The 2020 Virtual Esri User Conference (Esri UC) Is next week, July 13-17. Of course this year all conferences are virtual and it will be interesting to see how the user conference that we all know and look forward to each year in San Diego will play in virtual space.

For Esri, this is an inflection point; as a company as they have been very active in the virtual geospatial marketplace for a long time. They have been working on digital transformation and work-from-home initiatives for about two years now.

Close to 70,000 people are attending this year; in past years attendance has been around 17,000.

The constraints thrust upon us are spurring innovation, according to Esri CMO Marianna Kantor.

Esri is very good at crisis management, specifically the disaster response program. The Johns Hopkins University dashboard tracks all the covid cases in the world.

Among the stats brought forward:

The types of events you have grown to look forward at Esri UC will be available in virtual format, including the Plenary, Expo and technology workshops, Map Gallery Tour, SIGs, special sessions and educational sessions. Those registered will receive a Platform direction guide.

Central Live is a TV like component to the event, hosted live by an Esri executive.

Plenaries will be split into three days, with Jack Dangermond’s plenary on Monday. On Tuesday will be technology enhancement plenary, and Wednesday will be joined by Jeffrey Sachs, president of UN Sustainable Development Solutions and Vicki Phillips, executive vice president and CEO of National Geographic Society.

Head of Global Business Development, Jeff Peters, said that Esri wants to become as much a leader in virtual technology as in the physical world.

“If there was any doubt of role of GIS being a mission critical technology in organization, look at any federal, state, government authorities around the world and we are seeing transformation happen right before us,” said Peters.

“It’s a bit of crisis culture, and covid-19 is one of those.  The DRP program provided technology to over 4500 organizations and some work done on our racial equity hub, with Esri work supporting organizations around the world with transparency. Even as you shift to more recent events, for example, around the locust response we’re seeing locusts impact both Asia and Africa, potentially many could lose their lives. As a company Esri identifies these crisis events and ask, what can we do with real work to help users customers and citizens respond to those events?”

Peters said the the Johns Hopkins dashboard is up to almost a trillion views since launch. “At the peak of the use of Esri’s stat system ArcGIS Online saw 12 billion transactions per day, and was the #3 most visited website in the world. The technology is absolutely mission critical. The theme of interconnecting our world, the value of geospatial infrastructure will be discussed, including using AI, analytics, mobile clients, and bringing technology and making it pervasive for both the private and public sector is our continued ambition.”

2020 Esri User Conference