I always get lots of kudos on our "TopTen" or best of announcements. So, here are what I feel were some of the Best and Worst things observed at the 2000 ESRI User Conference. If you have a most memorable moment or would like to nominate a "Best" or "Worst" of recipient, please contact editor@spatialnews.com

• Coolest buzzword: g-mail
• Most Heavily Promoted URL: geographynetwork.com
• Most surprising new URL: thedatadepot.com a new portal from ESRI France (does this sound familiar!!)
• Most surprisingly large booth: Lizardtech
• Best Belly Dancer: Lizardtech
• Turned the most heads: Belly Dancer at LizardTech Party!
• Loudest Exhibitor uniform: IBM - very bright Hawaiian shirts
• Footwear of choice: Sandals!
• Most captivating speaker: Lynne Malone and three of her students - 8th grade geography teacher from Barrington Middle School, Rhode Island
• Best Rack of Lamb: Free grub served up by Compaq at the corporate party Wednesday evening
• My most memorable discussion: an hour and a half chatting with Dr. Roger Tomlinson
• Most surprising product announcement: ArcView 8.1
• Coolest Booth: SpaceImaging - very high tech... and very cool!!
• Best Contest Prize: Compaq - a Motorcycle (cool!)
• Been There, Done That: Convergent Group - with the Austin Powers theme... this is getting old...
• Oddest Booth Furniture: thedatadepot.com - Hmmm... cardboard tables and chairs... no smoking in this booth please!
• Most embarrassing moment: ESRI - the fire alarm sounded and put an early end to the business partner challenge and other GIS Solutions Expos.
• Most creative advertising: GeoMedia - They had a truck with a GeoMedia billboard on it's side circling downtown San Diego - Click Here to View the billboard!
• My favorite new product: ArcPad 5 - this product is sooo easy to get up and running! I'm looking forward to 5.1
• Most wearable free T-shirt: GeoCommunity - Very popular. You see them everywhere. Maybe I'm biased but I was seeing them everywhere!
• Most worn out attendee: Myself on Thursday - I admit I stayed out WAY too late last Wednesday night, although a number of others around the convention center looked equally as rough as I did!

Some Comments From Our Readers

• Most Applause (Monday): ArcMap's follow-along tracing tool
• Favorite worst line from a presentation: "...I don't like complexity in our products because I'm not that sophisticated, just like all of you..."