Dear Army_(part two)
Thanks for following along to part two.
In my first story, I talked about a dialogue between the Army and industry. I invited you, the reader and Army teammate to the AUSA 2016 Annual Meeting, and I answered “Who Should Come?” and I started responding to “What Will I Learn?”
Let’s refresh that quote from the TRADOC CG, General Perkins and how he envisions the Army evolving “from buying things to building new capabilities”. Esri doesn’t sell the Army end products so to speak- no platforms or programs of record; no end item or LIN. We’re not a Boeing- we don’t produce a “Chinook”.
We do provide great software, samples, solutions, and code to help others build great applications or programs of record. Esri is proud to build a community to support the implementation of our platform. We call that platform ArcGIS.
Implementing the platform in total or in calculated components is a team sport. It’s about People, Process, and Technology and we don’t want our users and customers to go it alone. The second take away in your learning with Esri is our support for developers. (If you missed the first blog post- I talked about Esri’s support to open standards, data interoperability, and open APIs and specifications)
ArcGIS for Developers is more than a website. It is a team of teams ensuring developers everywhere access to documentation, samples, and code for Web, Mobile, and Desktop applications. As you dive deeper into the learning you’ll see that we give you the opportunity to discover the capabilities of ArcGIS through powerful location services, data management, analysis, and mapping.
The documentation provides a wealth of knowledge to support a wide variety of skill levels, application needs and platforms. Whether you are working on a web application, mobile or native app, or you are seeking to extend the ArcGIS platform- you will find info to enable your design, development, and success. Pick your flavor (SDK):
- Android
- iOS
- .NET
- Java
- Qt
- OS X
- or use Xamarin or our AppStudio
Part of our Open Vision includes support to open source. When we say are in open source- we are “IN”. We have over 300+ projects on GitHub.
Esri is committed to helping developers build and share software. Browse our open source code and get started with our powerful ArcGIS platform to help provide powerful geospatial applications for our world wide deployed US Army.
Sometimes you might feel like you need a jumpstart. Maybe you want something that’s ready out of the box that you can configure quickly and take for a “test drive” before you getting into starting with the SDKs and APIs. I would offer up some research into our ArcGIS Solutions- Ready-to-Use Maps and Apps for your “swim lane” in the Defense arena.
Solutions, open source on GitHub, SDKs and APIs- that’s a lot of inspiration for Army developers. You might be asking yourself-
“How in the world am I going to keep up with all of that?”
Software evolves, code gets “forked” and improves, questions arise, training is needed, and hey, I need to tell Esri about my problems, needs, and ideas for improvement.
I like to talk about a team of teams- I used that in the Army, we use it at Esri, and I believe the Army acquisition community operates as a team of teams. Another apropos word could be community- we are all part of the community to assist and develop the individuals, teams, and organizations. Esri has a thriving, supportive community to enable everyone to be successful.
There is so much information online to support your learning, answer your questions, or meet other folks working in the same arena or programming language. Let’s take a quick look:
ArcGIS for Developers- your first stop for APIs, SDKs, including Beta releases and the supporting documentation. This is a window into information!
GeoNet- the Esri community. This link takes you to the developer content including developer spaces, Runtime SDK spaces, and developer groups (Angular JS; Bootstrap etc.)
ArcGIS Ideas- soon to be moving under GeoNet. See (and submit) ideas; those under consideration; and those recently implemented. If you want to help improve and move the software forward- let us know.
Esri Support- The place to reach out to reach out to an analyst or log a support request.
ArcGIS Resources- focused on app developers. Breaking news and blog posts oriented on difference subjects and communities. You can link to Developers as well.
But I believe we learn best when we are interacting face to face. Peer to peer, teacher to student, Jedi to Padawan learner, you get the idea. What are some great in person events?
Esri hosts GeoDev Meetups around the country. These are smaller events to allow developers from a city or area to link up and learn from invited presenters and meet like minded people. You can find the list of past and upcoming events here.
Esri hosts a variety of events around the world but two of the most impactful are the Esri User Conference in San Diego, CA and the Esri International Developer Summit in Palm Springs, CA. These are fantastic events for learning, asking questions (bring your work), and networking. You can review the presentations from the posted Proceedings if you were not able to attend. There are links to the FedGIS and DC DevSummit in the Proceedings. Look for those in February if you are on the East Coast.
Social Media- we post on them all.
I use Twitter as an inbound source of information. “@EsriDevSummit” “@EsriGeoDev” “@EsriWebDev” “@EsriInsider” are good accounts to start with- and of course “@armymapguy”.
Here on Medium you might want to follow: Esri Insider and Esri
Stay with me next week for my last post on how a geospatial platform supports the Army Enterprise and other Army Warfighting Functions.
Read the final Part Three here.
