Hallelujah!!!

First day of the ESRI User Conference was a day with hallelujah feeling. All the attendant spent the day in the largest conference "room" I have ever been in. According to the founder and owner of ESRI, Jack Dangermond, who led the opening session we were about 12 000 attendants this year.



Jack Dangermond, founder of ESRI.




Row after row after row of seats! I wonder hoe many foldable chairs the the centre has.

The day was filled with presentations of news when it comes to improvements in the software followed by applauds and a little bit of cheering. What amazed me the most was how simple it is becoming to work with geographical information. Hopefully that means that more people will realise the benefits of using GIS.

We had lunch by the hotel pool looking over the gigantic convention centre. The lunch the hotel served was not to great though so that was a only time during the week we had a meal there.


Our hotel, Omni, just by the convention centre.



The boys are having lunch with the convention centre in the background.

The opening session continued after lunch and ended with the key note speaker, artist Will.i.am (known by himself as well as part of Black Eyed Peas) who had gotten acquainted with Jack Dangermond through charity. To me he and his presentation of his charity project where teenagers are using GIS to improve their neighbourhood was the highlight of the day.



Will.i.am with Jack Dangermond and students teenagers from his charity.


Will.i.am.

After a meeting with other Swedish colleagues within my line of work, Martin and I headed down south with the tram to a large shopping area close to the Mexican border about a 30 minute ride from downtown. There we did some speed shopping until 10 PM when they closed. The last place we stopped at was Ross where brand items seemed to end up after being discarded by the brand stores.



On our way to another shopping spree. Can you see the Mexican flag in the background marking the Mexican border.

There we found Samsonite suitcases really cheap, more than half the regular price and since we are allowed two items of checked-in luggage each on the flights home we ended up buying one each which gave us the chance to buy even more stuff.

Leaving Ross the store alarm went off when I was exiting. Then I discovered that a bag I bought at Levi's still had its alarm. It hadn't triggered the alarm leaving the Levi's store, entering and leaving the Samsonite store or when I entered Ross. I knew that the store was closed but thought that maybe someone would still be there so I headed back to that store while Martin went to McDonald's. Back at Levi's I saw at least 10 people tiding up the store and thought that great now I can get the alarm off without too much extra work. I knocked on the window and one of the girls came up to it. She asked what was wrong through the window and I showed her the alarm. What I thought was an easy problem to solve was apparently a difficult one. According to the girl I had to come back in the morning since it was impossible for them to open the doors again after closing. Since that wasn't a possibility for me I continued the discussion and when I was ignored (the girl just left the window from time to time) I put the bag by the window close to the alarm sensor so that the alarm would go off. Finally after about 25 minutes the manager came and opened the door and took the alarm off but she was not very happy and barely apologised. I wasn't the one forgetting to take the alarm off. I don't like turning into a bitch but I'm glad I did and that I didn't give up in this case. We got home quite exhausted by 11:15 PM, but still glad over what we accomplished shopping wise :)