ESRI Labs?

June 19th, 2006 · 8 Comments · ArcScripts, ESRI, GIS

Is there an ESRI labs? Well not technically, but you can find some “lab quality” stuff in ArcScripts. I got to thinking about this when I saw Zillow introduced their own labs section. Specifically this quote caught my attention:

“Every now and then, someone writes a tool in their “spare time” (i.e. nights and weekends) that we don’t have time to fully test to make sure it integrates well with the rest of the site. So, in the spirit of playing in a tech sandbox, we came up with a way to put these ideas out there for everyone to use, test and make suggestions.”

We’ve all seen those cool mashups and tools that ESRI employees seem to trot out every User Conference or Dev Summit so why doesn’t ESRI “formalize” the process some more and let some of these great ideas out into the wild? I’ve mentioned an ESRI sandbox on this blog before and I still think it is a great idea. Many cool ideas have come out of Google Labs and I’m sure that users would love access to some of these great tools that ESRI prototypes from time to time.

Tags: Programming

8 responses so far ↓

1 Geometrybag // Jun 20, 2006 at 2:15 am

James I agree with you that people are often building cool stuff that it would be great to show off to more than just conference attendees. In the UK the biggest issue tends to be getting permission to use Data in these demos. It’s worth looking at the developer samples as a place for cool demos that don’t quite make the grade as releasable code, 9.2 has some good samples, for example realtime yahoo weather maps in ArcMap. there’s also the arcweb labs of course.
2 James Fee // Jun 20, 2006 at 6:05 am

Well ArcWeb labs isn’t the same because those aren’t really unsupported products. More like beta than sandbox IMO.
3 Matt Eitrem // Jun 20, 2006 at 8:05 am

For sure, I have always looked forward to the sotware updates just to dig into the new and improved samples. I think now days much of the newer code samples and current builds can be found at EDN http://edn.esri.com/.
4 All Points Blog // Jun 20, 2006 at 7:23 pm

There Oughta be a Lab!

Two “lab” stories this week prompt me to add to my list of “must do’s” for those offering new Web 2.0 APIs.

The first requirement is to have a contest. I was being a bit flippant about this in the past since I thought it was being over done. I …
5 Craig Williams // Jun 20, 2006 at 8:05 pm

ESRI has had a formal Applications Prototype Lab for many years now. Many of the prototypes developed in the lab have become Developer samples, ArcScripts, free downloads, or additions to ESRI products.
6 James Fee // Jun 20, 2006 at 8:07 pm

Yea and there has been some cool stuff. I’d like to see something more formal though.
7 Dave Bouwman // Jun 21, 2006 at 8:04 am

Doing “Labs” Right…
8 Drew M // Jun 24, 2006 at 8:20 pm

I would love to see an ESRI Labs section. I work for Zillow and use ArcView for some of my work. I love the programs’ capabilities, but plug-ins to add further functionality would be cool. I’m glad Zillow Labs is prompting discussions like this.