Well, I actually made it to Palm Springs and to the ESRI Developers Summit.  If you're ever in Palm Springs, I have two words for you: Hotel Zoso.  The hotel rocks and it's right in the heart of downtown Palm Springs.  Stay there if you ever have the chance. 

The Dev Summit is packed this year with over 1300 developers from 690 organizations and 49 countries.  It's getting bigger every year and it's great to be here!  This morning, I sat through the Plenary Session and heard an awful lot of ESRI Kool-Aid being poured out (see Dave's post for the gory details).  Seriously, lot's of cool stuff looks like it's coming our way in 9.3 . 

Of course, my ears were listening closely for any hints of an ESRI shift towards agile practices.  And, it seems like some of the speakers threw out a few ESRI agile "code words".    The first hint was dropped by Euan Cameron, Senior Architect on the ArcGIS Explorer product.  According to Euan, ArcGIS Explorer Build 480 will be based on user prioritized needs gathered through direct user feedback.  Euan said they learned a lot from the user feedback that they're pushing into their products.  Words like rapid evolution and frequent releases also escaped his lips.  Smells of agile to me. 

Next, Scott Morehouse, ESRI's Director of Software Development, followed up with the big picture for ESRI.  Again, similar words.  "More frequent releases...modularizing for faster releases...incremental releases".  Coming out of Scott's mouth, this means a lot!

Jim Berry, the Program Manager for the ESRI Developer Network also spoke about a community approach to their development.  A lot of "ESRI and You" huggy feely kind of stuff, but still, a new road for ESRI.  They're talking about ESRI doing more active blogging and sharing with their customers. 

Now, you may not see the word agile being thrown around here by the ESRI guys, but I think we're hearing ESRI code for it.  The idea of frequent incremental releases is very encouraging.  Opening communications between ESRI developers and the rest of the GIS development community is a very good thing.  I'm looking forward to seeing where this takes ESRI in the next year, but I'm hoping it's a better place...a more agile place.