This year, our Flutter Maps SDK team at Esri was thrilled to participate in Fluttercon, the premier global event for Flutter developers.
We were proud to represent Esri at both Fluttercon USA and Fluttercon EU, sharing our latest capabilities, such as Geotriggers and Navigation, with the community and showcasing how location intelligence can elevate Flutter applications.
Fluttercon USA – Brooklyn, NY
Fluttercon USA took place on July 25–26, at the Brooklyn Storehouse in the Navy Yard, welcoming over 500 developers and featuring more than 60 speakers. Our team was excited to take the stage and share insights into how spatial awareness can transform mobile experiences.
Martino Yovo, Product Engineer in the Flutter Maps SDK team at Esri, presented a session titled “When Maps Think: Geotriggers & Spatial Awareness with ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter.”
If you’re unfamiliar with Geotriggers, they allow you to kick off an action based on a user entering a predefined location (fence) that you’ve defined.
In his talk, he explored how Geotriggers enable app behavior, where instead of users pulling data, the app pushes events based on your device location.
He stepped the audience through Geotriggers’ architecture, including location feeds (“Where am I?”), fence parameters (“What area matters?”), and rule types (“When should this trigger?”).
He also showed how to create and display routes using the ArcGIS World Routing Service and how to combine Flutter Maps SDK with Flutter text-to-speech package to build smart, contextual apps.
To make it real, he demoed a lightweight NYC Tour Guide app. As you move from Union Square toward Times Square, the app highlights nearby points of interest and speaks them aloud. When you enter a buffer zone, it announces it: “You’re entering Central Park.” This showcases how Geotriggers, buffers, and rules can be used to create real-time, reactive experiences within your app.
He said:
“I was personally excited to present that feature because it empowers people with limited hand mobility or visual impairments to interact with maps through voice, opening new possibilities for accessibility and inclusion in spatial applications.”
Watch his session here:
Fluttercon EU – Berlin, Germany
Held at CityCube Berlin from September 24–26, Fluttercon EU drew over 1,000 attendees and featured a diverse lineup of speakers.
Among them was Jen Merritt, Product Owner for the ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter, who delivered a talk titled “Why ‘Where’ Matters: Exploring the Power of Location-Aware Apps.”
Jen’s session focused on how Geotriggers work with native device capabilities to power location-aware experiences.
In her talk, she explained the different levels of location awareness:
- the basic level, “Where am I?”
- the contextual level, “What’s nearby?” and
- the dynamic level, “What happens when I move?”.
She showed how the “Where am I?” level is applied when an app determines your current position and represents it visually, often as a blue dot on the map, how “What’s nearby?” comes to life when the app displays nearby points of interest and relevant data, and how the “What happens when I move?” level triggers UI updates and notifications in real time as your position changes.
She also explained how GPS and location permissions (the settings users must enable to let apps access their real-time position) allow developers to build reactive UIs that adapt as people move through space. The talk covered best practices for requesting and handling these permissions in Flutter to deliver a smooth, privacy-friendly experience for users.
To wrap it up, she demoed a map built for The Great Edinburgh Souvenir Hunt, which guides you to locations near you and even lets you explore or experiment with different tours based on where you currently are.
Watch her session here:
Top takeaways from Fluttercon
Fluttercon brought together a mix of developers and companies from across the tech ecosystem. We connected with attendees from industries including geospatial, navigation, entertainment, travel, consultancies, security, AI, developer tools, and more.
Flutter’s Momentum
Flutter is gaining adoption across startups and enterprise teams for its cross-platform capabilities and efficient development model. It’s exciting to see how it’s evolving.
Geospatial Interest
Our sessions drew an engaged audience and sparked great discussions on building location-aware apps with the Flutter Maps SDK. Developers showed strong interest in offline-first capabilities, Geotriggers, and routing use cases.
AI Is Reshaping Developer Workflows
No tech conference today is complete without AI, and Fluttercon was no exception. AI-assisted development was a popular topic, with sessions exploring everything from agentic experiences to AI-powered code reviews. One note from these sessions is that well-documented APIs significantly improve AI-generated code quality. So we will work hard to continue offering top-notch documentation that is also AI-friendly.
For developers who want to explore the ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter further, here are some of our resources to help you get started:
- ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter Package on pub.dev: https://pub.dev/packages/arcgis_maps
- ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter Documentation: https://developers.arcgis.com/flutter
- ArcGIS Maps SDK for Flutter Samples: https://github.com/Esri/arcgis-maps-sdk-flutter-samples
Did you attend Fluttercon? We’d love to hear what you enjoyed most!
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