My week at EsriUC 2016
Last week was a jam-packed week of EsriUC 2016. This was my second year attending the UC as an Esri employee, which means I had more presentations to do this year, which was awesome. I really enjoy doing these sessions, I’m pretty comfortable talking to crowds of people about tech and all things geo, so it works out pretty well for everyone.
The only downside is I don’t really have much time to attend many other sessions. I wrote about my recommendations in Esri UC for the GeoDev (or your boss!), but I heard from some people I know that attended some user presentations that they turned out really well.
Optimizing your JS App for Performance
One of the sessions I was able to co-present on was on Optimizing your JS App for Performance.
I actually was able to co-present on this session last year. We did an even more in-depth version of this at DevSummit earlier this year and it covers everything from using the Web Optimizer to using the Bower release of the ArcGIS JS API. We cover some details about AMD and packages and benefits of asynchronous module loading, in particular with localization and using Web Maps. We always get good feedback on these and I have some ideas on some other stuff we can cover in the future.
Vector Tiles
I had the opportunity to present on Vector Tiles in two different sessions. These were tons of fun because most people have a general idea of what Vector Tiles are and if you just want to use them in your apps to take advantage of cleaner drawing and smaller datasets, that’s fine.
Leveraging Vector Tiles in your Web Apps
The first one was Leveraging Vector Tiles in your Web Apps. This was a lot of fun, my co-presenter covered some great practical uses of Vector Tiles in web apps and I was able to show some more creative use of Vector Tiles during runtime.
I covered Using non-basemap Vector Tiles in a bit more detail, which was a lot of fun.
Styling your Vector Tile Basemaps
The other session I did was on Styling your Vector Tile Basemaps. I actually had the opportunity to present this one with a couple of smart geo folks and an actual cartographer that knows what he’s doing.
I can make some awful looking Vector Tile maps or help you trim them down to make them easier to style, but my co-presenter showed some legit cartographic thought in those decisions.
Here is a github repo with all the demos and resoureces I shared in my Vector Tile sessions.
Fee time, kind of
I spent my non-session time at the developer island in the Expo. It’s always cool to see what kind of questions users can come up with. A couple of times, I caught myself saying, Hey I remember you from last year!. Getting feedback from users and digging into their needs and helping them out is always a lot of fun. If I don’t have an answer, there’s a good chance someone there does or is nearby.
I did get some time to wander around the map gallery and there were some great looking maps. I even found the tiny map.
I swung by real quick to see a Top 10 ArcGIS JS API Skills, but it was standing room only, so I couldn’t get in to hear much, but I’m sure it was awesome.
There was a cool drone area with a cage where vendors were flying them in.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately that I want to get a drone, both for mapping and filming. It looks like a lot of fun!
I even found my book in the bookstore, which is always cool to see. Coolest experience of them all was when a user asked me to sign my book. That was awesome!
Speaking of which, be sure to check out my new book, Intro to ArcGIS API for JavaScript 4.0. I’ve got more updates ready to go for it, still proofing.
I had a good time at the GeoDev meetup, even if I showed up a little early. I had a chance to meet a couple of new folks and even talk shop with someone facing similar issues with Maximo I once struggled with. Godspeed my friend.
I had a lot of fun at this UC. I even had a chance to spend a night out with my family, which I hardly get to do at UC, but made sure I made time this year.
A video posted by Rene Rubalcava (@odoenet) on Jun 29, 2016 at 8:31pm PDT
I’ll see you all again next year, and I look forward to the next DevSummit where we can really geek out!
Main image via @EsriUC on twitter with my own tweaks.