00:01Now I'd like to introduce somebody very special, special to me.

00:04He's been my colleague for decades and also a very close friend of all of you, and that's Scott Morehouse...

00:12...head of software engineering for Esri.

00:14Come on out here, Scott. He's a little shy. It's good.

00:20Hey, Jack.

00:21Nice to see you, Scott.

00:22Yeah. We're going to now talk about the future.

00:26Yep, a peek at the future.

00:28A peek, oh, I see. Okay.

00:29He's always saying, Jack, hold back a little.

00:35Actually, Scott and I have worked together for three decades.

00:39Yeah.

00:40And it's...he really owns engineering.

00:43He has all these incredible minds that work with him.

00:45I've done more on the other side of the business, and the two of us have been friends but also sort of collaborators.

00:54And that's the reason why this, well, actually mostly Scott, has made this world come alive...

01:01...everything that you've seen today and, of course, all of his people.

01:05But this afternoon we're going to say, What's next?

01:08Right. Yeah.

01:09He's not going to say... this is unrehearsed.

01:12He's going to say, Jack, it's a secret. Is it a secret?

01:15Well, I think our view about how we build software is kind of based on principles...

01:22...and creating a strong team and then letting things develop organically.

01:27So it's not like we have this five-year master plan and we're executing stage 32B.

01:33It's really more about putting our principles in place, creating strong communication with you and our business partners...

01:41...and others in the community, and then empowering smart, creative people to get it done.

01:48And we're quite flexible, quite adaptive.

01:52We do have some really obvious goals and challenges that we're working on, and we want to share some of that with you today.

02:01Just a little about principles.

02:02I think they're probably familiar to you from this morning, but it's our primary purpose in software development...

02:11...system development is to serve you.

02:13We think of ourselves as the engineers, the boffins, kind of behind you, giving you a platform...

02:22...and technology that you can use to do your great work, serve your users, your community.

02:29Our strategy has been to build a kind of generic platform or framework that can be focused into different markets...

02:37...and different areas and to then show some, more recently, show best practice examples and templates...

02:47...that leverage that platform.

02:50We listen very carefully to what you tell us, what you want us to do, kind of at a tactical level and strategically.

02:59We also have our antennae out and we're watching what's happening in computing and information management, science...

03:07...you know, how people interact with technology.

03:10It's changed quite a bit from the old computer center days to now the, you know, information being pervasive days.

03:20So we kind of put all those things together, and we have an iterative development process with a team of people...

03:29...smart developers, smart people good at user experience and how to express that, communicate that...

03:38...and iterate until we get it right.

03:43I think what you saw this morning was a big shift from kind of the first generation, if you will, of workstation...

03:53...database-centered GIS, back office GIS, to this new pattern of pervasive information...

04:02...making information accessible through the web, collaborative information.

04:07And some try to kind of position these as two different things.

04:10You know, there's the old school and the new school, the, you know, whatever.

04:14And our vision, our goal, our ambition is to really bring these things together and to let you...

04:23...and the geospatial experts that kind of create and manage and curate a lot of this information...

04:31...also make it accessible more broadly and take some of that new energy, new viewpoints about social information...

04:41...web-based information and combine the two.

04:47So that's our strategy.

04:48We have a number of development teams, and we'll continue to invest heavily and develop our kind of workstation GIS...

04:59...database-centric GIS, a lot of these advanced analytical tools that Lauren showed this morning, for example.

05:07But we're also working, investing very heavily in this cloud-based dissemination, collaboration...

05:15...and analytic platform as well as the whole notion of geographic information being pervasive.

05:23You know, you don't need to look at a map necessarily to know about a place.

05:29Your phone or your device actually knows where you are, and it can tell you about that place...

05:36...without even having to have a map in the loop.

05:38So some of these trends of mobile, pervasive, device-based access to geographic information...

05:47...we're going to share a little bit of that with a live demonstration, but before that, I guess I wanted to give you a chance...

05:55...to meet the development team or get a glimpse at who the development team are.

06:00So a few weeks ago, we just sent some folks around with a video camera and just asked folks in development...

06:11...about what they were working on, what they were excited about, and we gathered up some of that that we wanted to show in a video.

06:19And then we'll show...we'll have a demonstration with some cool stuff that you'll see.

06:26Last thing I guess I want to say is we listen very carefully to what you tell us, everything from all of your complaints...

06:34...and your concerns about fine points, we want to get that right.

06:39Also, your ideas about big ideas and where you want us to go in the long run.

06:46The development group, by and large, has moved from Redlands and our various development centers...

06:53...to be with you here this week.

06:55They're going to be in the islands in the conference center, I guess, as well as a lot of tech sessions...so...

07:06You know, at the very first User Conference, I sat up on stage and we kind of raised our hands and, Who wants what next?

07:13I want, you know, Calcomp plotter shading or I want, you know, can you do something in three dimensions...

07:21...and we'd write things down, and it was very human, right?

07:24We listened and serve you in a very human way.

07:29At scale, it's not the same, but after this session, everybody's going to be at those islands, and you can go find smart people...

07:39...and you can talk to them one-on-one at a human level.

07:42So, for us, building our system is very much of a human endeavor in serving you, and we really enjoy that.

07:52We really enjoy playing with the technology.

07:55So I hope you get a little of that with our segment today and then drill in and pigeonhole or...pigeonhole? Wrong word.

08:05That's okay.

08:06We grab them by the lapels and shake them.

08:08Lapels, wow. You can do that.

08:10The developers that are going to be here this week, and I'll be looking forward to meeting some of you also.