ESRI User Conference

Preconference Seminar Schedule

System Implementation for GIS Paper Sessions

Enterprise GIS Track

Planning and Managing a GIS - Saturday
Presenters: Dave Peters, ESRI; Roger Tomlinson, president of Tomlinson Associates, Ltd

Level: All levels

Audience: Current or potential GIS managers or senior executives who need to know the steps to put a successful GIS in place in their organization; also valuable to students planning to enter the working world

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. A good reference for attendees to review in preparation for the seminar is Roger Tomlinson's book Thinking about GIS, available through ESRI Press (Third Edition, available in English, Russian, Spanish and Polish).

Description: This is the basic seminar for current or potential GIS managers or senior executives who need to know the steps they must take to put a successful GIS in place in their organization. Jack Dangermond himself has written that this seminar bridges the communication gap between those two levels of management.

A consistent methodology for planning and managing GIS will be presented. This methodology has evolved in step with the technology and is based on extensive experience with GIS implementations ranging in size from small corporate installations to multidepartment, statewide systems and complete national enterprise-wide systems. Dr. Roger Tomlinson, president of Tomlinson Associates, Ltd., is widely regarded as the father of GIS and has enormous GIS planning and implementing experience that is drawn upon. Dave Peters has managed ESRI Systems Integration consulting services for the last 19 years and will be the principal presenter for this year’s seminar.

The seminar will focus on the practical aspects of planning and implementing a GIS as part of an organization's business strategy and workflows. It is concerned with the integration of GIS technology and business practices to achieve organization-wide coordination and information sharing. The planning methodology includes a well-tested approach to cost-benefit analysis (return on investment), which has been acceptable to financial controllers worldwide. The management component of the seminar will discuss day-to-day details of GIS management, creating the personnel and technical environments for hardware acquisition and deployment, system migration, data acquisition and application development, legal issues, risk analysis, and organizational control and personnel structures that have proved to be most effective. Participants who want to continue with a more detailed technical introduction and acquire a set of tools for designing system architectures and communication requirements can attend the seminar System Architecture Design for GIS given by Dave Peters on Sunday.

System Architecture Design for GIS - Sunday
Presenter: Dave Peters, ESRI; Ty Fabling, ESRI

Level: All levels

Audience: GIS/Project/IT managers, business partners, solution architects, enterprise consultants, programmers, database designers, system administrators

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. A good reference for attendees to review in preparation for the seminar is System Design Strategies (technical reference document) available at www.esri.com/systemdesign and Dave Peters' book Building a GIS, available through ESRI Press.

Description: System architecture design provides a solid foundation for supporting successful GIS operations. Understanding technology alternatives and selecting appropriate software architecture strategies can mean the difference between implementation success and failure. ESRI software and vendor hardware technologies support a growing variety of software architecture alternatives. Selecting the right technology to support specific business workflow requirements is essential for deployment of successful system operations.

This seminar will share a system architecture design methodology for supporting successful GIS operations—a methodology developed and proved by successful GIS implementations over the past 19 years. System design strategies are used by ESRI customers worldwide to support successful implementation of GIS technology. The seminar will update users on new developments in capacity planning and performance of ESRI software when deployed in today’s operational IT environments. The system design models, capacity planning tools, and configuration guidelines provide participants with a proven path to successful GIS operations.

A full three-day course on system architecture design strategies is provided through the ESRI Learning Center.