Change, Collaboration, and Common Ground: Esri UC 2022 Recap

A lack of understanding and a failure to collaborate are, according to Esri Founder and President Jack Dangermond, the central challenges of our time. These issues were among the most prevalent topics at the 2022 Esri User Conference, which finally returned to an in-person format for the first time in three years. Geonexus was proud to participate in this year’s conference, and we got to meet so many great members of the GIS community. 

Several members of the Geonexus team were in the audience during Dangermond’s opening presentation and spent the next few days interacting with other attendees at our booth. As the conference came to a close, the team took note of what the GIS community is thinking about and working towards in the future. 

Mapping Common Ground 

Throughout the opening presentations, “mapping common ground” was the phrase mentioned more often than any other. “I know, I’m being repetitive, are you sick of it already?” asked Dangermond, drawing laughs from the audience. Looking deeper, there’s a reason mapping common ground came up so often: it’s a key part of working together to solve many of the world’s most important problems in addition to the smaller ones utilities are facing every day. 

Dangermond spoke about how finding common ground is the first step in working on worldwide issues like homelessness, disease, and environmental protection. He said finding common ground is necessary all the way up to the highest level of collaborative government, the United Nations, and that failure to do so is what has led to the most important global issue of our time – rapidly evolving climate change. It’s clear that Dangermond, and by extension, Esri, feels that common ground needs to be a shared goal around the world if we seriously want to tackle our largest problems. Thankfully, many organizations are finding that a more collaborative reality is arriving quickly. 

Collaborating Through System Integration 

System integration has become a vital part of the utilities industry and is enabling new ways for organizations to collaborate and support their customers. Dangermond believes the potential of integrated systems is massive; he likened the advancements in system integration to another massive technological evolution, saying “Your systems are becoming interconnected, enabling something we’re calling geospatial infrastructure – it resembles the web itself.” 

Dangermond said geospatial infrastructure is already comprised of millions of users, billions of maps, and enables widespread shared understanding and collaboration. Geospatial tools are being used to solve social and environmental issues around the world and to share important information that can improve and even save lives. Dangermond referred to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 map as an example; the map was built on Esri software and has been viewed over 1.2 trillion times since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s a perfect way to show how integrated data and effective collaboration can come together to make something special, and it proves that organizations using geospatial tools are already taking advantage of them.

What We Heard: Utility Network Migration 

The topic of collaboration did not stop with the end of Dangermond’s opening presentation. At our booth, the bulk of our team’s conversations were centered around the move to Esri’s Utility Network (UN). All the organizations we spoke with were in some stage of either planning or making the move to the UN. Understanding that these UN migration projects are going to be multi-year and interdepartmental projects, the need for collaboration throughout the process is becoming clear – especially for organizations who want to ensure the integrity of their data between Esri’s Geometric Network (GN) and UN throughout the move.  

Another popular topic regarding the UN was support for legacy applications that don’t support the Utility Network natively. Through our conversations, it became clear that organizations are searching for solutions to keep legacy applications that only work with the GN supported until they’re compatible with the UN. Although several methods are being tested, synchronizing UN data and GN data to avoid problems with these legacy applications is the most common solution we heard about at our booth. More about the Geonexus approach for helping with the UN move is explained in our blog post on our role in the migration process. 

We also heard that the UN move is inspiring more collaboration across different teams at many organizations. As system integration becomes more popular, teams are learning about others’ workloads, goals, and pain points, allowing them to work more closely together. At the conference, we presented with the City of Henderson on how ArcGIS – IBM Maximo integration eliminates technical debt. After the presentation, our team received a surprising number of questions about how integrated data unified Henderson’s teams and allowed them to solve issues that were present between teams. The amount of interest in this topic convinced us that organizations are seeing the immense value of integrated data and how it can increase operational efficiency, open the door to offering new services, and find common ground to collaborate on. 

Conclusion 

As an Esri Partner, Geonexus shares Esri’s optimism about how geospatial tools and integrated data will be used in the future. Organizations are already using our integration solution in powerful ways, and we’re looking forward to seeing what the adoption of integrated systems can achieve in the coming years. 

To learn how the Geonexus Integration Platform can connect your geospatial systems and let you make the most of your data, schedule a personalized demo or contact us with any other questions.