Tech Help, Social Networks, and the Geoweb: Dev Summit Parting Shots

The ESRI Dev Summit is something I look forward to each year and 2009 did not disappoint.  Another gratuitous shout out to Jim Barry, the entire EDN team, and ESRI staffers who turned out this year and extended hospitality, knowledge, and new shiny bits to hordes of geo-geeks in spades once again.  While others will likely chime in with interesting technical summaries, I will reserve those comments for them and say only that the Silverlight API for ArcGIS Server and Build 900 are drop dead sexy.  My team doesn’t do a lot of desktop work but we’ll find some way to leverage ArcGIS Explorer and its fancy new managed code API.  My comments here will zero in on the evolving presence of the social network at this year’s summit and what it can offer us as a development community.  Buckle up…this is likely to be a long winded post.

Social Network Revelations

I sat in the “Notes From the Field” presentation this morning given by Dave Bouwman and Al Laframboise and was stunned when Al got up to give his portion of the session.  His message: there is resistance and hesitation in the larger portion of the geo-community regarding adoption and use of social networking to advance the collective professional cause.  Most geo developers continue to be 99%-ers who search traditional forums and whitepaper resources, snatching the odd code snippet here and there without contributing and who eschew using social networks like Twitter and Facebook to routinely communicate with like minded individuals.  Based on the evening festivities each night this week, these are the same folks who will broadcast on their MySpace account that they are well into their cups at their favorite Palm Springs watering hole.  Al made the excellent point that technically or socially conservative geo-geeks shy at throwing their name into the Twitter hat, but will gladly broadcast their GPS coordinates right now if asked.  Al showed a slide indicating that something like 15-20% of developers surveyed participated in the use of / found useful RSS feeds, social networks, and similar resources despite identifying themselves as Web 2.0 developers. Are you kidding?

A New Age for Tech Support

I called this out in my presentation on Tuesday.  We have moved into a phase of development with ESRI products (and with software in general) where we can no longer depend on the typical support avenues for input.  Good architecture and development practices mean we can no longer just ship off a snippet of code from form_main() or page_load() and expect to get meaningful input from our software or API vendors.  Why? Because if you are living right as a developer, that code is coupled to a service boundary or page controller, which is hitched to a repository, which is glued to a DAL…the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone.  And by the way it should be unit tested long before you get to this point anyway.  We have collectively entered a phase where we need to rephrase our technical questions from the specific to the general.  Don’t ask why your code doesn’t work, and don’t ask ESRI to surface your custom services for you. Ask the community about good strategies for RESTful architectures.  Get URLs to videos, podcasts, and demos.  I rode to the airport on this trip with Dave Bouwman who brought along his IPOD…the musical selection?..an Azure podcast.  Ask for thoughts and pitfalls with various DAL generation tools…don’t think you’re going to pop into the ESRI forums and find a copy paste solution…although that may actually happen more frequently with the recently revamped ESRI Resource Center and Code Galleries.

In addition, many of us are now meshed into teams that have incredible development velocity relative to a few years ago.  We don’t need the answer in 48 hrs, we need the answer now…other devs are waiting on us.  How do you get instant feedback? The guy/gal sitting behind you, Twitter, Facebook, your blog, my blog, Scott Hanselman’s blog, etc., etc., ad infinitum.  In short, the same social networks, RSS feeds, and all things Web 2.0  that apparently just short of 85% of us geo-geeks ignore on a regular basis.

How did we get here?

I am a software developer at heart…this means that I am also accustomed to a very large toolbox of technology that typically provides instant gratification on a daily basis.  Also, I’m a complainer.  I always want more from the new, new thing.

• I ask for more and more features in ArcGIS Desktop or ArcGIS Server but lament that bugs are not fixed fast enough despite a ballooning backlog of technical debt of my own making
• I ask for stateful, long transaction spatial editing over the web in an AJAX environment (before the release of MS-AJAX just to make it challenging) and lament that the Web ADF is slow on his feet
• We wonder why Mike Hogan can’t get our pet issue into the build for 9.4 without ever finding a work around on our own and sending it to ESRI for integration
• We complain about having to write unit tests and wonder why things break

And we do all this while forgetting that a core group of folks built us a REST API, a JavaScript API, and Flex API, and a Silverlight API and gave them to us for free.  And by the way you need some data to render in those so here’s worldwide data in 2D and 3D pre-cached…and Jack is going to foot the bill for the bandwidth, the server storage, the sexy cartography, and the updates.

In short, we forgot that we are no longer analysts who write AML or Avenue from time to time. We forgot that we are not macro developers.  We forgot that WE ARE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS.  And we forgot that there are others like us suffering through the same heartaches and technical snafoos every day.  We are not alone, WE ARE A COMMUNITY, WE ARE PROBLEM SOLVERS, so let’s start acting like it.

Where do we go now?

M-kay, I had to fudge it a little to make my point with all of the #devsummit love flying around right now, but check out this cap from my TweetDeck. 

And on any given day, my ArcGIS Server search pane is filled with this swill…not just one or two…I mean 80 percent of the search pane.  Hate ArcGIS? It’s killing you?  Go dig ditches, or pave roads. Better yet, buy AutoCAD and then come back and tell me how your life is after you’ve stopped cutting yourself.  Alternatively, ask a constructive, open ended question about your problem and anticipate needing to actually write some code or do a little digging.  Do a Google search.  Join the community.  Find your own work around and write some code…how many bridge engineers do you know that would say a chasm is too wide?  Why should a software engineer be any different? This stuff is complicated, no doubt about it…XAML hurts my head right now ’cause it’s new.  But I can ask Morten or Art or Rex and they will answer my question, provide some guidance, and off I go problem solving.

If there’s a call to action in any of this (there’s gotta’ be a point in here somewhere) it is that we’re entering a new age of high velocity, challenging development and integration scenarios and none of us can do this alone.  Get involved.  If you are a self-identified Web 2.0 developer then leverage shiny technologies to communicate with your peers.

• We have users presenting their experiences and views at the developer summit
• We have ESRI, historically leery about the blogosphere, regularly blogging, rolling out RSS feeds for resources, and tweeting like mad
• We had a member of the user community selected to present in regular technical session at the developer summit this year.
• We have just had a week of shaking hands with each other, asking questions of each other, calling each other to answer for our comments and views
• We have Art Haddad begging us to download a public beta of another free API and giving us his email address and multiple feedback avenues

Get involved.  Subscibe to the new RSS feeds in the resource center. Get a blog, read a blog, tweet and ask a question about your architecture and development issues.  I may not have the answer but the whole community can see our exchange and jump in.  Solve an interesting problem?  Tweet it, blog it, shout it from the rooftops and share it.

Uh-Oh, Brian’s been drinkin’ the Kool-Aid!

Maybe I have.  But I’m frequently one of the first folks to speak up and complain about all things ESRI when I’m not happy.  In addition to all things geek, I’m a Red Green fan and we can all take a little advice from him…”Keep your head up, we’re all in this together.”  Red Green also loves duct tape…so whether your duct tape is made from C#, JavaScript, Flex, Python, Perl, or good old adhesive plastic products, get it out ’cause you’re going to need it.