations! blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/…
    – geographika
    Feb 14, 2011 at 1:10
  • kirk, did you end up doing this? How did it go?
    – Jay Cummins
    Mar 12, 2011 at 23:15
  • Kirk was there. When I last saw him, he was trying to form a gis.se Dodgeball team for the conference Dodgeball tourney. I couldn't join in because I had to leave before the play started.
    – Craig Williams
    Mar 14, 2011 at 6:01
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    The Dev Summit was great. I got to meet a lot of people face to face that I'd known only virtually before. In the plenary Jim Barry mentioned Esri's support for StackExchange and also at the closing session. We (Chad & sethp) weren't able to get a StackExchange team together in time for dodgeball, so I put T-shirts under the dodgeball score board where they were quickly consumed. Maybe in the future we should add "gis" to the stackexchange t-shirts. Lots of folks I spoke with knew about stackoverflow, yet hadn't visited gis.stackexchange. A big thank you to all of you who voted to send me!
    – Kirk Kuykendall
    Mar 14, 2011 at 16:07
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This is really cool...a big thank you to the stackoverflow team!

Does this make sense?

I work primarily with ESRI-products, so it is natural for me to think this is a great idea. And it does make sense if that's the closest event to the public launch date.

But it is one GIS vendor's conference and it could appear that you are favoring ESRI GISers. Any chance of funding another conference (maybe not for the public launch, but at some point this year)? Maybe the FOSS4G Sept. 2011 in Denver?

Or maybe we can update this question with other 2011 conferences that would be good candidates? Good conferences for Spatial/GIS developers

I don't know what sort of attendance numbers these conferences have, and it could be that the ESRI Dev makes sense just for the attendance numbers.

Something to think about.

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  • The Esri Dev summit could also be thought of as a FOSS4G missionary opportunity.
    – Kirk Kuykendall
    Jan 7, 2011 at 16:01
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    Certainly, i wouldn't turn down the offer if the situation was reversed!
    – Jay Cummins
    Jan 7, 2011 at 16:14
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    +1 for expanding the umbrella beyond ESRI folk. I work in a 90% ESRI shop, and that is where the bulk of my expertise comes from, and is also the direction most of my questions point. However having GIS.se be vendor agnostic is very important to me, and part of why I spend so much energy here, because of that potential. (This isn't a vote against sending someone to the dev summit, just a vote against only that one.)
    – matt wilkie
    Jan 9, 2011 at 20:11
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I would love to volunteer myself to go (would save me a fortune ;) )

Joking aside, I am not too sure if it's that good an idea. I know, from experience, that not all folk consider ESRI the undeniable #1 vendor favourite now in GI circles and it might be a better idea to branch out and think of GIS.SEl as agnostic as a paradigm.

I'd actually like to see a specific group set up akin to the BCS in the UK (British Computer Society), which is specific to GIS and advances, techniques, training etc. I think it's no longer a niche area and, in fact, quite a large industry in its own right. Its hard to nail this out here, but I think of this site as being a repository for all things pertaining to GI, so to go to one, and not others, sends the wrong signals to all users, imo.

Maybe, as mentioned elsewhere, going to a generic GI conference would be a better idea

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  • Can you travel back in time? :-)
    – whuber
    Jan 8, 2012 at 4:37
  • Haha, well, it could be a holistic offer, a timeless one ;)
    – Hairy
    Jan 8, 2012 at 14:18

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