Luke Fischer is the Co-Founder & CEO of SkyFi, a company that we'll describe in a few ways in this episode, but boils down to an Earth Observation marketplace. We talk about Luke's 20 year time in the military before getting into startups, why Luke is bullish on their approach and many more Sponsor: SatCamp SatCamp is a different kind of conference…

Ben Strong is the Science & Machine Learning Lead at Earth Genome, an NGO working on the intersection of data, science & digital design. Most recently they've been working on Earth Index, an application built on top of Earth embeddings from foundation models. This conversation is the "so what" of Earth foundational model Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenC…

Ib Green led the development of 3D visualisation tools like for example Uber’s deck.gl and is now working at Foursquare, after having started Unfolded, which Foursquare acquired. During this conversation we touch on how browser based visualisations are changing This episode is supported by all the people on Patreon Access Behind the Scenes and supp…

Bruno Sanchez is the Executive Director of the Clay Foundation, which just released their v1 of a “Foundational Model of Earth”. We talk about what that means, building open source & non profits and can’t help but draw parallels to the not-so-open anymore OpenAI. Previously Bruno was the Program Director of the Microsoft Planetary Computer Sponsor:…

Dr Fred Calef III has the unofficial title of "Keeper of Maps" at NASA JPL, he's the Lead Mapping Specialist for most of JPL's Mars Rover missions, most recently that being Perseverance & Curiosity. But to land -and navigate- a rover, one needs maps, and Fred makes them. Sponsor: Nimbo by Kermap Try out Kermap's monthly mosaic viewer Nimbo for your…

Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API Geomob Shownotes Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books. GeoLayers geolayers.app Johnny Harris Markus’s cameo in a recent video Search Party Felt Procreate dreams Jason Boone’s episode Podcast recommendation: Synt…

Volodymyr Agafonkin is the creator of Leaflet, an open-source JS mapping library started in 2008 that is used pretty much everywhere on the Internet today. We end up nerding out on what makes building simple open source software & rendering maps online tricky but also so endlessly interesting. Volodymyr lives in Ukraine, a country shaken by a war f…

Qiusheng Wu is an Associate Professor in Geography, an active open source contributor behind projects like geemap, leafmap or segment-geospatial also sharing tutorials on his popular Youtube channel. Qiusheng has a desire to teach, share and lower the barrier to entry to geospatial, all things I'm always curious to talk more about Sponsor: OpenCage…

Ryan Abernathey is a Climate Scientist, open-source software developer and the CEO & co-founder of Earthmover, a company trying to simplify how scientific computing is done. Ryan also co-founded the Pangeo project in 2016, one of the major efforts to build better tools for scientific computing today. Sponsor: Nimbo by Kermap Try out Kermap's monthl…

Gilberto Camara was the director of INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research from 2005 to 2012, working there 35y in total and leading the use of satellite imagery to fight deforestation in Brazil, leading to what Nature declared “One of the biggest environmental wins of the 2000s” Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs…

Thomas Ager worked for 30y at the National Geospatial Agency on Radar satellite images and recently released ‘The Essentials of SAR’ a book breaking down Synthetic Aperture Radar for, as he puts it, “non electrical engineers” Sponsor: Planet Find more about accessing Planet's high resolution & high frequency images About Tom LinkedIn His book: The …

Brian McClendon was one of the earliest investors & later VP of Engineering at Keyhole, which got acquired by Google in 2004. Brian become VP of Engineering and led Google Geo, overlooking the development of Google Earth & Google Maps. He also worked at Uber & is now at Niantic, which you might know for thri most popular app: Pokemon Go Sponsor: Op…

Ariel Seidman is one of the co-founders of Hivemapper, a company building a map through selling dashcams & paying contributing drivers with the aim of competing with Google Maps. Ariel has a long history of mapping, working on Map & Search at Yahoo in the mid 2000s. Sponsor: Planet Find more about accessing Planet's high resolution & high frequency…

It's the end of the year, so time for Christmas sweaters & looking back on the year through 12 conversations ranging from advice for people wanting to build things, discussing academia & companies, thinking about the roles of maps in the world and many others. Support the podcast & my work on Patreon Listen to the full episodes mentioned today: Har…

Jason Boone runs the Boone Loves Videos YouTube Channel with nearly 100k subscribers, teaching people visual effects & map animations. This led him to work with some of the biggest YouTubers out there, including Johnny Harris. We talked about running an online business teaching people map animations, using maps to tell stories and Jason's recent di…

Javier de la Torre started a Biologist Researcher, went on to start Vizzuality and later Carto where he is now. Javier works at the intersection mapping, software based companies & geospatial. He is also one of the founding members of the Tierra Pura Foundation focused on mitigation and adaptions tactics to climate change. Sponsor: Felt Check out t…

Hongwei Liu is the CEO & Co-Founder of MappedIn, a company focused on indoor mapping. I know a lot about what it takes to map the outdoor world, but little about what’s required to map indoors. That’s what this conversation is about. Episode Sponsor: SkyFi Get high resolution imagery easily, with prices up front on SkyFi.com About Hongwei LinkedIn …

Sean Gorman is currently on his 4th start-up, Zephr, working on improving smartphone location. Previously he worked on 3D mapping (acquired by Snap), mapping fibre optics infrastructure (and caught the NAS's attention as a grad student). I was recently in Colorado and got to spend a few days with Sean, at the end of which we recorded a conversation…

Harold Goddijn is one of the co-founders & the CEO of TomTom. TomTom has pivoted many times, from it's beginnings making PDA software in the early 90s, stumbling onto map applications, building its own hardware to millions of devices sold in a day, to its current form today. TomTom is a fascinating company in the mapping industry and I'm excited to…

James Killick worked at Apple from 2013 to 2022 on the Maps team and has worked in mapping for the past 40 years. I've been wondering why Apple has gotten so much into Maps; Google makes sense to me, they're just the same ad business as search, but on a map. So, why -and how- did Apple get into Map? Sponsor: Felt Try out collaborative online mappin…

Aravind Ravichandran is the founder of TerraWatch Space, where he does consulting and strategy with the goal, in his words, to demystify Earth Observation. This is an introduction to the 5 layers Aravind identifies as making the Earth Observation industry. Aravind writes one of the most popular newsletter gathering the latest news and featuring dee…

Steve Brumby is the founder & CTO of Impact Observatory, a company working on providing rapid land cover maps anywhere on Earth. He puts it as wanting to provide "the maps the US takes for granted, all around the globe". Steve was also a co-founder & the CTO at Descartes Labs and worked at National Geographic. --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage Use Open…

Robert Cheetham is the founder of Azavea, founded all the way back in 2000 and Dan Pilone one of the founders of Element84, started in 2010. Recently Element84 acquired Azavea to expand from large scale computing to also analysis. I wanted to talk to Robert & Dan about why they went for an acquisition and why now, if both companies had both been ar…

Dr Este Geraghty is the Chief Medical Officer at Esri, a former Deputy Director of the California Department of Public Health and a certified public health professional; so the perfect person to talk about how we map diseases, health and all the support around medical care. Este also wrote a book about the learning of mapping applied to covid, whic…

Can Duruk is the co-founder & CTO at Felt, a company working on bringing maps to the browser. In Can's own words they want to make maps fun and collaborative. Think of Felt as the Figma or Notion of Maps. Episode Sponsor: satellite-image-deep-learning newsletter To keep up with all things satellite images & deep learning, follow Robin Cole's newsle…

Zhuang-Fang Nana Yi is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Regrow, though today's conversation is about her story from going to school not speaking the language, to mapping rubber tree plantations and ultimately using global satellite imagery methods to solve local problems. Support the podcast on Patreon --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCag…

Jed Sundwall is the Executive Director of Radiant Earth, and formerly worked on creating AWS's Open Data Registry, starting by putting Landsat images and then other Earth Observation datasets on the cloud. Radiant Earth is an NGO focused on making geospatial data more accessible, specifically for Machine Learning applications. Support the Podcast o…

Marc Prioleau is the newly appointed Executive Director to the Overture Maps Foundation (at the date this episode comes out). Overture was originally announced in December 2022, founded by Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom, with the goal of providing a open map data. That sounds a lot like what OpenStreetMap set out to achieve... so why start some…

Grega Milčinski is the founder of Sinergise, the company behind Sentinel Hub & EO Browser which recently got acquired by Planet. While the deal of the acquisition isn't closed just yet at the time of publishing, we discuss the story behind Sinergise, how it's more of an engineering than remote sensing company and why they decided to get acquired. S…

Mila Luleva is the Head of Remote Sensing at Rabobank, the 2nd biggest bank in the Netherlands. Specifically she works on the Acorn Initiative which aims at supporting small holder farmers transition to more sustainable agriculture practices by selling carbon credits for the biomass these farmers produce. Carbon credits are a messy, complicated and…

Renny Babiarz is a former Analyst at the NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) and the VP of Analysis & Operations at AllSource Analysis, a company focused on providing geospatial Intelligence investigations. One of the angles of Renny's work is better understanding China's Nuclear testing using satellite imagery, Open Source Intelligence m…

Kuo-Yu 'Slayer' Chuang is the co-founder of GeoThings, a Taiwanese company leveraging SMS to share GPS location, images & any useful information for disaster response. He was also on the board of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team; and has focused on applying mapping to supporting humanitarian endeavours mostly in Asia. --- Episode Sponsor: GeoAwe…

Benjamin Grant is the founder of Overview, which started as a project of sharing 1 satellite image per day on Instagram, now to an audience of nearly 1.5 million. It has since turned into books, exhibitions and collaboration with huge brands like Louis Vuitton; all in an effort to showcase Earth using satellite images. --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage…

Iain Woodhouse is a Professor of Applied Earth Observation at the University of Edinburgh, the author of multiple books & course on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and one of the best people to explain radar remote sensing with decades of experience teaching but also working in the industry. --- Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub Geoaweso…

As 2022 wraps up, I wanted to bring some of the most insightful moments from conversations over the past year: 12 clips from 12 conversations. --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API. They have a generous Free trial you can sign up to! --- Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 02:32 Steve Coast: The Next Thing th…

Andrew Blum is the author of 'The Weather Machine', which provides a history & global overview of how we predict the weather, from the data collection to forecast modelling. His book came out in 2019 so we also discuss the current evolutions & changes since its release. --- Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub Geoawesomeness UP42 --- About…

Hamed Alemohammad was the previous Executive Director of the Radiant Earth Foundation, a Non-Profit focused on building open machine learning tools & datasets for satellite imagery through projects like the ML Hub & STAC, Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog. --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API. They have a g…

Mo Islam is the Co-Founder & CEO of Payload, a Modern Media Company build around a daily newsletter reporting on the Space Industry. --- Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub Geoawesomeness UP42 --- Shownotes: - Subscribe to Payload! - Pathfinder, their podcast - Crowdfunded SpaceX round of investment - Book & Podcast Recommendations - Engi…

Daniel O'Donohue is the host of the Mapscaping Podcast, the biggest geospatial podcast out there. Over the past 5 years and 180 episode Daniel has talked to hundreds of professionals in the geospatial industry. This is his 2nd time on the podcast, since last time the podcast has grown, he's become a close friend, and recently quit his job --- Episo…

Joshua Stevens is the Lead Visualiser at NASA's Earth Observatory. Him & his team works on making satellite imagery more accessible to the general public by making visualisation of common imagery like Landsat or MODIS. --- Episode Sponsor: Geoawesomeness & UP42 EO Hub Geoawesomeness UP42 --- About Joshua: Twitter LinkedIn Website Shownotes FEMA NAS…

Steve Coast is the Founder of OpenStreetMap, one of the most successful open source projects; started in 2004 and now used everywhere from Apple's Maps, Mapbox and even Pokemon Go recently. Steve has worked at places like Microsoft, TomTom, Telenav & Digital Globe. We talk about the future of mapping and Tech in general as well as how Steve thinks …

Muthu Kumar & Aleksander Buczkowski are the Editor-In-Chief & Managing Editor (and creators) of the Geoawesomeness website, which has been running as an independent geospatial media for the past 11 years. More about Muthu & Aleks: Muthu's Twitter Muthu's LinkedIn Aleks's Twitter Alek's LinkedIn And of course find more on the Geoawesomeness website …

Kevin Pomfret is a Space and Spatial Corporate and Transaction Attorney at Williams Mullen and one of the references in terms of Law around spatial data & within the geospatial community more globally. --- Episode Sponsor: Element84 Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast --- About Kevin: - LinkedIn - Twitter - More about him Shownotes: - Geospatial…

Jeffrey Lewis is a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and one of the most influential people in the Open Source Intelligence Community. He is also the host of the "Arms Control Wonk" podcast. --- Episode Sponsor: Element84 Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast --- About Jeffrey: - Twitter - LinkedIn Shownote…

Jean Martin Bauer is the Country Director for the World Food Programme in Haiti, where his job is in simple terms to ensure the population does not run out of food. This conversation focuses on the use of data - specifically satellite imagery & maps - and how it helps feed the country. --- Episode Sponsor: Element84 Dan Pilone’s appearance on the p…

Indra Den Bakker is the CEO & Co-Founder of Overstory, a company providing vegetation information to electric utility companies about the state of (mostly) trees around power lines by using high resolution satellite imagery. This can lead to prevention of wildfires by finding hazardous vegetation before it falls on a line. --- Episode Sponsor: Elem…

Dr Catherine Nakalembe is an Associate Research Professor at University of Maryland and the Program Head of NASA Harvest Africa. We talk about some of her work on using satellite imagery for Food Security in her home country of Uganda & how she got into this field in the first place. --- Episode Sponsors: Element84 Dan Pilone’s appearance on the po…

Emily Darling & Kim Fisher both work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, respectively as the Director of Coral Reef & as Spatial Analyst. They have developed MERMAID, a platform enabling coral reef scientists to aggregate & share their data together. One of the main challenges they tackle being most measurements need to happen in the field as opp…

Arjen Vrielink is the Director & co-founder of Satelligence, dedicated to stopping deforestation by leveraging satellite imagery. They work directly with commodity companies who sell things like cacao or coffee to understand the causes of deforestation and how alternatives can be found. About Arjen: Twitter LinkedIn Satelligence --- Episode Sponsor…

Barbara Ryan was instrumental in the policy change in 2008 that opened up the Landsat data to being freely & openly available for anyone to access. This resulted in more than 100x uptake in the number of imagery downloaded and fundamentally changed the Earth Observation industry. She is currently the Executive Director of the World Geospatial Indus…