2011-01-31-2011-esri-dev-summit-prologue.html

--- 
layout: post
title: "2011 ESRI Dev Summit: Prologue"
tags: 
- ArcDeveloper
status: publish
type: post
published: true
meta: 
  _edit_last: "3307217"
  _edit_lock: 1296488107:3307217
  jabber_published: "1296488103"
---
Yay!  One of my presentations was selected for the User Presentation track at ESRI Developers Summit.  It is called "You are Legend" and it shows how I created a jQuery plugin that creates an interactive TOC/Legend combination for your jsapi map.  I am kind of surprised it was chosen, since it didn't seem like I was getting many votes and the whole TOC/Legend concept is, <a title="Mr. Bowman's TOC Rant" href="http://blog.davebouwman.com/heading-to-the-geodesign-summit" target="_blank">in many people's mind</a>, a big usability no-no.  I really did it because most of my clients want one and I like jQuery and I like javscript and I had to do something for the ESRI Charlotte Developers Meetup.  The DevSummit version of the presentation will be, I am hoping, much enhanced and a bit more polished, if for no other reason than I won't likely be 3 beers into the night before the talk (the Charlotte meetup was in a pub).

Last year I thought the user presentations were really, really good.  If you want to network with other developers, attend as many of these as you can and then ask questions after the talk.  I know that I appreciated the questions after my talk last year and, as a result, have added Twitter contacts with which I can now discuss ongoing development issues.  Also, if you're headed to DevSummit, let me know (comment here or @ruprictGeek on the twittersphere) and maybe we can plan a couple of pub-based nerd sessions.  Here are some of (what I consider) other interesting sessions:
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008INU&amp;returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26category%3DDevSummit%2B2011%26sort%3Dpopular" target="_blank">Tip, Tricks, and Best Practices for REST architecture</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008IOw&amp;returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26category%3DDevSummit%2B2011%26sort%3Dpopular" target="_blank">Coding Dojo - Sharpening Your Skills</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008IPf&amp;returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26category%3DDevSummit%2B2011%26sort%3Dpopular" target="_blank">High Performance Feature Cache with NoSQL for ArcGIS Server</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008IRb&amp;returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26category%3DDevSummit%2B2011%26p%3D2%26sort%3Dpopular" target="_blank">Using Google AppEnging and Fusion Tables with ArcGIS Server</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://ideas.arcgis.com/ideaView?id=087300000008IKB&amp;returnUrl=%2Fapex%2FideaList%3Fc%3D09a300000004xET%26category%3DDevSummit%2B2011%26p%3D2%26sort%3Dpopular" target="_blank">Responsive Geo-Web Design: HTML5 is Cool, But Maybe Not for Everyone</a></li>
</ul>
I am not sure if all of these made the cut, but they do look interesting.  I didn't put any Python or Silverlight presos on my list, simply because I don't use that stuff much, but if that is your cup-o-tea there are a lot of offerings.  Another thing that surprised me was that my Robotlegs presentation did not get selected.  Out of the two I entered, I thought that one would get the votes.  Basically, I was going to walk through using Robotlegs to create a Flex Viewer widget.  The ArcGIS Flex Viewer is nice, but I don't like that they rolled their own framework.  There are so many well-supported and, frankly, superior frameworks out there (Robotlegs, Swiz, PureMVC, Cairngorm3) that would have allowed ArcGIS Flex devs to leverage those communities.  I am trying to enter a widget in the Flex-a-widget challenge that uses Robotlegs, so we'll see if I can get that done.

Try to get to DevSummit if you are able.  If you are a ArcGIS Developer, this is by far the best conference of the year.

&nbsp;