On Tuesday the DevSummit really took off. The day  started with the plenary session, where we got an overview of the coming week. The talks in the  planery session covered the upcoming ArcGIS 10 release, which will be released this summer, most likely around the ESRI User Conference. Beta-program users can look forward to the “Pre-Release” within the next few weeks. ESRI’s  key message to the attending audience was that they improve on simplifying the work and usability of the software products, in order to increase the efficiency of developers as well as end users. In other words, with the new ArcGIS version users should be able to do their work with in a more logically way and fewer mouse clicks. The plenary presentations featured an interesting “click map” of an average ArcMap users (see photo).

The new desktop and server features re-enforced and validated our concepts and approach of deliverying ready-to-use applications to our end-users. The desktop still serves as the main platform for data production and advanced analysis, while the server platform will mainly be used for data discovery, querying and display results from analyses, as well as simple editing of attribute and simple-feature data.

One highly anticipated presentation was the iPhone app from ESRI. It is an answer to the hype around this device. The app was shown live during the during the presentation. ESRI also developed a SDK for it, so that developers can also take advantage of this cool platform.

The technical sessions, which started in the afternoon, include presentations, demonstrations, tips and tricks about using ArcGIS with technologies like for example REST, Flex, Silverlight in the different context like desktop, mobile devices and online. A big leap was seen in the online functionality. On one side, there’s a rich set of APIs for developers to develop their own online applications. On the other hand, ESRI introduced ArcGIS.com, which will be released anytime soon. ArcGIS.com is a platform for users and developers to share their data, maps, apps and tools.

Last but not least, an important part of the day was the meetings with ESRI technical staff. The developers from the different areas like server and mobile devices are available most of the day for answering our questions. This is a great opportunity to get the latest information regarding our specific interests and problems. As we are also participating in the Beta-Program for  ArcGIS 10, this was a good possibility to give feedback, place wishes and ideas for improvements.

We also meet with our geodatabase contact at ESRI to continue our discussion on the issues with the geometric network. Yet we saw, that our intensive discussions seemed to pay out, since some our requirements will be worked into ArcGIS 10. For other ones we may have to wait a bit longer till 10.1. Nevertheless, we know now, that ESRI is listening to its customers.