SFU ECCE student associates at the 2019 Esri Developer Summit

Geography students Alysha van Duynhoven (graduate student) and Chris Yee (undergraduate student) represented the SFU Esri Canada Center of Excellence (SFU ECCE) at the 2019 Esri Developer Summit held from March 5-8 in Palm Springs, California, USA. The Developer Summit is one of the largest geospatial development conference in the world with several thousand GIS developers in attendance, and providing an engaging environment filled with technical sessions, demonstrations on current, new, and upcoming issues related to the GIS software and programming. The keynote speaker this year was Glenn Vanderburg, Vice President of the Engineering at First company, who uses data science as a basis for engineering transformative software.

Alysha and Chris had the opportunity to attend many GIS and computer programming sessions relevant to their study interests. They interacted with the Esri Canada team and networked with student associates from other ECCE across Canada. The fun events included the well-attended Developer Summit party night that consisted of a dodgeball tournament, carnival games, and food trucks.

This trip would not be possible without the help of Esri Canada. Attending the 2019 Esri Developer Summit was certainly a beneficial experience for Alysha and Chris towards the advancement of graduate research in the case of Alysha and the advacement of professional experience in the case of Chris.