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All of us on the Mapping Center Team were at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, California this past week (July 11-17). We taught Tech Sessions, we demoed our online map services, we had meetings with users, we attended sessions, we judged maps, we promoted books, we solicited feedback on our work, and we made connections for future projects.  We also got to see many people we know and to make new friends!

We thought you might like to hear what the highlights of the conference were from our perspective, but we'd love to hear what you thought about the conference, if you were able to be here. Please take a moment to add a comment so we can hear from you!

For those of you who weren't able to attend, many of the conference sessions have been taped and will be available to you on the ESRI web site in the near future!  And all of the presentations of the Mapping Center Team will be posted on our Other Resources - Presentations page within the next week.

So here were the highlights for us:

  • More than one of us said the highlight was when people realized that some of the things you can do with ESRI software to make great looking maps are really not hard at all!
  • For me, one of the highlights was learning that there is a Student Resources link for the Map Use book that includes for every chapter the PowerPoint presentation (every graphic in the book is on a separate PowerPoint slide!) as well as the exercise so they can simply download them from the Web site for their classes. (For teachers, there is a Teacher Resource CD with the answers that we can send to you.)
  • Since we have been making so many maps lately, especially for online map services, it is not surprising that some of us felt that one of the highlights was seeing our maps in demos and used as examples to show people how to get their information online and out to a wider audience.
  • For me, one of the highlights was meeting some of you who have written to us on Ask a Cartographer. In fact, one person came up after a session to ask if you could use fractions in scalebars (right now you can't, so we'll write a blog entry on how you can achieve this effect nonetheless!) Because we have been here at the UC this past week, we didn't respond as quickly as we usually do, so I was able to answer him in person -- a real treat!
  • One person said that the highlight was getting the whole room to laugh while he was presenting in a Tech Session -- that indicated to him that people were relaxed and not intimidated by what he was trying to teach them.
  • Another person said that the highlight was getting good feedback after her presentation. We all work really hard to put together our demos and talks -- since technology is involved, you sometimes don't know how things will turn out, so it's always nice when it all comes together in the end!  And it's even nicer when the audience members let you know what they thought about how you did.
  • For many of us, one of the major highlights was seeing colleagues, former students, and friends that we have not connected with for a while -- one person unexpectedly ran into a buddy of his from graduate school that he hasn't seen for 18 years! It was exciting to see so many of you doing really interesting and important things in your jobs, and to learn that you are still making your great maps!
  • For all of us, one of the other highlights was getting to know new people -- for me, these were the folks from The Nature Conservancy and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service --  we are really looking forward to working with them in the coming months to make their maps and data "come to life" (as Clint put it) on the Web.
  • Finally, for me, one of the other conference highlights was seeing Jon Kimerling walking through the Map Gallery on opening night with the "Meet the Authors" sign for our new Map Use book -- as he carried the sign over to the Academic Fair area, people started following him like he was the Pied Piper! We don't know if it was because he was laughing the whole way, because they might have known him and wanted to talk to him, or they really did want to "meet the author"!

Next week, it's back to Redlands where we'll be working full time on Mapping Center again!