{"id":4637,"date":"2015-03-23T08:16:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T15:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/?p=4637"},"modified":"2015-03-23T08:16:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T15:16:14","slug":"2015-esri-developer-summit-helping-developers-build-top-quality-geospatial-solutions","status":"publish","type":"insider","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/2015-esri-developer-summit-helping-developers-build-top-quality-geospatial-solutions","title":{"rendered":"2015 Esri Developer Summit: Helping Developers Build Top Quality Geospatial Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Geosolutions are desperately needed to solve the world\u2019s big problems, Esri president Jack Dangermond told 1,800 people at the 2015 Esri Developer Summit<\/a> (DevSummit). Esri and the developer community can work cooperatively to build technology to tackle these issues, he said.
\nMore creative developers are needed to forge solutions, Dangermond said, encouraging the audience to nurture new talent by being a mentor. \u201cThe interest we have is growing the next generation\u2014we need more of you,\u201d he said, opening the largest annual Esri developer event, which was held March 10-13 in Palm Springs, California.
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\nOn Esri\u2019s side, staff will continue to open the hood of ArcGIS technology to help geodevelopers build \u201cgreat things,\u201d Dangermond said. Knowledge about Esri\u2019s code will be key. \u201cOur technology is modular and structured into thousands of components. These are the components that Esri\u2019s developers use to build the platform,\u201d Dangermond said. \u201cIn the last couple of years, we\u2019ve opened up that structured code\u2014some with open source and APIs\u2014so that you guys develop with exactly the same code that our own software engineers do.\u201d
\nIf geodevelopers go with the grain of the basic ArcGIS platform, it will be easier to create great mapping applications and other geotechnologies, Dangermond stressed. \u201cWe want you to be our colleagues in development of geosolutions and be part of the fabric of what we\u2019re working on. We are interested in building great tools that address the big issues of the world.\u201d
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\nHighs and Lows of Mobile App Development<\/strong>
\nSomeone who is at the forefront of coming up with ideas and solutions in the mobile development world is John Tomizuka, cofounder and chief technical officer of Taqtile, a Seattle, Washington-based mobile app development company. His firm has developed apps for President Obama\u2019s inauguration in 2012 and NBC\u2019s coverage of the wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton in 2011.
\nTomizuka used his keynote speech at the summit to talk about the triumphs and pitfalls of developing mobile apps. He said he wanted to save others from what he called the heartache, pain, and time spent making the same types of mistakes his company has made in the past.
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\nBefore plunging into stories about the highs and lows of developing the various mobile apps he has worked on for Taqtile, he caught a dodgeball thrown by Esri ArcGIS program manager Jim McKinney, who moderated the summit. Tomizuka laughed and said, \u201cGoing along with the dodgeball analogy, for me building mobile apps over the years is like getting pelted in the face. I don\u2019t want to discourage anyone but it is a complex endeavor.\u201d
\nTomizuka said there are two types of mobile apps: narcissistic and empathetic. Avoid being narcissistic, where you develop for yourself, and opt for being empathetic, where you develop for your end user, he said. \u201c[Not] putting yourself in someone else\u2019s shoes. . .is deadly for mobile apps.\u201d
\nAs an example of a narcissistic app, Tomizuka used an app Taqtile designed for the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The app included a logo of the city of Charlotte that users could take a picture of with their cell phone camera and get more information about the city. However, that idea was not driven by the user but by someone who worked for the city. \u201cThat\u2019s not thinking about your user. That\u2019s not being empathetic,\u201d he said.
\nTomizuka contrasted that with developing a mobile app for Netshoes, an online sporting goods retailer in Brazil. Taqtile interviewed potential app users and collected data on how they used e-commerce apps. The app was a hit; one of its most successful aspects was a real-time chat feature that let the customer chat with a Netshoes employee about a product or the status of an order.
\n\u201cThis is a big success,\u201d said Tomizuka, adding that the app had 750,000 downloads and 500,000 monthly active users and generated a large number of purchases.
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\nWhat\u2019s New, What\u2019s Next<\/strong>
\nChristopher Moravec, director of products for Eagle Information Mapping in Houston, Texas, likes Esri\u2019s philosophy of working collaboratively with developers like himself while always upping the ante and improving ArcGIS.
\n\u201cI like the culture of the company\u2014to push the [technology] limits. I was not always necessarily happy, but it got better\u2014faster, easier to use, and more configurable,\u201d said Moravec, whose firm creates data management and analysis tools for companies with oil and gas pipelines.
\nA collaborative relationship also makes developing geospatial solutions easier, said Moravec, who uses the entire ArcGIS platform, with ArcGIS for Server as the cornerstone. \u201cI\u2019m focusing on my industry and my needs while Esri provides basic functionality such as the mapping, disconnected editing, and analysis [tools],\u201d he said. \u201cEsri does the hard part, and I do the fun part.\u201d
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\nMoravec and the other attendees look forward each year to hearing about Esri\u2019s new GIS technology. They weren\u2019t disappointed by what Esri director of software development Sud Menon, and McKinney, and their team of software engineers brought to the stage.
\nMenon kicked off the technology demonstrations by providing a holistic overview of the ArcGIS platform. \u201cYou will see a lot of exciting things today,\u201d he said.
\nMenon explained how the platform includes ArcGIS for Desktop, apps, and APIs powered by ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS for Server in the cloud or an organization\u2019s infrastructure. \u201cWe have been working hard on building a cohesive platform that knits all these elements together.\u201d
\nHe highlighted Esri\u2019s new 3D web GIS technology, including web scenes that represent 3D maps. Scene layers represent features displayed in 3D including points, lines, polygons, objects, and meshes. \u201cYou can also work with map and image tiles and dynamic map and image layers,\u201d he said.
\nMenon emphasized the platform\u2019s ready-to-use maps, apps, imagery, demographic information, and other data Esri offers. The apps include Esri Story Map apps, Explorer for ArcGIS, templates, Dashboard for ArcGIS, Collector for ArcGIS, GeoPlanner for ArcGIS, Esri Maps for Office, Web Scene Viewer, ArcGIS Open Data, and a crowdsourcing solution template.
\nTo help people quickly build apps, Esri just released Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS<\/a>, which is also available in a developer edition that provides an extensible framework for developers to create custom widgets and themes. \u201cIt allows you to build HTML\/JavaScript applications by using a predefined gallery of widgets,\u201d Menon said. \u201cThis is something we had a lot of requests for. As a developer, you can also extend this framework by creating your own widgets.\u201d
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\nThat is exactly what Tom Sellsted did. A supervising senior analyst for the city of Yakima, Washington, Sellsted said he always leaves the summit with tools, techniques, and insights from peers and Esri staff to create new information products.
\n\u201cFor me, you can\u2019t walk away from here without being inspired,\u201d said Sellsted, who used the developer edition of Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS to build a custom measure widget for his organization. The widget provides a running total measurement of area units such as square feet, square miles, or hectares or distance units such as feet, meters, and miles as segments are being drawn.
\nMeasurements appear on the map after drawing a line or freehand polygon or dragging a polygon, line polyline, triangle, ellipse, circle, or extent onto it. \u201c[The widget] also leaves those measured dimensions on the map so it can be printed,\u201d Sellsted said.
\nSellsted took advantage of some hood popping on Esri\u2019s part. \u201cThis was based on an [Esri] draw widget,\u201d he said. \u201cI copied the code in order to create a new kind of measure widget.\u201d
\nOther crowd-pleasing technology at the summit included Smart Mapping<\/a> in ArcGIS Online, which Menon said makes it easier for people who are not cartography experts to create great maps that tell the story of the data.
\nSmart Mapping helps people quickly make maps that are highly useful and visually beautiful given the data they have in hand. Smart Mapping, with data-driven workflows, provides smarter initial settings for the map that\u2019s being made, including color, scale, and styling.
\n\u201cSome cartographic options just aren\u2019t appropriate,\u201d said Mark Harrower, an Esri product engineer. \u201cThe software is offering the right choices at the right time.\u201d
\nAnother crowd pleaser was AppStudio for ArcGIS<\/a>, currently in beta. Developers can use AppStudio for ArcGIS to build a single mapping app that will run natively on multiple platforms including Microsoft Windows, Apple iOS and OS X, Android, and Linux.
\nMoravec said that having to build an app only one time for all the platforms will be a huge time-saver. \u201cIt\u2019s a ton of work to build a really good app,\u201d he said. \u201cIt turns making a good app into weeks instead of months.\u201d
\nIn closing the technology demonstrations, McKinney told the audience that he thinks they would agree that in 2015, Esri will have a huge amount of innovation and capabilities for developers in place. \u201cThink of the entire platform as your development space,\u201d he said.
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\nLooking Forward<\/strong>
\nThe 2016 Esri Developer Summit will be held March 8 \u201311, with pre-conference training sessions scheduled for March 6 \u20137. If you have questions or feedback about the DevSummit, send a Tweet to @EsriDevSummit or e-mail devsummit@esri.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[275952],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4637","insider","type-insider","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n2015 Esri Developer Summit: Helping Developers Build Top Quality Geospatial Solutions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/2015-esri-developer-summit-helping-developers-build-top-quality-geospatial-solutions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2015 Esri Developer Summit: Helping Developers Build Top Quality Geospatial Solutions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Geosolutions are desperately needed to solve the world\u2019s big problems, Esri president Jack Dangermond told 1,800 people at the 2015 Esri Developer Summit (DevSummit). 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