00:01I'm Allen Carroll; I'm program manager at Esri and I'm glad to have you here.

00:05I'm going to be doing most of the talking, but joining me are Andrew Skinner and Rupert Essinger.

00:15We're going to try to move kind of quickly 'cause there's a lot to cover, but we're going to start by...

00:20...I'll start by giving just a general overview of what story maps are, kind of conceptually, then I'll give you...

00:26...a quick tour of a few of our recent story maps and urge you to go back to our site any time to see more.

00:33Then we'll talk a little bit more about the components of story maps and how we build them...

00:40...and Andy will go into more depth on our selection of basemaps and how to use them.

00:46Then we'll talk about, I'll talk in a little more detail about the process of publishing web maps into templates...

00:54...one of which, or at least an upcoming template, is the short list that Rupert will talk about...

01:02...and then I'll wax, if there's time, I'll wax philosophical very briefly, and then hopefully we'll have some time for Q&A.

01:11So, what are story maps?

01:14Story maps are this combination of intelligent web maps that are produced and shared on ArcGIS Online...

01:24...with web applications and templates that incorporate text, multimedia, and interactive functions.

01:30So, they're meant for very general audiences; they're meant to inform, educate, entertain...

01:36...and inspire people about the world and all sorts of topics within it.

01:40They're meant to be simple and essentially single purpose, and they're meant to be usable right out of the box...

01:48...by anybody with little or no instruction.

01:53So in a very general way, we think sort of conceptually of story maps in these three steps.

02:01So first, as I mentioned, are web maps that we compile, mash up, and publish on ArcGIS Online...

02:08...and those include, of course, maps that you might have produced, or we might have produced...

02:12...on ArcGIS Desktop and put up as services.

02:16They might include other services that we find on ArcGIS Online, as well as point data that we input via spreadsheet.

02:27And then they become, I guess in a sense, intelligent as we refine those maps, and you'll see a bunch of arrows that have...

02:36...just one direction on them, but in fact as we're producing these story maps, we're going back and forth constantly.

02:43So we'll realize that our web map would be better if we added more stuff to it.

02:47So we're constantly refining our web maps in terms of the cartography itself and especially in terms of...

02:56...how we refine the pop-ups, and I'll get into a little bit more detail about that.

03:02And then finally we publish them into, and you can publish them, into websites that might provide...

03:09...that additional context, but we work especially hard on creating our own and then sharing with you...

03:17...templates that provide kind of the rest of the story, the places for titles and subtitles and legends...

03:22...and keeping the kind of interactivity, or functionality, that can make it engaging and help...

03:30...kind of support the telling of the story.

03:34Half of our story maps team is here.

03:37I have the pleasure of leading it.

03:39David Asbury is here, and then we've got Steve Sylvia and Lee Bock.

03:45We all work out of the Washington, DC office, but we also get all sorts of help and support from others...

03:52...across Esri and, of course, partner organizations.

03:56But these guys are certainly included on the list.

03:59We work fairly closely with our marketing group - Bernie Szukalski and others.

04:05We've got several goals.

04:07One is to just pick topics that we like, or we find important or interesting, and feature them.

04:14We want to, and we're learning constantly as we do this, we want to develop new ways to tell stories with maps.

04:21We want to demonstrate that ArcGIS isn't just about planning and analysis and decision support, et cetera...

04:28...it's a communication platform, and a very exciting and very rich one.

04:32And then finally, and I think way most importantly, is that we ultimately want to enable you and thousands of others...

04:39...to tell their own stories using some of our best practices and especially our apps and templates.

04:49Sorry, wrong way.

04:51So, I'd like to just give you a quick tour of our recent productions.

04:57But again, please, at any point, do go to... that's the wrong one... sorry about that.

05:05Do go to our website at storymaps.esri.com and just peruse it.

05:12We publish new story maps about once every couple weeks.

05:16So, please do come back and take a look.

05:19And we also have links to other resources, including examples of how other people are using our templates...

05:26...some white papers and best practices documents, and, I'll get to this later, but a gallery of templates...

05:34...that you can download and use.

05:37At any rate, let me quickly take you to a recent story we did on feeding the world, and I'm happy to say that...

05:46Paul West and Peter Engstrom of the University of Minnesota are here in the audience.

05:51We worked with them to produce this from their incredible work and analysis.

05:57So the basic idea here is to examine a huge challenge we face as a kind of planetary family...

06:06...which is to meet a demand for food that will double by the middle of the century.

06:11And, thanks to Paul and Peter and their colleagues, we were able to look into this subject by examining things like...

06:23...crop yield and comparing it to - a little hard to see on the projector here - but comparing it to essentially...

06:33...the difference between the yield and the proportion of the calories from those crops that go directly to feed people.

06:39So here in the richest, perhaps the richest breadbasket in the world, a lot of that enormous productivity is...

06:46...going into feeding animals and into biofuels as opposed to directly feeding people.

06:52So perhaps it might imply that we should think about changing some of our habits...

06:56...in order to meet that increasing demand.

06:58And I won't go into the rest, but there's more information about crop production and water use.

07:08Far and away our most popular story, so far - it kind of went viral in some ways - was published just prior...

07:15...to the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic, and we simply, in this case we didn't use GIS data...

07:23...we simply went to Wikipedia and we map-enabled the passenger list and found some really interesting things.

07:29So, as you can see, overall, about a third of the Titanic's passengers survived, but when you look at it...

07:35...class by class, about two-thirds of the first-class passengers survived, and perhaps...

07:41...unfortunately, not surprisingly - only about a quarter of steerage passengers survived.

07:46But what's even more interesting to me is that the distribution of the first-class passengers was mainly from...

07:53...major cities in the US and western Europe - US, Canada, and western Europe...

07:58...but again, if you look at third class, this distribution is really different.

08:02So, there're many, many people from rural areas of Scandinavia and Bulgaria and the Balkans...

08:08...and Lebanon and beyond, but also a lot from Ireland and England, and one particularly telling location...

08:17...is Peterborough in England, where the Sage family all boarded the Titanic and none survived.

08:25But for every passenger, you can click on that name and see the point of origin, where they boarded the Titanic...

08:33...and where they intended to go, so it's a nice way of kind of personalizing what might be otherwise kind of dry data.

08:41Another template that we think has lots of potential we first published as a walking tour of the National Mall.

08:50So I went, I spent a nice, before it got sweltering in Washington, I went out for a day and took pictures...

08:55...and geotagged them and strung them together into this place-based narrative.

09:01And then users of this story-telling template can then just click through sequentially, or if they get bored...

09:10...with my pictures and want to kind of jump ahead, they can kind of hijack the narrative and just jump around...

09:18...wherever they'd like to go, and of course they can use this carousel view to get a preview of coming attractions...

09:25...or know where to go back to if they want to return.

09:30Another story we did a couple months ago was to show the relationship between obesity and diabetes...

09:39...or at any rate the fact that the patterns, the geographic distribution of obesity and diabetes...

09:46...does seem to have some striking similarities.

09:50So this has also been enabled as a template.

09:53So it takes two layers of a single web map and enables them in a way that makes it very easy to compare.

10:01So to zoom in a little bit.

10:03You can also click on any county.

10:06This is a good example of how we work hard to configure the pop-ups.

10:10You can look at any county and see the breakdown by county and as you move the slider across, the pop-up...

10:17...automatically changes to the other map theme.

10:23We did a, essentially a chronology in geography of major Civil War battles that you can explore in various ways...

10:34...so I could type a battle name and find it, but I can also type in a state name and it will filter the battles by that state.

10:44I can change to different basemaps if I want to look at it against satellite view.

10:49And this is pretty cool, to zoom in and see how many battlefields become subdivisions and strip malls and things.

10:56And we also tapped a map from the David Rumsey collection - if it loads here - to get a sense of what...

11:03...what it might have looked like back in the time of the Civil War.

11:07There we go.

11:08And then you can also play the time slider and just watch the kind of sequence of battles or stop it and move it...

11:19...manually to get a sense of the kind of projection, I mean progression, excuse me, of battles during the war.

11:30So let me go back to the PowerPoint, and we'll show you one or two additional things a little bit later.

11:46So. Components of story maps.

11:49I should have included something but before, of course, you'd begin to assemble the components, the necessary...

11:55...thinking has to be, well, what is the story we're trying to tell and who are we trying to tell it to...

12:01...and what are the essential components to that story.

12:04And I really do mean essential; we're constantly eliminating; we're constantly trying to simplify...

12:10...and that's something that doesn't necessarily come natural to cartographers.

12:14And my teammates are pretty frequently saying, Allen, you've gone too far, we need to eliminate.

12:21But at any rate, we assemble raw materials, including map services and tabular data and the basemaps...

12:29...that Andy's going to talk about, into web maps.

12:33And in addition, we assemble other multimedia content, including text, of course, and photos and videos.

12:39We assemble most of that into one or more web maps, and then we publish those web maps into the apps...

12:48...and templates that give it the functionality that really enables people to interact with it in fun and interesting ways.

12:56And we do it in a way that makes it as broadly distributable as possible.

13:02So that means that my team member, Lee Bock, who has spent years developing in Flex and Flash...

13:09...essentially had to give up on that, because of course Flash is not, won't show up on iPads.

13:15So we're using primarily JavaScript and a little HTML5 to get these out to as broad an audience as we possibly can.

13:25Here I am going the wrong way again; excuse me.

13:28So, one of the key components, then, of our stories are basemaps, and Andy is going to show you...

13:36...in a little more depth the selection of basemaps and essentially what they, the kinds of choices they enable...

13:43...and that you should think about. Thanks, Allen.

13:57Okay, well, as part of the ArcGIS system, we provide a series of basemaps that can be used to...

14:06...for inclusion in your work.

14:07I'm going to focus on choosing the most suitable basemap, and it's one of the many choices you'll make...

14:13...in building a story map, but it's a crucial one.

14:16The basemap may be the first thing that people see when they open up your map and you want it to be...

14:24...to draw them into your story.

14:31Okay. I'm going to use two examples to take you through the strengths and weaknesses of the different basemaps.

14:38One based on polygon data and one based on line and point data, and these are going to be based on...

14:48...maps that are being created for existing story maps.

14:54I'm going to compare these against a series of basemaps.

15:00I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'm going to try and give you a good cross section of them...

15:05...and remember with all of these that the most detailed or the most richly colored or the coolest-looking basemap...

15:13...is not always the best one for showing your particular map.

15:19I'll be looking at imagery and specifically Imagery with Labels, which is one of the options that we have.

15:26Light Gray Canvas, National Geographic, Streets, and the new World Topographic Map...

15:36...and I'll explain a little bit more about that at the end.

15:40And there are many other options available to you, and of course you can also create your own basemap...

15:46...for doing this, if that's what you prefer.

15:51Okay. I'm going to switch over to a live ArcGIS session, and I'm going to start out with a map of...

16:03...primary health care providers in the US.

16:07I'll start by switching it across to imagery - the Imagery with Labels option.

16:14Many of the maps that we create involve polygon data, and choosing a basemap to work against this sort of map...

16:22...can be problematic, particularly when you've got a continuous coverage, such as this.

16:27Much of the useful locational detail is concealed, and the message of the map can get distorted by the base.

16:36So, and with all of these, I'm going to ask myself the questions that I normally go through when I'm trying to decide on...

16:42...a basemap, and the first one is relevance.

16:46As far as this particular one is concerned, I'd say, it's not really relevant; it's dark, it's intense...

16:52...the subject matter is primarily physical, and it doesn't really relate to the subject of the map, which is demographic.

17:01We've got a bit of a hangup on the service; there, there we go.

17:04However, it does have a reference layer; that's a layer of information that comes in over the top of your map.

17:11There are a few of our services that have that, and that's actually a useful thing to remember when...

17:17...you're making your choice.

17:18There are some circumstances where that actually can be very useful.

17:22If I, I can demonstrate if I... oh, no, in fact, you know, I can't do that, delete the reference layer - it doesn't show up....

17:31...does it, when we - in the list of layers, in fact, it doesn't show up when you're using a basemap.

17:36The other thing I look at is color.

17:39Quite often, with imagery, its very difficult to get a set of colors that work well with imagery.

17:44In this case, actually, I don't think it looks too bad.

17:47I think it's more luck than judgment, but, in fact, I think from a color point of view, it works okay.

17:54One of the things that we can do to improve the readability of the map is transparency, but I'm not...

17:59...going to spend any time on that with this.

18:01I think with imagery, if you try and use transparency on it with this sort of map, it can be very dangerous...

18:07...so I want to stay away from that.

18:10Let me change the basemap.

18:13And we'll go the Light Gray Canvas Map.

18:16This is almost the antithesis of the one that you were seeing just now.

18:21The light gray canvas has been designed deliberately to have a neutral palette, and one...

18:26...that doesn't challenge your information.

18:29It leaves larger areas of the visual hierarchy available for you to work with and to play with.

18:37Base relevance? Well, it doesn't have a lot of detail.

18:41That's part of the reason it works the way it does.

18:46But the base is, essentially, relevant.

18:49It does have a feature service, a reference layer working over the top, and that does help.

18:57Transparency on this map, it's not really needed; I think the map is working pretty well without...

19:03...so we won't worry too much about that.

19:07National Geographic - now, this is an unusual one.

19:12It was designed to operate as a full-color reference map as well as a basemap, and that means...

19:18...with this sort of information, it can be a little bit distracting.

19:22It has very rich colors, and they can enhance a map, but they can also work against it.

19:28As far as base relevance is concerned, well, it's not really relevant.

19:34The National Geographic map has a lot of physical information which doesn't tie in to a demographic story.

19:41It does have political information, but where we need the political information, it's hidden behind the subject matter...

19:49...and we don't have a reference layer available on this map at the moment.

19:55The color palette I think works very well; in fact, it might work a little bit too well because the subject map's...

20:04...falling back into the basemap a little bit.

20:08I will, on this one, I'll show transparency, because it shows a particular issue that I want to get on to.

20:14Transparency, I'll just click in here and move this to about 30 or 35 percent, which is a point at which you can see...

20:23...let me get the pop-up out of the way - where you can begin to see labels coming through the map...

20:28...and where they may be functional.

20:31But any attempt to add transparency to a polygon has to be done very carefully, and particularly one that uses color...

20:39...to define categories, as this does.

20:43 That's because the level of detail in the basemap can compromise the color that's coming through.

20:49Very often you'll find that you will lose your categorization as the basemap begins to dominate.

20:57Having said that, I think on this map, the categorization is actually strong enough to allow the base...

21:04...to come through without it destroying the effect of the map.

21:10But the polygons do get a slight color cast to them, and, you know, I said that it was falling back into the map before...

21:19...it's definitely falling back into the map at the moment.

21:21So I would say for that reason, this isn't necessarily a good choice.

21:26Let's look at Streets.

21:35Okay, the base may be a little more relevant here; the highways, I guess, add more locational information...

21:41...but unfortunately they're not where we need them to be, which is on the subject area, and...

21:45...we don't have a reference layer for this particular one.

21:49Colorwise, I think there's a clash with the water colors, so, you know, the combination of those two...

21:54...I would probably not consider this one.

21:58Finally, the existing topographic map - and again, I'll explain that a little bit more at the end...

22:05...and, again, base relevance, we're seeing a lot of physical information again which really doesn't tie in...

22:11...with what we're doing with the map.

22:13And I think there's a striking color clash between the map and the water color on this map...

22:19...so I wouldn't consider it in this case.

22:22So the best one in this case, I think, is probably the Light Gray Canvas Map, and that is really no surprise...

22:29...in that we actually built this map with the Light Gray Canvas Map in mind, so...

22:35And in fact, the Light Gray Canvas is a favorite of many of us that work with this type of map.

22:41It's very forgiving; it allows you to do a lot with the map that you're working with.

22:46I'll now switch to a line and point map, and this is the map service which feeds the walking tour...

22:52...that Allen was talking about.

22:54Symbolization's a little bit different on this to the one that comes through in the final map.

23:01And at the moment, I've got it on the canvas map, on the imagery, and at this scale, imagery can sometimes...

23:14...work very well with this type of map.

23:17I do think maybe it's one of these things where the trees are actually a distraction.

23:22It gets a little bit difficult, as far as the map is concerned, to pick out exactly what is on the...

23:29...exactly what the features are around the Mall.

23:31Although they're well labeled with the labeling option.

23:35Colorwise, it doesn't work; I think the line and point information on this is falling back into the map in quite a big way.

23:46But, as Allen was demonstrating, it's quite nice to have this available sometimes as an option...

23:50...as you're working through.

23:54Let's go to the canvas map.

24:01Well, the basemap is relevant here.

24:03There's quite a bit of information here, but you have to struggle a little bit to see it.

24:08It's weaker than it needs to be against this very strong line work.

24:15So, you know, in that respect it's not a great choice.

24:19As far as the color's concerned, well, it works fine.

24:23Just about any map is going to work well with the canvas map; it's designed to be very forgiving in that respect.

24:30Let's have a look at the National Geographic map.

24:39This works very well, I think.

24:41The information is relevant, the subject matter sits up right on top, and the color palette's...

24:47...about fairly complementary, although with a National Geographic map, you really need to stick to the...

25:00...as I said before, to the reds and the blues.

25:03I think the yellows and the oranges, you've got to be very careful with, against some of the symbolization.

25:11Street map works very well.

25:20I would have no problems with using this as the base, probably with the red roads.

25:27I'd have chosen a different color on the symbolization - maybe a bright blue.

25:32And finally, the topographic map, and this is the one - if you can remember back to the service...

25:40...this is one that was actually used, and it is the best choice in a lot of respects.

25:44It works very well with the information.

25:46It's got a lot of detail in there.

25:48The colors are very complementary, and it is, in my opinion, the right choice.

25:57Now, that's the point for me to switch gears and just talk about the changes to the topographic map that are coming up.

26:14Have any of you used an existing topographic map at all?

26:18Plenty of you.

26:21The changes that we've done are a direct response to comments that we've had from users, from people like you...

26:28...and that was to try and give the map a more neutral feel, a bit more like the canvas map...

26:34...although not as extreme as the canvas map, and also give it more of an international feel.

26:40It's got a very sort of USGS-y type feel at the moment, so our international customers...

26:45...wanted to see something a little bit more neutral in that respect.

26:50Unfortunately, I don't have any access to a live service at the moment, but you will start to see the existing...

26:57...topographic map being replaced by this service progressively, starting, I believe, from the end of August.

27:05So I expect over the next few months to see the current map disappearing; this one beginning to come in...

27:11...and we hope that it will be an improvement for you, but obviously, we'll be interested to hear your feedback. Allen?

27:22I'm really excited about the new topo map.

27:24I think it's going to be... I think you're going to like it.

27:28So, moving on.

27:31Just a few other thoughts about web maps and how to refine them for stories.

27:36As I mentioned, and I can't stress enough, just take stuff off; anything that's not essential to the story.

27:42Making legends clear and simple; it's very easy, of course, especially if you're using a map that's from a desktop GIS.

27:50Often the legend, often the map categories can include things like run-together words and underscores and things like that.

27:57So you need to be conscientious about getting rid of those.

28:01And then especially configuring the pop-ups; to make those as useful and simple and compelling as possible.

28:07And that's become quite an art for us.

28:09So we've learned how to create and refine spreadsheets with pop-ups in mind.

28:16And I won't go into a lot of detail here, but just an example of how we kind of organized our spreadsheets...

28:23...thinking about what we're going, where are they going to go, how, what kind...

28:27...how they're going to be symbolized and how the details that'll pop up are going to work.

28:31So here are the same categories from that database, but expressed in a nonconfigured pop-up.

28:37So, obviously, the lat/long was important to placing the symbol on the map, but it's not important to users...

28:44...so we eliminate that, of course, from the map itself.

28:48And here's how, finally, the pop-up was configured.

28:51So of course a URL for a photo becomes, you know, that brings the photo in.

28:56We've taken quite a bit of the, most of the subject matter actually, off of the pop-up.

29:03So again, just a quick kind of before and after.

29:06And I've seen a lot of otherwise quite nice web maps with pop-ups that have not been configured...

29:13...and so I just urge you all to use the tools there.

29:16And they're pretty powerful, and there're some really interesting options.

29:19One that I was a little late to discover but find especially useful is this custom attribute display.

29:25So if you click Configure pop-up on ArcGIS Online, then you get a way of, you know...

29:31...a set of options for displaying the pop-up contents.

29:34And that custom attribute display allows you to essentially type in text and insert components of the data...

29:44...into the text and you can add, so you can come up with a kind of natural sentence structure for data...

29:53...for presenting information and use colors and bold and italic and things like that.

29:59So it's, you can really do some interesting and creative refining.

30:04So, again, a little bit more on publishing maps into templates.

30:08And, what do these templates do?

30:11Well, they do a bunch of things.

30:12They just provide nice places for titles and subtitles, for, of course, the web map or maps themselves.

30:21They provide social media links and opportunities for branding.

30:25They bring in multimedia content; but most importantly, they provide that kind of user experience and the...

30:32...interactive functionality that can make the maps fun to use and easy to navigate.

30:38And we have a series of them, and we feel like we've just barely scratched the surface.

30:43So please be coming back to our site in coming months, and hopefully you'll be seeing quite a few more templates.

30:50So we've got a very, very basic story-telling template.

30:53If the map is more or less self-explanatory, like this map of World Heritage Sites...

30:57...then no need to have lots of bells and whistles.

31:00We also kind of refined an existing template for comparing maps side by side.

31:06But, perhaps somewhat to my surprise, we rarely use this; it just doesn't seem to be as engaging or useful...

31:14...as a story-telling tool, as we might have anticipated.

31:17But the swipe template is a lot more interesting, so if you are comparing Map A versus Map B...

31:23...this just seems to be a more effective way to do it.

31:28One of our most useful templates is a side panel one, and in its simplest form it utilizes a single web map...

31:39...and presents the map description in a side panel, along with a legend.

31:43But the cool thing about it is that you can also load more than one web map and it will automatically appear...

31:49...in this tabbed organization, so you can have four or five or six web maps that can be then presented sequentially.

31:57And if one or more of those maps is time enabled, it automatically displays the time slider.

32:03So that can be useful for lots of different purposes.

32:08And then there's the map tour template that I mentioned that we think will have lots of possibilities, obviously.

32:15You saw it in the form of a walking tour, but this could just as easily be a tour of sites...

32:19...halfway around the world from each other.

32:23And then we've got a brand-new format; it's not yet published as, and enabled as a template...

32:31...that we produced in a very happy collaboration with Rupert, so he's going to go into that in more detail.

32:45Thanks a lot, Allen!

32:50I'm originally from Leicester in the English Midlands; now, I'm very lucky to be able...

32:55...to work for Esri, based in San Diego.

32:58So, we used some of my inside information to make a story map that gives you a small set...

33:07...of some of the cool things in San Diego.

33:10Who's here for the first time at the User Conference?

33:14Okay, great. How many people have been multiple times?

33:17How many people have been more than five times?

33:20I see. How about more than 10 times?

33:23Okay, that's, I see some real old hands here.

33:25Hopefully this app is useful for all of you.

33:29If you want to have a go with this later or use it now if you have an iPad or a laptop you can go to the...

33:36...story maps website Allen showed earlier, or you can go to esri.com and this story map is a featured map...

33:44...on esri.com home page all this week.

33:48What we wanted to do with this app was to give you a selection of some of the cool places in San Diego...

33:56...in three different categories, so we've got Fun; so, for example, if I scroll through one of these...

34:05So for example here's the Maritime Museum.

34:10Here's a ferry over to Coronado.

34:13And you can drill into any of these to get more information about them, including all the details about...

34:18...when the ferry leaves it, and so on.

34:20We've also got a category called Food.

34:24So it's organizing these three tabs.

34:26Got some recommendations here.

34:28This Café 222 is a good place to go for lunch or breakfast, and the lady in the photograph, that's the owner of the café.

34:36We've also got a tab called Design.

34:39So we wanted to highlight both architecture, and also some planning and urban design...

34:50For example, we've got an entry for the car2go system, which you might have seen these little...

34:59...electric Smart cars around San Diego.

35:02They've let loose 400 electric Smart cars that members can rent and park anywhere in the city...

35:08...without paying for parking.

35:11The way this application works is, as you zoom around the map, the list of places on the left updates automatically.

35:22So, it's always showing you places that are in your current extent.

35:27So when you visit different areas - like, for example, if I go up to Balboa Park, which is where the party is tomorrow...

35:37...don't forget to get your wristband down at the activities desk either today or tomorrow, before you go to the party.

35:45So notice how I go to Balboa Park and it's showing me some of the fun things there; also, some of the cool design.

35:48...we thought people would be interested in.

35:51And, a lot of these museums are open tomorrow during the party, just for you guys.

35:56So we wanted to give people the experience - a similar experience that you get if you're traveling around...

36:02...the city yourself so as you go around, you come across interesting or cool things.

36:08So one of the areas you're probably already familiar with is the Gaslamp District.

36:14Has everyone discovered that?

36:16Especially the old hands will know that.

36:18One of the tips we've got, if you find the Gaslamp's a little bit hectic and rather too many under-25-year-olds...

36:27...sometimes, there's a cool park downtown you might like to go to, which is called Little Italy.

36:35So, it's up here; we've actually got a set of bookmarks here that take you to these different neighborhoods.

36:40You can get to Little Italy, either by walking, or you can get one of the little rickshaws...

36:44...or you can also go on the trolley or get a cab.

36:47So zoom to Little Italy. This is, it's a nice place to go for the evening; it's quieter, less hectic.

36:54It's a bit more hip than the Gaslamp.

36:56There's actually some really cool design there, too.

37:00So here's the food choices in the area, and here's some of the architecture you can find.

37:06For example, this building here is the home of Robert Quigley, who's a local architect.

37:11He's the architect of the amazing new San Diego library that is under construction.

37:16You might have seen it on the east side of Petco Park.

37:21For this map we chose the light gray basemap, so that everything sort of recedes...

37:27...into the background except the places.

37:30We wanted to make it easy for people to find those.

37:33And we've also got a home bus in there that takes you back to downtown.

37:38Now, one of the fun things you can do in San Diego - this is nice, if you haven't done it yet...

37:43...especially if you're new to town - is you can take a ferry over to Coronado ferry landing.

37:49So you can... there's a Broadway ferry you can take; there's also a ferry from the Convention Center...

37:54...and there's also a water taxi that the Marriott Hotel runs, right outside here, that anyone can use.

38:03Over in Coronado, you'll find the beach over here.

38:09That's the nearest beach to downtown.

38:12You'll also find the amazing Hotel del Coronado, the largest wooden structure on the west coast of the USA.

38:20To get over there from the ferry landing, here's what you do.

38:23You can either get... you can either walk across the peninsula - it's really a very nice walk...

38:28...or you can get a cab, get a bus.

38:30But the most fun way to go there is to get a water taxi.

38:36It's not shown on the map, but if you click on, for example, Coronado, and then look at the details...

38:42...it'll give you the phone number of the water taxi.

38:45That's an on-demand service; they'll pick you up anywhere around downtown and they'll take you to...

38:51... Glorietta Bay, which is just here, right next to the Hotel Del.

38:55It's a really fun trip to do.

38:59Let's see, what else can I show you?

39:02So the beach at Coronado is okay, but it's not the best beach in San Diego.

39:07In fact, San Diego's got two of the best beaches, really, in Southern California.

39:14So I'm going to zoom out a little bit and show you where those are.

39:18First off, who wants to go to the beach?

39:20Who's hoping to go to the beach during this conference, or afterwards?

39:24Hands up. Okay, who's got a car?

39:28Okay, so can you guys take them, and can you...

39:33If you've not got a car, here's what you do.

39:36So these two... so the two beaches I recommend are Mission Beach, which is just here.

39:43Sort of a nice thing about this template is, when you click on one of the places, we thought a bit - we didn't want to...

39:50...automatically pan the map around, because we thought you'd get disorientated.

39:54So, because we're only showing you the places inside the current map extent, we avoid that.

40:01So if I scroll down to La Jolla - La Jolla Shores, which is the other recommended beach...

40:07...that map's up there, you'll see what I mean.

40:10If you've not got a car, here's what you do.

40:13There's a bus called bus number 30 - three zeroes - and before seven o'clock on weekdays, you can catch it...

40:21...on Broadway in downtown.

40:24After seven o'clock on the weekends, what you do is you take a blue line trolley to the Old Town transit center...

40:32...which is just down here, next to the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.

40:37Then at Old Town transit center, you grab that bus.

40:40It runs up to five times an hour, and it takes you to Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla Village, and La Jolla Shores.

40:49So it's really perfect for you guys if you haven't got a car.

40:51Or, if you've got a group of you, you can go in a cab, but the bus is really cool because it's inexpensive.

40:58It's five dollars for a day pass for all the buses and trolleys in San Diego.

41:02If you want to go to Sea World - I'll show you where that is - so, this is Sea World here...

41:03So I really recommend that as a place to go.

41:09...and you haven't got a car, go to the Old Town transit center on the trolley, then get bus number 9.

41:15If I zoom in on Mission Beach - I'll show you why it's so nice there.

41:20Mission Beach, this is, they call it the epicenter of beach culture in San Diego.

41:25Imagine a small town designed entirely by 18-year-olds.

41:30And...it's really fun. There's a lovely boardwalk you can walk along; lots of action.

41:37But what's really cool about it is that if you get fed up with the crowds on the beach and the scene there...

41:43...you just walk to the other side of this peninsula, and you'll find Mission Bay, which is a still-water...

41:49...enclosed bay and park with some very nice placid beaches all the way around.

41:57Let me show a picture of that.

41:59And you can walk or bike all the way around Mission Bay.

42:06Here are some food choices in the area, and here's some of the design.

42:11One of the design themes I want to highlight, if you go to Mission Beach is there's some, most of the space was...

42:17...developed in the '30s, and a lot of the old cottages are still there on these delightful little alleyways that...

42:24...crisscross that peninsula, so it's really fun to walk between those and go from the bay to the beach.

42:32Another place I wanted to show you in terms of beaches is La Jolla Shores.

42:38Now La Jolla Shores, this is your best bet if you want a really fun day at the beach.

42:42If you're going to take your stuff, maybe take the family and go swimming and so on.

42:47You can also rent kayaks there.

42:49So, La Jolla Shores is just here, La Jolla Village is just here.

42:55La Jolla Village is San Diego's Beverly Hills.

42:59It's got some really posh shops; it's a nice place to go.

43:02It's actually much better than Beverly Hills, because there's a beautiful scenic coastline here...

43:07...that's just a couple of blocks from the shops.

43:10So we put that on the map.

43:11And we also put this, there's a cliff-top coast walk that you can do, that even lots of locals don't know about.

43:19And again, you can get Bus 30 takes you up here, and you can walk on the coast walk, if you want...

43:26...and to go La Jolla Shores.

43:30Also if you're an oceanographer there's, you'll also find Scripps Institution of Oceanography's here as well...

43:37...also the Birch Aquarium.

43:39And the last tip about La Jolla Shores is, if you do go swimming there, watch out for...

43:44...there's a lot of little stingrays there in the mud.

43:47So if you go in the water, or if you got kids and they go wading, you have to shuffle your feet...

43:53...so you don't tread on a stingray when you go to La Jolla Shores.

43:56So I think that's about it for the tour, and obviously we're hoping that you guys will use this template...

44:03...to showcase your own data.

44:05So, this is sort of a fun tour I've been giving you, but we're hoping, for example, that like...

44:09...a military base could use this to highlight environmental remediation areas or a city could use it...

44:16...to highlight infrastructure planning successes.

44:20The thing I want to point out about is that there's nothing fancy going on in this web map.

44:26All these points and areas are simply shapefiles that I edited in ArcMap.

44:31I zipped them up in Windows Explorer and uploaded them into a web map.

44:36And it's totally free to do that.

44:38You don't need a server, you don't need an ArcGIS Online subscription.

44:42Anyone who gets a standard personal account in ArcGIS Online can do that.

44:46So it's really simple to get your data into a map and make this kind of user interface.

44:55Thank you, Rupert.

44:57Thanks to Rupert's recommendations, I'm staying up in Little Italy, and I've rented a bike for the week...

45:02...which I highly recommend.

45:04The only limitation is perhaps not doing too much drinking in the evening, but otherwise it works really well.

45:14It's a great area.

45:17So, back to business.

45:25I'd just like to walk you step by step through the process of publishing web maps into...

45:30...as just an example, our side panel template.

45:33So as I mentioned on our Storytelling with Maps, from our Storytelling with Maps home page...

45:39...you can access a gallery of our templates.

45:43And in that gallery is the side panel template, and within it, its summary, is a link to the ArcGIS Online...

45:53...where there's a page that describes the template and makes the source code available.

45:59And I should stress that for all of these templates here, you're perfectly free to download the source code...

46:06...and change it and hack it and customize it to your heart's content.

46:10These are meant for you to alter and change; and, in fact, it's a real thrill for us to see people pick them up...

46:17...and use them in ways sometimes that we haven't and would not have predicted.

46:24At any rate, once you've downloaded it, then you go the index file and open it, and within that...

46:32...is a configurable, or a Configure section.

46:38And within that is a place into which you can copy a web map ID.

46:44So, if you go to the web map that you've created, or want to feature, you just simply copy its unique ID...

46:53...and paste it into that config page.

46:57And then if you want to show a series of maps as tabs, then you just repeat the process and...

47:04...for, you know, two or three or four times.

47:08But you do need to be careful to make sure the little brackets and things are there.

47:13A little farther down the line we're going to have this more fully configurable so you don't have to worry about...

47:18...the details of the code, and a few of these things are already available in the Share section of ArcGIS Online...

47:25...but I must confess that I don't think they're quite ready yet, and so this might be the better way...

47:31...at least on an interim basis, to do this.

47:33So once, this is typical of what we do - so we'll, you know, we'll start, as we're producing a story...

47:39...we'll copy these web map IDs into the template, and then you of course open it up in a web browser.

47:45And I come from National Geographic, and among other things I worked on a world atlas.

47:50It would be roughly a year before you got the feedback of seeing it in print.

47:56But the wonderful thing about the web is, it literally, in about two seconds, you can see the results of your effort.

48:02So this looks pretty nice, but I don't like the title; the title is simply reflecting the name of the first...

48:10...of the three thematic maps.

48:12So that means I want to go back into that config file, and then I can either copy in or type in a title and subtitle...

48:20...that provides a nice overview to the whole series of maps instead of just being a label for the first map.

48:26So, and again, in a matter of seconds, I go back to a browser, see how it looks, and I think, well...

48:32...that's pretty nice, but I don't like the tab titles.

48:35They're too long, and so you end up with a little ellipsis at the end and it's kind of interrupted.

48:39So once again I go back to that config page, and there's a place, the title can be just default to the web map title...

48:49...but there's a place for you to add a custom title just for that tab.

48:53So then I go back and look and say, yeah, that's about what I want, and that's essentially what we do...

49:01...in producing these stories except I said repeat times 50; it's probably sometimes like 250, back and forth.

49:09But that's what it takes; I mean, that's the editorial process, and it's not just going from that config file to...

49:16...the web browser, but it often means going back into the original desktop map and republishing it as a service.

49:28It's just, by nature it's an iterative process.

49:32One important detail is that in many of these templates, including this one, the web map description...

49:40...becomes the text for that thematic map, and that if you're writing a description for a web map you're just...

49:47...sharing within an organization, that description can be quite different from the description in the...

49:52...that you want in the context of a story.

49:55So it often means rewriting and simplifying and shortening that description.

50:02So here's a look at the description page on ArcGIS Online and how that same content appears in the story map.

50:11And again, here's where to find the templates, both directly through storymaps .esri.com...

50:16...or a public story-telling group on, storytelling templates group on arcgis.com and also, to a limited extent...

50:25...via the Share function on ArcGIS Online, but that will get richer going forward.

50:30So again, these are completely open; you can download them and change them, do whatever you want with them.

50:36So they're open source in that sense; they're JavaScript, so they will run on pretty much any device.

50:45Again, we are continuing to enhance our templates and add new ones.

50:51We're working on a so-called briefing book, so the idea for this is to map enable a longer document with more text.

50:58So if you're doing a report and you want to web enable it and link it to maps, that's essentially what this will do.

51:04We're also working on a story builder mobile app, and I'm going to give you a really quick preview of that.

51:11This was, literally working on it up to days or even hours before the User Conference...

51:17...so the first time I had a chance to test it was this morning at the 5K run.

51:22Did anybody here go to the 5K run?

51:25Okay, a few of you. Great.

51:27Well, I had the pleasure of running and running this app at the same time, so my photography isn't very good...

51:35....but the idea, basically, is that you create, on ArcGIS Online, a feature service, and then you can...

51:47...then you e-mail the field feature service, and when you open the e-mail on your iPhone...

51:53...it - the app essentially senses or picks up that service, and then you can start to populate it.

52:00So, that's what I did this morning; I opened the feature service and started taking pictures and notes and then...

52:09I went back, took a shower, sat down in a coffee shop, and then refined, you know, took out a few of them...

52:16...I adjusted the text, which I hadn't had a chance to really type, and then I just e-mailed my colleague Lee...

52:23...back in Washington and said, please publish this service into our map tour template...

52:28...and within an hour and a half of the 5K run this morning, I had a story map with no model releases for these four runners.

52:40But, I'm just tremendously excited about the potential for this.

52:44Now we don't yet, we haven't, this is so new we haven't yet outlined the plans for essentially productizing this...

52:51....but we certainly plan and hope in the next few months to enable the process of creating a story map in the field...

53:01...to become much simpler, thanks to this app.

53:07And by the way, be forewarned, I'm going to be wandering around at tomorrow's party taking pictures...

53:16...and this time making more notes and getting peoples' names.

53:21And we will, if all goes well, we will publish that publicly as a story map.

53:27So, finally, you know, after 27 years at National Geographic I came to Esri with a real kind of crusade in mind.

53:38I had, long before I made the move, I had become enamored of this amazing technology and even more enamored...

53:46...of the remarkable community and the incredible content that it's producing.

53:52And I've often felt that that content needed to get out to larger audiences.

53:57And so I've arrived at Esri at just the perfect time, because now that GIS is emerging from the back office...

54:04...thanks to the miracles of these kinds of devices in the cloud and the Internet...

54:10...it's suddenly accessible to a whole lot more people, and those of you who sat through the Plenary could see that...

54:16...that suddenly what we used to, you know, a lot of us used to labor in obscurity doing is now just open to the world.

54:23It means it's a very basic shift, both in terms of what GIS is all about, but it's also a basic shift...

54:33...it requires a basic shift in our own thinking and the way we do things.

54:38And making a map that's just essentially the expression of an analysis versus telling a story about that map...

54:48...or that analysis is a quite different thing.

54:51So of course we all know the sort of traditional uses of GIS, and those will always be legitimate and important.

55:00But now we're about emancipating enslaved data and getting it, you know, liberating it to serve...

55:08...much, much broader audiences and do good in new and unanticipated ways.

55:14Both in terms of serving the general public, but also serving your colleagues or your bosses or your bosses' bosses...

55:21...and involving your customers and constituents and citizens.

55:26It means informing, inspiring, and entertaining.

55:30And it's been fun to see, formerly from the sidelines, but now from the heart of it, how GIS has been quietly...

55:37...changing the world; but quietly is no longer the case, and in fact it's inexcusable anymore.

55:44And the old, and of course for many of us, those of us with gray hair have been around for a while.

55:50There used to be lots of excuses like, "well, you know, there's just not enough data"; or "Gee, I don't have the...

55:56...bandwidth"; or, "I can't afford to put up a website"; or, "the tools aren't there"...

56:01...or, "not enough people are connected."

56:02Well, guess what; those excuses are gone, now.

56:07So now's the time to come out of the closet and get your data out and tell your story.

56:13So, please do.

56:14Thank you very much.