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The first Geocortex user group

September 15th, 2008 by Darin Herle

Our customers and partners have long asked us to kickstart Geocortex user groups where there were a concentration of users around them. A combination of busyness (building the technology) and platform penetration have hindered this before, but no longer…

We (and more importantly, our users) are pleased to announce the first Geocortex user group – California. The Golden State is home to the largest pool of Geocortex users anywhere, and based on ongoing interest, its time to bring them together.

Our first meeting is scheduled for Thursday October 16, 2008 in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles County has generously offered to host this event. So far, our draft agenda includes introductions, a “Geocortex Technology Update” section (courtesy of me!), user presentations, Q&A and more.

If you’re a customer or partner and think you should be home to user group #2, contact your account manager!

For more information about the California User Group, please contact me. Hope to see you there.

Posted in Business, Clients, Events, General, Geocortex | No Comments »

Regional Training

June 2nd, 2008 by Darin Herle

Our training team has become overtaxed of late given the significant amount of things our clients want to learn! This is great from the perspective that our clients are looking to become self-enabled (we do every thing we can to make our users self-sufficient); bad when you consider the amount of travel and overhead this involves as we try to manage our growth.

Solution: bring workshop oriented Geocortex Essentials and IMF training to locations close to our users, using ready-made training facilities provided by ESRI.

We’re announcing three dates and locations to start; a pair of workshops in the United States and one in Europe. Our goal is to see what kind of response we get and go from there. Things are looking positive so far; early feedback seems to suggest we need to add some more rooms and dates!

To learn more and to register, visit our new training page.

Posted in Business, Clients, Events, Geocortex Essentials, Geocortex IMF | No Comments »

Heading Home

May 11th, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

I’m sitting at Heathrow right now waiting for a connection after spending a week in the United Arab Emirates. I was at GISWORX (which is GISTEC’s annual user conference). I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and was happy to have GISTEC programmers there when the Q&A session at the end of my presentation on our ArcGIS Server-generation solutions got into some in-depth technical questions.

I’m really impressed with the work people are doing in the region, and a few attendees have promised to send screenshots for my opening presentations of some cool projects (including an underwater inventory of coral reefs in Abu Dhabi–complete with video).

Posted in Events | No Comments »

Stepping Back and Looking Back

April 29th, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Steady, gradual change is easy to underestimate when you’re up close to something.

While working on my GISWORX (Dubai) keynote for next week, I opened a few of my 2003-2004 PowerPoint presentations that examine the significance/future of web-based GIS technology on society and decision-making. Despite the fact that I don’t feel like the fundamentals change all that much day-to-day, I was struck by the fact that most of my forward-looking presentation content from 2003-2004 is now happening. Core aspects of the “road ahead” sections from these presentations have arrived and I can replace my slides with real-world examples that are mainstream (if not yet ubiquitous).

Surprises as I look back? I didn’t forsee the incredible shift from Java towards .NET that we’ve observed, I overestimated the probable future influence of WMS/WFS, and Google entering the spatial realm wasn’t on our radar screen (it hadn’t happened yet).

Though we sometimes make major strides forward overnight (e.g. leveraging new capabilities possible with ArcGIS Server), as I cobbled together examples of innovative developments from the last couple years I noticed that many of the “breakthroughs” happened incrementally through innovative pilot projects and the addition of relatively minor new capabilities. When examined together, it becomes clear the technology is actually evolving very quickly.

Posted in Events, Ideas, Spatial Tech & Society | No Comments »

2008 IMF/Geocortex User Conference wraps (mostly)

April 24th, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

It sure has been a busy few days. Although there are all-day technical workshops happening today and tomorrow, the main sessions of our 3rd annual user conference are now over. Based on initial feedback from staff and attendees (we haven’t read all the evaluation forms yet), I’d say it was another successful event. The weather held out, and except for a digital projector dying mid-way through a presentation, everything went pretty smoothly. Even after the Road Ahead/Conference Recap Session, the audience went easy on us during the Q&A. I concluded the day with a pre-dinner paddle in the company kayaks with one of our International Distributors.

It’s cool to see how people are actually using our stuff. I’m continually impressed by the creativity and zeal of our customers, and they always have lots of awesome ideas for new features and product enhancements.

In the coming weeks, we’ll make presentations available for attendees to download. This year we also videotaped some presentations, which we might post on the web for folks to check out. But first, we’ve got our conference wrap party for staff on Friday night.

Posted in Events, User Conference | 3 Comments »

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

April 10th, 2008 by Darin Herle

I’ve always been fascinated by the Hollywood game “the six degrees of Kevin Bacon“. Its a pop-culture version of the well known “six degrees of separation” idea – we’re all seperated from anyone on the planet by, at most, six people. Except, in the “Kevin Bacon” version, you interconnect Hollywood stars via Kevin Bacon.

I’m in Corpus Christi, TX right now at the ESRI SCAUG conference, and was thinking of this concept as it relates to my predicament: I flew here on American Airlines and narrowly averted getting stuck in Seattle as their MD-80 fleet was grounded for FAA inspection earlier this week. With the cancelling of so many flights, surely everyone would know someone this has affected? Well now you know one more (or the first) – me.

I just checked the American Airlines website for information related to my flight home tomorrow and it won’t load – presumably becuase the other 100,000 or so displaced passengers are looking for the same information I am! Anyways, I hope I make it home tomorrow – but I can think of worse places to spend a weekend.

Posted in Around the office, Business, Events, Ideas | 2 Comments »

Back from the ESRI Business Partner Conference

March 21st, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Most of us have trickled back after spending a several days at the ESRI Business Partner Conference/Developer Summit in Palm Springs. We had six people down there for the Business Partner Conference portion, and it was a great, productive trip with some exciting developments and decisions that we’ll be sharing in the weeks and months to come. With ArcGIS Server 9.3 right around the corner, it feels like our work with ArcGIS Server is nearing a tipping point–and I think our overarching strategy over the last 24 months is really going to be validated.

Posted in Business, Events | No Comments »

Fun Stuff at the IMF/Geocortex User Conference

February 21st, 2008 by Darin Herle

seal The conference is happening in April, and we’re trying to come up with some unique and/or new things for delegates to do when they’re not nerding out at the IMF/Geocortex User Conference.

Whale watching is always popular, but lots of people have already gone out in previous years. In addition, we’re thinking perhaps adding one or more of the following:

trip to Butchart Gardens (to reinforce Victoria stereotypes) kayaking tours (done before, but fun and not done to death)
feeding the seals at Fisherman’s Wharf (so close you can smell seal breath)
surf lesson at Jordan River (hello waiver!)
trip to Botanical Beach (giant trees up to the rugged beach, extraordinary inter-tidal pools)
yardwork/chores at the Herle house (as authentic as it gets)

Does anyone have any other ideas? We’re also seeking good evening activities, in addition to the annual group dinner at a local brewpub.

Posted in Events, User Conference | 5 Comments »

2008 IMF/Geocortex User Conference Registration Opens

December 18th, 2007 by Darin Herle

Registration for the 3rd Annual IMF/Geocortex User Conference, April 20-22nd, 2008 in Victoria, BC, is now open! To learn more and to register, head over to our user conference homepage at www.geocortex.com/uc

We look to improve our conference experience every year, and our 2008 conference is no exception. We sold out our workshops very early last year, and as a result, we’ve added additional seats this time around. Our workshops will be on the University of Victoria campus this year, and I’m told we may have a double-decker bus (which are seen regularly around town) in the works for the short shuttle up to campus! Since we’d have the bus for the day, we’re also considering combining the shuttle trip with some sightseeing for those not attending the workshops – contact us if you’re interested.

We hope to see you in Victoria in April ’08!

Posted in Business, Clients, Events, General, Geocortex, User Conference | No Comments »

Geocortex IMF 5.2 Webinars

November 8th, 2007 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Geocortex IMF 5.2 is now shipping, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. While the demo site is there to explore, we figured we’d organize some guided tours so people can just kick back and get a thorough overview of the new features and capabilities. You’ll just phone in, click on a link, and enjoy the show (there’ll be Q&A time at the end).

We’ve created two distinct presentations; What’s New in Geocortex IMF 5.2 (Nov 14, Nov 20) and Introduction to Geocortex IMF 5.2 (Nov 16).

Click here to learn more/sign up.

If these webinars prove popular, we’ll do more of them in the future.

Posted in Events, Geocortex IMF | No Comments »

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