After five years away, returning to Palm Springs for the Esri Partner Conference felt familiar in almost every way, except for the one thing that’s changing everything: AI.
I have had the good fortune to attend the Esri Partner Conference in Palm Springs quite a few times over a 25-year career in Location Technology, however this was my first time since 2019. The conference is refreshingly familiar; the venue, the format, the food, the premise, even the city itself felt very much like it did seven years ago. Esri haven’t fixed what isn’t broken, no need to freshen up a winning formula.
The San Jacinto Mountains continue to dominate the blazing blue skyline, ever present, analogous perhaps to Esri’s own dominance over the GIS market. But whilst the mountains are rarely troubled by anything other than seismic activity (the last big shake being more than 200 years ago), Esri is having to deal with a seismic shift in technology, (AI of course), which is changing at such a pace that bi-annual software updates seems strangely out of place.
Esri has been embracing AI in all its many forms, be it AI Assistants or AI Agents or Model Context Protocol (MCP) (if there is another tech acronym which fails to articulate its own importance more than MCP I would love to hear it), and therefore this has been a major focus of Esri.
This is not to say that Esri haven’t been busy in other areas, the Telecom Utility Network for example looks near complete for its release in June/July, there are many new features and functions added to ArcGIS Pro, and 3D GIS continues to grow in capability, but honestly AI dominated proceedings, muscling its way into almost all conversations, indeed Esri laid on a special 3rd part of the Sunday plenary session dedicated to it.
Before exploring AI a little more its worth saying that AI for all its amazing capabilities lacks one capability for which it seems humans seem more adapt, and for which the Partner Conference excels. The ability to create and rejuvenate true personal connections with other human beings. Within minutes of arrival at the conference centre, hands were shook, backs were slapped and conversations burst into life as the language of GIS took over. It was awesome to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in years. In many ways this is the point of the conference, personal connections as important, if not more important than technology.
This is something Esri were keen to encourage and there were ample networking opportunities – breaks between sessions, long lunches and both welcome, and goodbye functions.
John and I were there of course for all things related to Safe Software and FME, which as most know is closely aligned with Esri. It was great to be able to have meaningful conversations with Julian and Conor from Safe and spend time outside of the conference in their company at one of the many Mexican restaurants that adorned Palm Canyon Drive. I’m pleased not to have chosen the flight of margaritas enjoyed by John and Julian, the local craft beer being enough of an attraction, but I couldn’t go past the local street tacos which were a tasty alternative to enchiladas and burritos.
As ever our small nation was well represented at the conference with a large team from Eagle Technology, GBS, GPS-IT, Signal and others making more than enough for a rugby team. Special thanks to Eagle for hosting a dinner on Monday night – much appreciated, I don’t think the waiter had ever had quite some many orders for the Bombe Alaska!
But let’s return to AI for a minute, it took centre stage and it is fair to say that future releases are going to be the most AI packed yet with broad adoption across the entire platform. Whether using AI Assistants to help you make a better map, or to code/vibe code web applications better and faster, or creating AI Agents to help complete complex tasks, AI is going to change how you do things. So, prepare yourself, its not going to be something to ignore, and nor should you. In days gone by I have used the phrase “the power of GIS”, but today, whilst GIS remains a powerful tool, it is AI that has “the power”.
Fear not FME users because AI is also going to play an important role in your work as well. Safe Software and the FME platform is embracing AI just as much, but in slightly different ways. More on that in a later post, but for now Esri deserves the plaudits, an amazing conference well hosted in the desert oasis.
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