Jane Goodall Institute Archives

Esri UC: The SuperBowl of the Geospatial Industry

The Esri User Conference is the biggest GIS event of the year. This year, the San Diego Convention Center was once again filled with a record-breaking number of geolocation enthusiasts; over 17,000 attendees. The Blue Raster team was excited to participate and showcase our latest work, meet new friends and learn from other GIS professionals.

Blue Raster Team at Esri UC 2019

With ideas flying and new technologies being unveiled, we walked away excited for what is to come:

Esri ArcGIS Hub – It was amazing to see all the ways cities and organizations are partnering with residents, non-profits, business, and universities through ArcGIS Hub. The Hub work that the City of Zwolle, Netherlands, and the District of Columbia government are doing was super inspiring!
ArcGIS Urban – This is the ultimate city planning tool. It takes into account setbacks, zoning regulations and overrides, and provides capabilities to compare large-scale 3D projects across multiple parcels and development projects.
ArcGIS Indoors – ArcGIS Indoors is enabling organizations to provide the ultimate workplace experience for employees through workplace maps and location data to better manage workplace operations. We are proud to announce our new ArcGIS Indoors specialty from Esri.
ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7.1 – This new version of ArcGIS Enterprise has reduced server memory requirements have by 95%. This means that the same hardware should be able to do MUCH more now.

The conference kicked off with the Opening Plenary featuring Dr. Jane Goodall and an exciting new StoryMap, ENGAGE – LISTEN – UNDERSTAND – ACT, that the Jane Goodall Institute and Blue Raster teamed up to create. Built with the brand new StoryMaps for ArcGIS template, this story map outlines concerns over chimpanzee populations and the environment, the steps in the process of 'Tacare' approach toward conservation, and success stories with this conservation approach. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with the Jane Goodall Institute and meet Jane and her team at the UC conference this year. We hope to see Jane in DC when she visits in September.

UC Opening Plenary 2019

Dr. Jane Goodall at her booth

UC Opening Plenary 2019

Jane Goodall and the Blue Raster Team

Danny Cassiday at Esri UC 2019

On Monday, one of our GIS Analysts, Danny Cassiday, brought his knowledge to sunny California to present a lightning talk "My Life as a (Version) Control Freak: Versioning ArcGIS Online Items with Python" sharing his experiences and thoughts on applications of Python in versioning ArcGIS Online items.

On Tuesday, Blue Raster was proud to sponsor and attend the Sustainable World Social, a networking event focusing on the applications of GIS in the context of conservation and sustainability.

Following the social, we headed over to our annual Fish Taco Night at the South Beach Bar & Grille.

Blue Raster Taco Night

Blue Raster Team at Taco Night

We enjoyed seeing all those who stopped by our booth this year, from professionals in conservation and forest management to real estate development and utility support. We were able to demo some of our latest applications and invited attendees to visit our Map Gallery Posters. The Gallery featured our work with Forest Stewardship Council providing an interactive outlet through ArcGIS Operations Dashboards to explore where FSC Certified Forests and Certificates currently are located for verification and accountability purposes as well as our partnership with The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program, USAID, UNICEF, and the Nature Conservancy utilizing ArcGIS StoryMaps to track the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals. We also had the opportunity to display a poster covering the drone missions we flew with The Green-Wood Cemetery using Esri’s Drone2Map and ArcGIS Online Web Scenes to provide high-quality imagery that will identify invasive grass for measurement and monitoring in partnership with Cornell University.

Forest Products without Compromise map

Measuring Success map

Improving Drone Missions with Lidar Support map

Wednesday evening was family night, allowing us to engage with the entire GIS community and interact with enthusiasts, young and old. Our Blue Raster temporary tattoos were a hit with the kiddos! Between our booth on the expo floor, the many sessions and socials, family night, and our legendary fish taco night, we had so many wonderful moments. Check out some of our favorites:

Family Night at Esri UC 2019

Christina passing out candy at Family Night.

Some of our favorite moments from the UC this year

Blue Raster booth for Esri UC 2019

Our Blue Raster women in GIS Esri UC 2019

Interested in working with us?

Reach out to see how we can help you harness GIS technologies, mapping solutions, and data analysis to tackle the challenges you face.

ENGAGE - LISTEN - UNDERSTAND - ACT

Timed to coincide with Dr. Jane Goodall’s plenary speech at the 2019 Esri User Conference in San Diego, California, Blue Raster, Esri and the Jane Goodall Institute teamed up on an exciting new Story Map.

ENGAGE – LISTEN – UNDERSTAND – ACT, built with the brand new ArcGIS StoryMaps template, tells the story behind the ‘Tacare’ approach toward conservation. The story map outlines concerns over chimpanzee populations and the environment, the steps in the process of Tacare, and success stories with this conservation approach.

Beginning with an overview of how Jane Goodall first became involved with conservation through her work with chimpanzees, the story unfolds as Jane noticed that much of the forests in Western Tanzania, home to her beloved chimpanzees, had become barren hillsides after years of farming and other human related activities in the area. She realized that the only way to conserve chimpanzees and their habitat was to work directly with local people and communities. The story map we created titled, Engage - Listen - Understand - Act, explains this holistic approach and some of the successes the area has already seen through the work of Tacare.

Blue Raster is honored to have had the opportunity to help create the first dedicated web presence that details the Jane Goodall Institute's Tacare conservation approach and is especially thrilled to have been able to use the latest version of the next-gen StoryMaps builder.

An all-star team, including master storyteller Allen Carroll from Esri and Lilian Pintea, VP of Conservation Science at the Jane Goodall Institute, worked in collaboration with Blue Raster to produce ENGAGE – LISTEN – UNDERSTAND – ACT.

The new Story Map builder helps the reader flow seamlessly through the story of Tacare; the application intersperses captivating photos taken on the ground in Tanzania and interactive mapping elements that display chimpanzee ranges across Western Tanzania and the African continent. Success with Tacare can be seen in "before" and "after" aerial imagery, which helps readers to visualize the reforestation occurring in the area.

Not only does this story map detail the incredible conservation efforts led by the Jane Goodall Institute but it also serves as a call-to-action for other conservation efforts and organizations around the world. Conservation is in the hands of local people - by understanding the needs of local communities, we are then able to help create a sustainable future for our world.

This story map will be displayed at the Esri UC Conference. If you're attending, make sure to check out Blue Raster's booth!

Click here to check out the story map!

For more info about our work with the Jane Goodall Institute, read our blog post about our dashboard project in Tanzania.

Our Work

Esri User Conference 2019: The Blue Raster Experience

Esri UC: The SuperBowl of the Geospatial Industry

Interested in working with us?

Highlighting Jane Goodall’s Conservation Approach with a New Story Map

ENGAGE - LISTEN - UNDERSTAND - ACT