Archive for the ‘Clients’ Category

2010 Geocortex User Conference goes virtual

March 9th, 2010 by Darin Herle

You’ll read it here first:  registration is now open for the 5th Annual Geocortex User Conference, scheduled to take place June 8-9th, 2010.

Same great content, delivered online.

Due in large part to feedback we’ve received from clients, we’ve moved your event online.  With so many organizations straining to justify travel costs for conferences and training, we felt it was appropriate to alter our 2010 conference to cater to these very needs.

As in years past, we’ll open the conference with a plenary session Tuesday morning (PST).  From there, the conference splits into technical and business tracks, combining live and pre-recorded content, with live Q&A throughout.  The conference concludes Wednesday afternoon with a wrap-up session and panel Q&A.  Feedback from previous years tells us you derive significant value from user presentations, and these are certainly included.

If you’re thinking about a tranistion from ArcIMS to ArcGIS Server or considering the implications of ArcGIS Server version 10, join us for a pragmatic look at the present and future of Geocortex technology, as it relates to your own organization’s needs.

Hope you can make it!

Posted in Business, Clients, Conferences, General, General Discussion, User Conference | No Comments »

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 »

The value of data (even the historical stuff)

August 2nd, 2008 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Our friends at the Oklahoma County Assessor entered ESRI’s GIS in Action video contest. The folks at OK County Assessor are one of our customers that I most admire. They’re passionate about what they do, they’ve got their priorities straight, and they get things done.

Their video reminds me of working with historic map data from where I live. Back in 1998 I was at a map library and found a stack of aerial photos of Victoria from 1928. I got permission to scan them and did some rough georeferencing of them using a recent Victoria ortho. It was absolutely fascinating to see how much Victoria had changed in seventy years. In fact, comparing the landscape between 1928 and 1998 profoundly changed the way I think about growth (especially in our region).

When ArcIMS was released a couple years later, I couldn’t get permission from the copyright holder (a government agency) to make them available over the web through an ArcIMS service (on a volunteer basis no less). I guess someone got worried about the massive opportunity cost associated with losing out on licensing revenue associated with sepia aerial photos from 1928. Not that they had any model for licensing them even if someone did want them. I love my country, but our misguided geodata policies have impaired decision-making in the places we live. Things are slowly improving, but we need to be aggressive in changing the geospatial data status quo in cases where it is quietly failing us.

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

The Monk and the Riddle

July 7th, 2008 by Darin Herle

Speaking of the “Latitude Library“, I just finished reading an interesting book recently added to our inventory, “The Monk and the Riddle“. Written by Randy Komisar, self-described virtual-CEO and technology entrepeneur, the book is quick to reveal the roots of its unusual title (no clues here though!), but slow to reach its point: its the journey that matters, not the destination. Set within the context of new technology ventures, Randy presents the central premise of his book (and the driving force behind new arrivals to Silicon Valley and the so called SPDs at Bear Stearns) as the “Deferred Life Plan”; dedicate every waking hour to work today in order to enjoy life later with all the commensurate toys. Having lived the Silicon Valley lifestyle for several years, I could immediately relate.

Overall, I found the book largely readable due to its intriguing anecdotes about Randy’s numerous technolgy ventures – I’m a sucker for business non-fiction. Dissecting the successes and failures for technology ventures is infinitely more interesting than anything fiction writers could come up with! Conversely, I felt the premise of the book missed its mark – the “Deferred Life Plan” is a well worn cliche. Or is it? For those reading the book, perhaps it will beg the question: “Am I doing what I’m truly passionate about?” Regardless, I recommend checking it out.

Posted in Around the office, Business, Clients, General, Ideas | 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 »

New Webinars Scheduled

January 14th, 2008 by Darin Herle

We put together a number of webinars for the launch of Geocortex IMF 5.2 a little while ago, and got some great feedback from clients. So, we’ve added a few more and hope to offer them on a recurring basis. Topics vary from new products to new releases to technology we feel clients and prospective customers should keep their eyes on. Check out our Learning and Education page for more information and to sign up.

Posted in Business, Clients, General, Geocortex, Ideas, Products | No 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 »

CRD Natural Areas Atlas

October 9th, 2007 by Steven Myhill-Jones

Congratulations to the Capital Regional District on the Award of Excellence they recently received at ESRI Canada’s Regional User Conference in Victoria. This recognition is well deserved and is a long time coming.

hrh2001Although we’ve helped build lots of applications, CRD’s popular Natural Areas Atlas is special to me. Unofficially launched in April 2001, the Natural Areas Atlas was the first public facing custom-built ArcIMS application developed by Latitude Geographics. At the time Latitude Geographics was about four people, and we volunteered to build the first version at virtually no cost so we’d have something to show HRH Prince of Wales (a.k.a. Prince Charles) during his official visit to Canada. We’d been selected to present our newfangled Internet mapping technology to him in Regina and needed a public facing app to actually demonstrate! If memory serves, the first version of the Natural Areas Atlas was completed about two days before the big demo. It may well be that the first member of the “public” who viewed the Natural Areas Atlas was the Prince of Wales.

The application has evolved considerably since then, and it got redeveloped from the original ASP code (modified and adapted by CRD over time) and migrated to Geocortex IMF two or three years ago.

Posted in Clients, ESRI, Events, IMF | 2 Comments »