ESRI 2010 UC Cheat Sheet

I’m getting pretty amped about heading out to San Diego for this year’s User Conference. I have not been to a UC in 3 or 4 years, instead favoring the Developer Summit in March, but with the release of version 10, we figured that this would be a good year to hit it.

As many people have pointed out, ArcGIS version 10 is a huge release, with a lot of new functionality. What’s more, this release, unlike many previous releases, this one is very stable, and actually seems to have improved performance across the board.

So – with that in mind, here are my thoughts on what’s going to be worth checking out at this UC…

The Plenary

Yeah yeah, don’t get caught up in the “kool-aid” stuff – you’re trekking all the way out to San Diego, and if you do nothing else all week, spend Monday morning in the plenary. Maybe you’re sooooo plugged in that you already know everything Jack’s going to talk about, but my bet is you’re not. Be there, see what’s cool, and then hit those sessions.

Updates to the Editor

If you spend your days working with data in ArcMap, then you’ll really want to check out all the changes to the Editor. Everyone is hopefully using Geodatabases at this point, but at this release, the editing environment has been optimized to take advantage of the geodatabase, especially with the “geodesign” / feature pallet based interface.

Python and ArcPy

I bet Sean Gillies never thought I’d be pimping out Python, but there it is. If you’ve been doing VBA, switch now because VBA is going away at the next version. If you’ve been doing hard-core lowlevel ArcObjects for everything (that would be me) Python will save you a boat load of time and effort for a lot of stuff. Of course ServerObjectExtensions and Desktop extensions will still need to be COM, but an awful lot of data automation, map production and geoprocessing can be effectively automated with Python. Oh, and you get a python command window in Desktop. Me thinks Python will be the new AML.

ArcGIS Server Javascript API

The JSAPI has updates to play nice with all the new features in ArcGIS Server, but it also has a new “compact build“, which is optimized for iPhones – let me tell you that this is MUCH easier to work with than getting all up on ObjectiveC and building a native app! Also – push ESRI to make this build support webkit on Android!

Flex API and Web Application

The Flex Sample Kit has grown up into a fully supported part of the ArcGIS system (apparently called the Flex Viewer). This new version has lots of goodies which *may* help mitigate the cookie-cutter sites we saw with the 9.3.1 Sample Kit. Everything is now a widget, so you can completely change the look and feel of the app. And while we’re at it, you should check out the new goodies in the Flex API – there are some really cool clustering options that I’m excited to play with (the GridClusterer looks really cool, but no samples)

ArcGIS Server in the Cloud

Yep. Hopefully there’s more info on the “cloud bundle” licensing story, but having used ArcGIS in the Cloud for the past few months, I can say it is great. The ability to go from idea to running site in days or weeks and not be hindered by an IT procurement process that can take months to years is huge for many government users.

So that’s what I’m pretty excited about – what are you looking to get out of the conference?