Palm Springs, California was once again the hub of the GIS world, as many Esri partners gathered for the annual Esri Partner Conference, followed by over 2,500 people for the largest GIS-centric developer conference in the world.

In his opening session, Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri Inc., not only highlighted the versatile technological possibilities of the ArcGIS system, but also underlined this with innovative examples from customers and partners.

Once again this year, we actively supported the EPC and the subsequent Developer Summit as a Bronze Sponsor and were thus able to contribute to the success of the conferences. Of course, our visit to the Esri Partner Conference focused on the latest information on business strategies, technological trends and product innovations. Through the thematically diverse sessions and personal contact and exchange with Esri colleagues, we learned first-hand what is otherwise difficult to obtain. We have already been able to take away a lot of information on the planned simplification of the highly complex license model or the changes in the partner model and align our product and project strategies accordingly.

The Partner Advisory Council, of which we have been an integral part for over three years through our participant Mischa Giese, always meets on the fringes of the EPC to take advantage of the opportunity for personal discussions. As one of the few European partners and integrators in the Council, our opinions and views are perceived and valued, enabling us to make an important contribution to the further development of the global partner program.

Things continued on Tuesday with the Developer Summit. There is perhaps no other conference that focuses so strongly on exchange and communication with each other as this one. Developers from con terra were also on hand to find out about the latest trends in the GIS sector and the latest innovations in Esri's technology stack and to exchange ideas with the global developer community.

Designed as a conference by and for developers, the event focused not only on the possible applications of the various Esri technologies and their innovations, but also on the incredible number of opportunities for developers to customize them or create build their own creative and functionally focused applications.

The Developer Summit plenary and the subsequent sessions on the following days were also filled with tons of information. News in the central technologies such as ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise, or the ArcGIS API for Java Script, which we use as the basis for our product map.apps, are a must for us. However, we are also particularly excited by the further developments in the context of ArcGIS and cloud infrastructures, managed services and their operational aspects, as well as the possibilities for securing these environments.

Exciting topics in our focus naturally also concern the data preparation and provision of content for digital twins and smart cities. We are particularly fascinated by developments relating to the possibilities of immersive visualization, 3-dimensional content and spaces, the interaction of users with the map or the application itself. Above all, the possibilities which are already available for direct interaction with applications using generative AI are remarkable and never cease to amaze us.

The Esri Partner Conference and the Esri Developer Summit were once again able to offer us real added value this year. The intensive exchange with Esri Inc, Esri Germany and the detailed insight into the product strategies show us every year that with Esri we have a strong, future-oriented and valuable partner at our side, who continues to develop in terms of content and technology in order to offer partners and customers far-reaching opportunities to tackle and solve their own tasks and challenges in a future-oriented manner.

Many of the impulses gained on site have already developed into initial ideas on how we can sustainably develop our own customer projects. We are already looking forward to putting these new insights into practice.

Six days full of inspiring impressions, exciting discussions and, above all, creative interaction lie behind us.

Even though it is still a while away, we are already looking forward to the European Developer Summit and the Esri Conference in Berlin and Bonn in November. And, of course, to seeing you again in sunny Palm Spring in 2025 for the EPC. The dates for all the conferences have already been set, so so go ahead and start planning your attendance.