Getting Involved
I got an interesting email from a reader who didn’t want to be mentioned (something cloak and dagger no doubt). Anyway, he/she wanted to know why ESRI doesn’t get more involved with the GIS community. They acknowledged that there are a couple ESRI blogs, but nothing really engaging from any of them.
I’m not really sure why there hasn’t been more involvement with the ESRI folks on the blogs. I think there might be a couple of reasons. First I think everyone acknowledges that culturally it is very hard to blog at a company and I think that might be part of it. I’m not sure if there is any policy at ESRI for blogging or what backlash there has been from blogging by ESRI employees. I think the closest we saw was Eric Bader’s blog post gain a disclaimer and the fact he hasn’t followed up on it.
Blogging is a very large cultural shift for many companies and I think there will be more from ESRI in the near term (Brian Goldin mentioned blogs were coming soon from ESRI). I’m guessing ESRI employees will be more apt to blog on an internal blog service than they would be on their own as the boundaries are more defined. Some on this blog have mentioned Microsoft and Sun as great examples of blogging but they have been doing this for years longer than ESRI has. So while the blueprint is there, ESRI is taking is slow.
The second issue issue he/she mentioned was why ESRI wasn’t getting more involved with blogs. I can’t really answer that one either, but I’ve seen more @esri.com emails in comments on this blog and other in the last few months. I know Andrea Rosso has been commenting on this blog where we’ve talked about ArcWeb and others have chimed in also. I think if they could talk more about 9.2, we’d see so much more. Of course the other side to that is ESRI users are in the middle of 9.1 and while they are interested in 9.2, it really doesn’t help their production. We work with the USMC all the time and they are still on 8.3 and I’m others have the same issue. I’m glad to see Brian Goldin has said 9.1 will be the focus of the Dev Summit as most developers are working on 9.1 right now and things like the new Web ADF are really cool, unless it works with 9.1 it really isn’t any current value to us.
So lets see what happens at the Dev Summit with this new focus on community. You can be sure that developers are going to be letting ESRI know what is working and what isn’t working. I think we are all going to have a great time at the Dev Summit and we could be in for quite a change at ESRI because of it. Personally I’ve seen a change in my talks with ESRI employees so if they can figure out this blogging thing, we’ll all be in for quite a treat.
I think I can pretty much tell you why there hasn’t been much ESRI commeting on GIS blogs. They are all really bad (I say this without a blog of my own) other than yours and maybe one or two other ones. I see more comments on your blog than pretty much all the others put together.
Part of the issue I think is other blogs don’t try and engage the reader with their posts. You seem to do that (I’m sure its intentional) with regualirty. Most of these blogs don’t have anything for ESRI to react on. I did see Brian Goldin comment on the Unoffical ArcBlog so I think they do react when they read them. One thing I wish they’d do is blog more. I think you proved how valuable blogging is with your post on that ArcWeb developer having trouble with Perl and SOAP. He followed you post and then got a response that helped him continue with ArcWeb. That is a perfect example of why companies should blog. Nothing is worse than an unhappy person blogging about your product and nothing is better than someone saying how great your company is because they help their customers out.
ESRI should just use your blog as a roadmap of how to blog. You have readership, we interact with you and you help people out. There isn’t anything more a blog can do than that.
I hate to generalize but,
ALL ESRI BLOGS SUCK
None of them really are worth subscribing to. I just let Planet Geospatial send them to me rather than me seek them out.
James, you think there will be change. I was at the BPC last year, though I’m no longer with the company that sent me there. EDN was so impressive when I was demo’d it, but now its so out of date that its not worth visiting.
I’m willing to get excited about change at ESRI, but anything new they create seems to die a slow death.
To GISDev:
“ALL ESRI BLOGS SUCK”
Why do you think that. I’m not disagreeing with you, but feedback is important. Just saying things “suck” doesn’t help anyone.
Well, I’d say technically that if an emplyee (of ESRI or any one else) promotes the fact that they are an emplyee of company X and they promote that fact from their blog or whatever they have then it obviously reflects on the company in some capacity. ESRI has many formal channels for employees to interact with customers and others (ie. see GIS.com, countless email lists, discussion groups, EDN, etc…) so I think to say that simply because there’s not many formal esri “blogs” it’s going a bit overboard saying there’s no community… Google only bought blogger about 2 years ago (my rough guess) and community efforts have been going on at ESRI long before that. I would have to launch a guess that any employee of ESRI and many other companies are likely on a bit of a leash as far as blogging goes. As for the gisdev post… totally of no use
I do think there is a community but it isn’t as simple as one might think. To borrow from O’Reilly…
ESRI “official” community inititives are Web 1.0 and I think most people who read blogs have moved on to “Community 2.0″. The community is there, just not the type we’ve all gotten used to seeing these days.
oh, I forgot to mention, I recall seeing something in David M’s GIS Matters blog at http://gismatters.blogspot.com/2006/02/esri-jobs-jobs-jobs.html that describes ESRI as looking for many new employees this year, including an Evangelist.. not a bad idea, particularly when you look at what someone like Lynn Allen has done for Autodesk in evangelizing the product. She’s done a good job of creating a bridge between the company and users while at the same time having a long enough of a leash that she can occasionally be heard knocking things about the product that many users agree with. If couldn’t hurt!
Av8tor: I’ve always said that ESRI doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just work with what they’ve got. Small improvements are all that is needed (I say this without knowing anything about the backend to ESRI content management system).
Just starting over isn’t going to help anyone.
I have to agree with Glenn’s comment:
“I would have to launch a guess that any employee of ESRI and many other companies are likely on a bit of a leash as far as blogging goes.”
We arnt on so much of a leash but since I work for a distributor we restricted on what we can say and talk about. There are alot of inside information, especially on the development side of things, that we just cannot talk about. I guess this is the same case for the guys at ESRI so its really hard to post useful information.
I try my best at times, but I have to be careful in what I say
J:
Of couse some would say then don’t bother blogging. There are tons of things one can say and not get in trouble. One doesn’t have to blog about the 9.2 development process. How about 9.1 stuff? I’m sure internally that is boring stuff, but to me it isn’t as 9.1 is my life right now.
TomServo:
Good point. As far I can say for myself, when I get back from the Developer Summit/BP I will start working on a new ArcGIS Server 9.1 development project, so I will try and get some useful information posted.
I’m no programmer and I read this blog because it does have some good info on ESRI. I’d love to see some kind of community for desktop users where we can share templates, geoprocessing models and other cartographical stuff. There really isn’t anything right now like that.
Can you ask about Desktop James at the developer conference?
As a member of the sucky bunch I would like to ask for a bit more constructive criticsim than that.
Several times on my blog I have asked for what do people want to see and I have also done it in other peoples blogs as well. The only person who has been specific is drmkattr and he wanted to hear about 9.2 stuff, which I can’t really talk about. Look back at my earlier posts in 2005 (June, July, and August). Without comments it is hard to know if anything I am writing is useful. I know lately I have not written many useful things. Should I assume what I wrote before wasn’t useful either. If so then I am not really sure what I should blog about.
Thanks
I’d comment on your blog Steve if I have a clue about Java. Its all greek to me man.
But Java doesn’t look very different from C#. Most of my ArcObjects focused posts are applicable to any of the languages and if you know C# you should understand the ideas. The Web ADF on the other hand is more specific to Java so I understand that…
I agree with Tom Servo – it isn’t that important that it is the 9.2 breaking news – many of us are still struggling in the 8.3 or 9.0 world, coverages, grids and shape files.
Things I have been thinking about that I would like to see that wouldn’t necessarily be going out on a limb:
Trials and tribulations of a support desk person (with names changed to protect the innocent) might give a reading user a better perspective of what the other side of the phone goes through.
The process tricks and tips that one of the development group has put together for a neat little/big widget.
Even the trials of working with name changed to protect the innoncent / an average customer might help the next customer be a little more prepared.
Case studies.
Aha moments of normal people working with SDE, IMS, ArcServer, etc.
The orgs have to realize that a blog isn’t necessarily about selling something today – it seems like its power is making the connection and building the trust with their customers in the ethereal world that will lead to the sale/action/mindset and desire on the customers part to stay with the company tomorrow, in the face of an internet-time world with Google, OSGeo and others knocking on the door.
just my two simoleons (re: NS)
Yea, anything is better than nothing. I google most of my problems and none of the existing support stuff shows up in a Google search. Blogs do show up and are loved by google, so if you blog about a problem that you solved or a common mistake by ESRI users, you’ll help out so many more people.
I think that this phenonmena is mirrored to some degree in the user forums on the ESRI site. From time to time I have found a bit of useful information, but mostly people asking questions that wouldn’t have been asked with a bit a reading or background. I think part of the problem is that the average “GIS professional” is drinking their own bath water so to speak; in that the “arc-” way of doing things breeds a work ethic that is tied to button pushing without insight or required knowledge of what is really going on. Indeed with so many peple equating the idea of GIS with ESRI they are missing the point entirely: the Arc-* packages are the tool, not the methodology. For a look at vibrant, enthusiastic, and most importantly producting software communities take a look at the open source world. In most of these circles it is not the implementation, but the underlying concepts that are important- thus fostering a more inclusive attitude within the community.
[...] James Fee over at Planet Geospatial opened a pretty good question about industry and blogging. This seems to be a topic in other areas of the blogging world, not just a ‘geo’ issue. It occurs elsewhere. But let’s lookk at the ‘geo’ perspective a bit closer. [...]