ESRI International User Conference 2008

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image Awwwwe yeah, I'm coming home San Diego! I love a free trip home. Microsoft Virtual Earth will have a significant presence at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego August 4 - 8, 2008. We've had some strategic announcements with ESRI this year and with the integration of Virtual Earth and ArcGIS Server things just got interesting. At the very least, we'll have a booth at the show and I'll be working the first 2 days (others will work all week), so if you want to chew the fat stop by and let's talk shop. Since I know at least one person will ask, yes, Roger Mall (who has spearheaded our the Microsoft / ESRI and many other partner relationships) will be there for the whole show.

There's already one session (actually a pre-conference seminar) set in stone, but with the unpredictability of the future you never know what's going to happen between now and then. The current seminar is titled, "Rapid Web Development using ArcGIS Server JavaScript and REST API" and features the ArcGIS JavaScript Extender for Virtual Earth. It's $325 and it's on August 3, so you might want to get to the conference a few days early. Dude, it's in San Diego - how money is it that you can tell your boss you HAVE TO go to San Diego a couple days early for training.

After the seminar, you should be able to make cool applications like this integration of Virtual Earth and ArcGIS Drive Time Polygons. This is a sick little app (free download) that renders drive time zones from any point clicked on the map. The shot below outlines the drive distance you would drive in 1 minute (gray, covered with pins), 5 minutes (orange) and 10 minutes (pink) from the center of the map. The query also hits the Live Search local listings using the VEMap.Find method in the Virtual Earth API and populating the "what" argument with any keyword (burrito shops in this case). If you don't code and want to see this in action, you can view it from my Live Skydrive site.

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Get to San Diego, get out and surf, eat fish tacos, watch the most underachieving team in baseball lose and learn some GIS. That's my agenda, anyway. Oh, and Steve Lombardi and I have a 4-year argument going over the best burrito shop and both of them are in San Diego. My choice Super Sergios in Kearny Mesa; his choice (which he has nicknamed 'Macho Taco' because it clearly isn't good enough to remember) is Los Palmitos Taco Shop. Go there, eat carne asada burritos, come back and vote.

CP