News From The Show

Sunday July 8, 2001, San Diego, CA -- Day 1 in San Diego was basically spent getting registered and organized. As usual, the weather in San Diego is spectacular. Comfortably warm and no humidity... very nice. I had an uneventful flight and made great time getting from the airport to my hotel (a word of advice... if you come here, ask your hotel for info on the best way to get from the airport to your hotel as rates will vary from $4 - $12 to get you to downtown San Diego).

The Day at a glance:
- register at conference
- pick up "goodie" bag
- check email
- check in at Marriott
- set up and test internet access from hotel room (awesome!)
- hit the pool
- hit the pool bar
- walk through Horton Plaza
- dinner at Star of India
- "beverages" at The Field
- nightcap at some lobster place...($3 margs...yum!)
- back to hotel
- publish today's news
- write this report!

The Menu:
- papdams
- chiken tika masala
- nan bread
- flying fish beer (large)

In the 2001 ESRI UC goodie Bag:
- ESRI Map Book
- buttons and stickers
- pen
- wall calendar
- very cool Tele Atlas map of the US
- mousepad
- special edition USGS topo map of US
- what is ArcGIS? book
- postcards
- ArcUser mag
- ArcNews mag
- notepad
- proceedings summary
- conferece program

Notable Quotes:
- I didn't get to many sessions today - This weather is awesome - let's meet at Disk's later - Have you upgraded to 8.1 yet?

No "news" to speak of, however, a good time was had getting reacquainted with this beautiful city. I met up with several Canadians (including JoeGIS!!), all of whom are graduates of COGS from about 4 years ago. A good time was had discussing the US - Canada dichotomy as well as touching on the ever popular subject of charging or not to charge for data. Of course we all agreed that the costs associated with public domain data in Canada is definitely hindering GIS projects in Canada. Some interesting facts that also arose from our discussions; this year roughly 85% of COGS graduates have already found employment in their field, and it seems that approximately 20% of COGS graduates wind up working in the US.