The ESRI User Conference is currently in full-swing, with all sorts of social media traffic flowing around. I saw this photo posted on TwitPic yesterday, and while I think it’s pretty comical, and took a good bit of creativity and pre-planning on the part of whoever made these stickers, it also got me thinking about the whole ESRI “Kool-Aid” attitude.

In the many years I attended the ESRI User Conference, there were always those people who were “too cool” to attend the plenary. The “Jack Show” was beneath them. “No need to drink the “kool-aid” they’d say. 

I’d just nod, and make sure I was in the audience for a variety of reasons.

First, it’s a hell of a show. This is a serious, big production event that the ESRI team, including Jack, work for months to pull off. Check out this time-lapse photo of Jack prepping his talk (from ESRI’s Flickr stream)

A well orchestrated event on the scale of the plenary is something to behold in it’s own right. The fact it’s germane to my area of expertise makes it that much better. Although smaller, the same level of care and effort goes into the Dev Summit opening session too.

The second reason I attend Jack’s talk is inspiration. Aside from the shiny “version next” stuff about the software, Jack’s talks are inspirational. They are about reaching beyond the status quo, towards a better, brighter future. Yes, GIS is a tool that enables to that vision, but the end goal is not a droid army of GIS analysts crisscrossing the countryside GPSing flower pots and snapping vectors. His vision is for a fundamentally “better” future – cleaner air and water – responsible use of resources – space to live – for everyone.  Jack is genuine, passionate, and cares about the bigger picture – and that comes through in his talks. And that’s what makes him inspirational.

Yet, somehow, this seems to rub some people the wrong way. After so many greed-based corporate implosions of the last few years, how can having a vision beyond the bottom line be a bad thing? Imagine how much good we could do if we were not spending billions trillions of dollars bailing out a banking system and automobile industries that collapsed because of executives who’s vision did not extent beyond their bonuses and second homes in the Hamptons? What if those executives had shared a fraction of Jack’s vision? What if we did not have to spend trillions bailing them out, but were able to spend a fraction of that money creating the “green economy”, and leading the world towards a brighter future for everyone? Nah, let’s just be “too cool” and go play golf. Someone else will take care of that.

Personally, I’m glad I work in an industry where the de facto leader is thinking beyond quarterly profits, and trying to actually make the world a better place.

Thanks Jack.

(For anyone who skipped the plenary, or who were not at the 2009 UC, the plenary will be online at http://www.esri.com/uc “soon”, according to @alylawson via Twitter)