Here are the afternoon notes. They’re not as extensive as the morning notes, but the highlights are here. Don’t forget to look for our wrap of ArcGIS Mobile. I just got it installed on my Mogul and I can’t wait to play with it.

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What happens when you release 14,000 hungry geo-nerds on an unsuspecting downtown eating landscape? That’s right! Some of them are gonna come back late!

Came in mid 9.4 discussion. The music introducing the speakers was impressive, and I mean “The Right Stuff” impressive. Changed icons and buttons – it rather looks a lot like Office 2003. Table of Contents is now hidden and you can bring it up by passing your mouse over to the left. So you can see more map on your screen. The editor is changed to make editing easier. They call it more “stream lined”. There’s a box of symbols, which means you click on the symbol, then start drawing. They’re doing it with some point data. The box is broken up into points, lines, and polygons, which presumably will be smart enough to know what you need to do to do the drawing. Selection tools allows you to click on a point and it will effectively query all the layers for editable features. Editing is much easier now, because you can pick the symbols and just draw on the map. Much more “old school” if you will.

I just realized where I saw the headphones/ear piece things they’re wearing. It was on VH1 “Behind the Music” thing with 98 Back ‘Sync Boys or some such band featured. And now I’m terribly amused thinking of Jack dancing and singing to “Bye Bye Bye”.

Now they’re talking about interaction between ArcGIS and publishing to server. IT now does an analysis to see if there are any problems that would make publishing difficult. Errors have to be fixed before publishing and warnings don’t stop you from publishing, but are general “bad things” you should avoid. Very compiler like. Apparently 9.4 is going to feature a new rendering engine for server, which is great news. They’re pushing the service pack model heavily. Apparently the publishing/server updates will be happening in Service Pack 2 of 9.3. Wonder what’s going in SP 1?

ArcExplorer is way different. The 9.4 release uses Office 2007’s ribbon mechanism. I think that’ll be highly controversial. I personally LOVE the ribbon, but I know many more people that hate it more than those who love it. It’s coming out Q1 2009, so right around the corner.

Next up, education, particularly K-12, one of my favorite topics. How do you breach the digital divide, particularly with rather specialist technology like GIS? It isn’t a simple problem to solve, I don’t think. I winder how GIS can fit into the standardized test model we’re moving towards, even with geography being a core curriculum. Ah well, enough soap box, and on to the experts. This year they’re focusing upon a simple model in the story of one teacher and one student. Molly just finished the 6th grade. These are always the COOLEST talks of ANYTHING at the UC, I think. Last summer, Molly worked on the LIONS project in University City in Missouri. She began working on the project in summer camp and could not finish, so concluded in the fall. The project is in essence a historical GIS project. She looked at three generations of her family which lived in University City. When her family moved to the area in 1959, the city was pretty much all white. By 2000, it was evenly divided, but white tends to live with white and black with black. Incomes and education tend to follow the same racial patterns. The project is pretty classic GIS analysis. The city is pretty divided into the “right and wrong” side o the tracks, even geographically speaking, as it’s pretty much a 50/50 split. It’s too bad Sue had to work on her presentation for tomorrow, which is too bad, because this is 1,000% up her alley. Once again I’m stupefied that a kid of Molly’s age can stand up in front of a crowd like this and give such a wonderful presentation.

Finally, the keynote speaker – Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens. His talk is focusing upon the conservation of our planet. The basic notion is, as he quoted a colleague, that the world is our garden and we are the gardeners. I understand the concept, but what about those who have the proverbial “black thumb” and don’t know where to start? Dr. Raven is talking about his background, which is more or less education and professional experience in California, now at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which is the US’s oldest botanical garden.