Picked up portions of this from All Points Blog today. Where 2.0 is a conference dedicated to “neographers”, that new breed of mappers that are using free and open source map technology to develop some fairly advanced and easy to use maps (for the most part).  No longer a fringe group, neogeographers are becoming part of the mainstream of GIS.  This week is the annual conference pulling in some pretty big names in the GIS and neogeographer arena. Many familiar names and a few that are not as common to the traditional map user.

So the big news for the ESRI user base is how Google and ESRI are going to work together at least in the technical sharing of data sense. From a keynote address, the following highlights show a glimpse of how this will play out (from APB).

ArcGIS Server 9.3 (available in about 4 weeks, per Dangermond) will make its metadata service “scrapable” into KML and thus findable via Google’s geographic search (once known as KML search). Further, ArcGIS Server will be able to publish not only that data as streaming KML (and GeoRSS) but also related services. Dangermond showed finding data from a Portland, Oregon service, visualizing it and then performing analysis, all from Google Earth. Said another way, all data and services served by ArcGIS Server could potentially be findable and usable in any Google mashup. Further, the resultant KML can be used in app that supports the OGC standard.

ESRI has enhanced the API for ArcGIS Server 9.3 (JavaScript/Flash) to make it more conducive to plugging into other Web mapping properties in mashups.

Google is making its geographic search available in its various APIs. To date it was only available via Google Maps and Google Earth applications. Now any Google developers will be able to do “local search” on explicitly tagged data (KML built via MyMaps or 3rd party apps like Platial and Flckr or your GIS!).

According to APB:

These announcements have some important implications for the geospatial marketplace:
1) the use of and demand for ArcGIS Server should rise
2) any geo data or services provider who wants to play on the Web needs to look at how it will provide findability and usability of its data and services in this way
3) geodata-finding portals may, in time, become extinct – if the KML vision for search and distribution becomes a de facto one as well
4) the technology may be available, but the institutional barriers to data sharing may still be blocking the path (as noted in a question at the end of the session)

It seems that costs should come down for budget conscious agencies looking to maximize the ingestion of free data available throughout the Where 2.0 map world, while at the same time managing only those internal datasets that are either required by law, security-focused, or otherwise need to be handled locally. This leaves a plethora of free data that someone else can manage and make available. This news means combining these disparate datasets is now easier and more seamless than ever. “Why can’t we all just get along” just flew out the window.

Related posts:

1. Google offers 3D Services to Small Cities – FREE too
2. ArcGIS Server & ArcSDE at the 9.3 Release
3. Google releases v2.0 of Google Maps (Mobile) With “My Location”
4. ESRI to Roll Out New GIS Courses with Release of ArcGIS 9.3
5. Google Getting Sued over “Street View”