Busy Wednesday

Esri visited COGS to recruit new employees. Their head office is in Redlands, California.

The three members of the recruiting team were from Halifax and Connecticut. I attended the opening session in the AV room, because of my interest in GIS education.

I worked in Redlands in 1989, after a year in Indonesia and before moving to Ontario, to design and deliver GIS training for staff at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR).

Here are a couple of items that caught my attention.

1. Esri remains the world-leading GIS software company. They have 5,000 employees world-wide. They have eighteen R&D centres, one of which is in Ottawa. Esri purchased SpotOn in 2011. Both Derek Weatherbe and Jeff Sutherland work remotely for SpotOn.
2. Jeff gave a technical presentation on Data Pipelines. This included a video on Generative AI Assistants (HERE is the link).

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— a conversation between Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) set in London during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It was an evening of contrasts. Jeannie used to babysit our children when we lived in Clarence. I am not sure if C.S. Lewis was on the reading list.

It was unsettling to watch a movie set in WWII, in a small community with its own theatre, at a time when the world is in a state of turmoil, given the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Postscript

The brainchild of Edward Wedler. Doug Dockrill is preparing a book on the event.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Derek Weatherbe for the invitation to the ESRI Technical presentation. Thanks to Jeannie for the invitation to Kings Theatre. Edward added the graphics and the links.

References

Esri Generative AI Assistants video.