Intern Connect: The Future of ArcGIS

This was my second Intern Connect webinar through the internship program, and I video’d in to the presentation in Redlands. This virtual format is never quite as engaging to me as being able to be at a live presentation, but the presenter had put together a PowerPoint, which makes it easier to follow along through a virtual presentation.

The presentation opened with a great global perspective on mapping, which really made maps, especially the capability of virtual maps, click for me. Everything can be georeferenced on the earth. This then becomes a common data format across the globe, meaning all data CAN BE COMBINED. I don’t know why this hadn’t fully clicked for me, but this made it clear to me why GIS is so powerful and widely adoptable. ArcGIS and GIS in generally provides incredibly potential for collaborative, global data analysis, and data is rooted in the physical world, making it easily visualized in a mental map of our spatial areas.

We then went through a quick timeline of virtual mapping, which was also helpful for me to finally understand this progression and distinctions between software.

• Early 1990s: Geographic data can be expressed through GIS and geoprocessing tools.
• 2005: Around the time of the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth. I remember this time where everyone, myself included, was fascinated with Google Earth. Google Earth included 20 map scales, which covered the earth. I remember how the first thing my classmates and I would all do was find our houses, and then explore our communities and dream destinations through Google Earth (and later the obsession with both the landscapes and controls of the later Flight Simulator). Search indexes for Google Earth represented one of the fundamental ideas of GIS, to combine layers into information.
• 2007: The launch of smartphones, with the first apps quickly following. This was the start of “maps as apps,” which is the reality we are still in. Apps provided interfaces into worlds of integrated information. Throughout this time, ArcGIS was around and strong..
• The next transition in GIS came with cloud computing, which is the transition we are in now. Now I will transition out of bullet points.

Cloud-based GIS is a time of huge momentum. Cloud GIS, such as ArcGIS Online, allows everyone to participate in GIS. Approachable and accessible visualization tools are also allowing GIS to be accessible to both analytical and artistic inclinations. This sticks out to me with spatial data analysis and visualization, and it was great to hear this reiterated and explicitly highlighted.

Product Development

We then moved into talking about ArcGIS product development. This is somewhat of a recap of what I have already been somewhat working around.

Software Development at Esri involves software developers, involved in software design, algorithms, coding, and engineering (this one is pretty self-explanatory).

Software Product Engineering including product engineers, release managers, writers, app programmers, UX designers (ideally), testing (hopefully both automatic and user-testing), and bug tracking.

Product Managers were described as working with licensing, packaging, messaging, and product marketing.

Solution products or Solution Engineering includes solution engineers, app programmers, and communication experts who create configurable out-of-the box products or demos for customers.

Esri R+D Centers were also touched on briefly. These offices are often dedicated to specific technology spaces. For example, I had watched an EDGE video on the Zurich 3D Dev Center, which works with 3D visualization software (CityEngine).

This was a quick overview of some progression through ArcGIS over the years, and was a little bit of recap and a little bit of overview to explore further in the future.