Content makes the GIS world go round and ESRI is offering plenty of it. ESRI's Christophe Charpentier talked about ESRI's geographic content resources. "ESRI has made available to its customers world imagery, street maps, thematic maps, world terrain base maps, and millions of dollars worth of other types of content.  It also offers easy access to Bing Maps and other geographic data providers. We keep adding content constantly, and a lot more is coming."

Charpentier took the ESRI UC Plenary audience on a virtual tour of ESRI's wealth of content via ArcGIS Resource Centers. He demonstrated how ArcGIS 9.3.1 users can easily create and upload layer packages (.lpk files) to their projects. ESRI has added to its storehouse more than 700 international urban areas in the world at 1:1,000,000 resolution.

Watch Charpentier's video entitled "ArcGIS Online Content", included within the plenary session videos.

Also on deck in the ArcGIS Resource Centers are Bing Maps (formerly Microsoft Virtual Earth) with worldwide coverage of detailed street maps and high resolution imagery. DeLorme World Atlas data is also in the offering making available a consistent and accurate atlas of the world that shows transportation networks, as well as vegetation, elevation, and land use maps. "DeLorme will be expanding zoom levels to 1:200,000 worldwide by the end of the year," announced Charpentier. "ESRI makes this content free to its ArcGIS Desktop users. "