The Inaugural ESRI Dev Meet Up

ESRI is starting a new type of developer community initiative called the Developer Meet Up, and I was invited by my good friend David Martinez to come and present at their inaugural event. It was held last night in Pasadena, CA at the Tavern on Green. Thinking I would be talking for over an hour, I was surprised when Dave, said it would be a “lightning talk” and I would only have 10 minutes. Trimming down a presentation to fit in that time frame is a pretty good exercise, but I think I did well. You can see it here on SlideShare.

The event was nice, like a well-cultured User Group meeting, complete with fancy hor d'oeuvres, wine, beer and sodas. Expectedly, the majority of the audience were GIS people, but a nerd is a nerd and a geek a geek. I ran into a few people whom I have seen at other technical events, and another friend of mine, Scott Kerfoot from Microsoft was the main speaker. Scott enthusiastically bragged about showed off the new Windows Phone for 30 minutes and did quite a good job of impressing the crowd. After a short break, the lightning talks started.

I was third. At first I thought the topic wouldn’t be well received, but the audience seemed to like what I was saying and I had a great time. I love presenting to groups on stuff I enjoy and this time was no exception, even with the limited time.

It’s really great to see yet another software company stepping forward to promote community the way that ESRI is doing with their Meet Up’s. This isn’t competition between companies at all, but a collective effort to help everyone grow and explore. As Richard Campbell once told me, “when the water rises, all the boats float.” Food for thought.

James

By the way, I used to work at ESRI and when I was there, if you called it “ez-ree”, people looked at you funny. Last night that’s all I heard. Who decided to move my cheese?