Explore the impact of open source on academia and its transformation over time as Royal, General Manager of Digital Media and Games at the Linux Foundation, speaks to Stephen Jacobs, professor at RIT’s School of Interactive Games & Media and head of Open@RIT. Stephen recounts his longtime involvement in open source, sparked by a program to develop …

In this podcast episode, Royal O’Brien, General Manager of Digital Media and Games at the Linux Foundation, discusses gaming across AR, VR, and XR interfaces with Sidharth Moudgil from AWS. Sid is a Senior Graphics Engineer and has extensive experience in rendering for games. They discuss the complexity of graphics programming, challenges of render…

Today, I am speaking with Chiara Solimini, Space Downstream Market Officer at EUSPA, the agency that manages the space programme of the European Union. In this episode, we discuss what EUSPA is and its activities, the role of EUSPA in promoting the use of data from the Copernicus programme, the European Green Deal and how Copernicus enables its imp…

Today, I am speaking with Rhiannan Price, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at DevGlobal. DevGlobal is a consultancy that works in the development sector on impact projects with the world’s leading non-profits, companies, philanthropies, multilateral agencies, and government agencies. Rhiannan has been working in Earth observation for a while, es…

Today, I am speaking with Thijs van Leeuwen, Director of Product at Planet. Most of you should be aware of Planet, the company that operates the largest fleet of earth imaging satellites. A couple of years ago, Planet acquired VanderSat, a Dutch startup offering data products like soil moisture derived from various sources of satellite data. Today,…

Today, we are zooming out from Earth observation a little bit and going to focus on a subject that I think is very important for the future of EO: space sustainability. We are launching more Earth observation satellites than ever before, and the progress in space tech has meant that any individual, organisation or country can put up an instrument i…

Today, I am speaking with Dr Claire Burke, who is the Director of Science at Climate X, a UK-based startup that is building a global climate risk analytics platform to support organisations in their climate adaptation efforts. In this episode, we talk about what Climate X does, their tech stack and how they use satellite data, how they convert scie…

Today, I have two guests from Asterra, the Israeli startup offering a satellite-based solution for monitoring all kinds of infrastructure, whether it is for monitoring roads, rails, dams, water utilities and even for mining. While Asterra uses analytics derived from synthetic aperture radar (or SAR) imagery in their products, they use a specific ty…

Today, I am excited to bring you an episode on a topic that I have been researching for a while - satellite imagery in 3D. The guest I am speaking with is Josh Winer who is a Senior Director for Global Sales at Maxar Technologies. Maxar probably needs no introduction as a company, I think most of you know what Maxar does both within the Earth obser…

Today, I have two guests: Dan Pilone, co-founder of Element84 and Robert Cheetham, founder of Azavea, which Element84 recently acquired. Both Element84 and Azavea are essentially service companies that focus on building solutions to solve important problems in the realm of processing, visualization, and analysis of geospatial data, with open-source…

Today, I am speaking with Pooja Mahapatra, who is the Global Lead of Geospatial for Climate at Fugro, a Netherlands-based company focused on geotechnical and surveying services for monitoring infrastructure. As you will hear from Pooja, geospatial data is central to Fugro's strategy and one of the fundamental technologies that power their products …

Today, I am speaking with Dr Benjamin Laken, who is the Chief Science Officer at Cervest, a UK-based startup building a climate intelligence platform to support climate adaptation efforts for enterprises, governments and non-profits. Climate risk is an important topic and satellite data has a lot to offer for estimating it. Whether it is the climat…

Today, I am speaking with Grega Milčinski, CEO of Sinergise, a geospatial IT company based in Slovenia. Sinergise is most well-known for their flagship product, Sentinel Hub, which is a platform for accessing, processing and analysing Earth observation data. Grega has been around in the EO sector for a while now and has a ton of insight into the mo…

Today, I am speaking with Professor Paul Bates, Chairman and Co-founder of Fathom, a UK-based startup specialising in water risk intelligence. We have already had one episode on floods recently with Floodbase, a company that is working on creating near real-time flood maps, but in this episode with Paul, we discuss how flood risk is measured and mo…

Today, I am speaking with Sean Mitchell, Chairman & Chief Commercial Officer at Ubotica, an AI-driven edge computing startup from Ireland. Edge computing is a technology that has started to create a lot of buzz in the Earth observation sector. Enabling some processing of satellite data on-board the satellite before downlinking seems efficient, but …

Diversity and inclusion haven’t been the hallmarks of the gaming industry. But that’s changing thanks to advocates like Sheri Graner Ray and open source technologies that allow anyone to develop and showcase their skills. In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) Executive Director Royal O’Brien chats with Sheri – a…

Today, I am speaking with Brad Bode, CTO & CIO at ATLAS Space Operations, which is a ground software as a service company. Ground segment is an area of the space industry which really doesn't get a lot attention, despite the fact that it is the bridge between data acquired in space and data collected on Earth. So, I had Brad on the podcast to discu…

Today, I have two guests Bessie Schwarz, co-founder & CEO and Subit Chakrabarti, VP of Technology at Floodbase. Floodbase, which used to be called Cloud to Street, before their rebrand recently, is a climate-tech startup using satellite imagery to build flood data products for use by the insurance sector. In this episode, Bessie, Subit and I discus…

The applications for open source 3D technologies extend well beyond gaming realms. In fact, Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is increasingly being used to develop and validate the next generation of robots – those that will help us explore new worlds and assist with countless tasks here on Earth. In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Open 3D Founda…

Today, I am sharing an insightful discussion I had with Elly Perets, CEO of Asterra. Asterra is a startup headquartered in Israel, that offers a platform for monitoring all kinds of infrastructure, whether it is for monitoring roads, rails, dams, water utilities or even for mining - based on synthetic aperture radar (or SAR) data. SAR, as some of y…

We have got an interesting episode today, I know I say that for most episodes, but this one is actually quite interesting because we are talking about a strategy that not many companies have pursued in Earth observation - starting as a product company and offering solutions based on EO data, then deciding to go up the value chain and launch proprie…

This week, I am sharing an episode from the New Space India podcast where I was invited to talk about all things Earth observation, particularly focusing on India. The New Space India podcast is hosted by Narayan Prasad, the co-founder and COO of satsearch and is the go-to podcast to learn about space tech in India. I thought I will share this epis…

Jed is the Executive Director of the Radiant Earth Foundation and used be the Open Data Lead at Amazon Web Services. Jed is an influential thinker in the Earth observation space and he has been part of a number of important milestones in this sector. I wanted to have Jed on the podcast to talk about his thoughts on the future of Earth observation, …

Today I am speaking with with Bill Perkins, Founder of SkyFi and Luke Fischer, CEO of SkyFi. SkyFi, which just recently went live with their product, aims to democratise satellite imagery and make it affordable, accessible and usable for everyone. I recommend checking out their app, which looks pretty cool. In this episode, we talk about the foundi…

Amazing interactive 3D content can spring to life across all 3D engines—and in time, the Metaverse—with open source tools that creators are accustomed to using. Integration and shared standards for interoperability across real-time 3D engines bring freedom and flexibility to those creators. Collaborative communities such as the Open 3D Foundation f…

Happy new year, everyone. Hope you are having a great start to the year. Back to podcasting after the much-needed break! Today, I am speaking with Dr. Argyro Kavvada, who is the program manager at NASA’s Earth Sciences Division for their Sustainable Development Goals initiative, essentially focusing on how to translate Earth observation for sustain…

In response to the explosive growth of the content creator community and their desire to create new experiences and bring novel worlds to life, a complexity of tools has emerged. In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Austin Robison, Head of Product for Game Engine and Developer Services at Amazon Web Services, and Open 3D Foundation Exec…

Today, I am speaking with Mila Luleva from Rabobank, a multinational banking and financial services company, where Mila heads the remote sensing team. You might wonder what a bank is doing with Earth observation data and how they are going about integrating this technology into their processes. That's exactly why I wanted to have Mila on the podcas…

Today, I am speaking with Awais Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Pixxel, a space tech startup founded in India, with offices in the US, that is launching a constellation of Earth observation satellites collecting hyperspectral imagery. I have tracked Pixxel with two lenses over the years - one with my consultant hat analysing how this new startup will …

C++ is the underlying language driving projects in nearly every industry. It can be found in medical devices, oil exploration, financial, gaming, big machine equipment, safety devices, you name it, C++ is a part of it. Until the last few years, there have been very few options that deliver the performance of C++, and it continues to evolve. In this…

In this episode, I am speaking with Sean Wiid, CEO of UP42, an Earth observation company providing simplified access to geospatial data and processing. UP42 has had quite an interesting journey over the years. I would put in the category of platforms in the rapidly growing EO market, providing access to multiple sources of geospatial data from diff…

In this episode, I am speaking with Arnaud Guérin from Preligens, startup based in France that is building software for the defence & intelligence sector, by applying artificial intelligence to satellite imagery, among other data sources. Preligens was in the news recently as they won a 7-year long, 240M EUR contract from the Ministere des Armees, …

In many ways, the seedlings of today’s eye-popping 3D visual effects were planted a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. From its formation in 1975 to fulfill George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars to its wildly successful spinoff, Pixar Animation Studios, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has been at the forefront of digital creation and innovation f…

In this episode, I am speaking with Arjen Vrielink from Satelligence. Satelligence is a startup based in the Netherlands that is building solutions to monitor deforestation, track supply chains and carbon stocks using Earth observation data. Arjen has been a twitter friend for a while and I really like his pragmatic takes on the future of the indus…

Welcome to episode #50. This is a special one and it is been in the making for a while! Today, I am speaking with Simonetta Cheli, the Director of Earth Observation Programmes at the European Space Agency (or ESA). November is an important month for ESA as the Ministerial Council is coming up shortly, scheduled on the 22nd and 23rd of November 2022…

In this episode, I speak with Paul Counet, Head of Strategy and International Relations at EUMETSAT. EUMETSAT (or) The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation with 30 Member States in Europe, with an objective to establish, maintain and exploit European systems of operational mete…

Today, I have two guests on the podcast - Pierrick Poulenas, co-founder and CEO of Picterra along with Pascal van Dalen, the Chief Growth Officer. Picterra is an Earth observation startup based in Switzerland, providing a platform to train, deploy, and manage geospatial models at scale. Picterra sits at what I call the "Distribution" layer of Earth…

Most listeners know that Huawei isn’t just a mobile phone company. But many might not realize that it runs a global network of research institutes that are working on optimizing engine development. Tobias Alexander Franke, principal game engine architect at Huawei, talks with Royal about why the company prefers working with open source 3D engines o…

Today, I am speaking with James Slifierz, from SkyWatch. For those who don't know, SkyWatch is a Canadian startup that aims to remove the barriers to accessing commercial satellite imagery, through two offerings - one called EarthCache that is a one-stop shop to acquire commercial satellite data and the other called TerraStream that provides an ide…

“Do more work out in the open” is the #1 piece of advice Shehzan Mohammed has for his students, as director of 3D Engineering and Ecosystems at Cesium and GPU Programming lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. With an academic focus and a vision for the future of 3D modeling, Shehzan shares his views with Royal about the benefits of working in…

Today, I am speaking with Yana Gevorgyan, the Secretariat Director of the Group on Earth Observations (or GEO). GEO is a unique global network connecting government institutions, academic and research institutions, data providers, businesses, engineers, scientists and experts to create innovative solutions based on Earth observation. I wanted to ha…

Today, I am speaking with Nadine Alameh, the CEO of Open Geospatial Consortium, an international organisation dedicated to making geospatial data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) through consensus-based standards, collaborative innovation projects, and industry partnerships. I wanted to have Nadine on the podcast to speak abo…

The Open 3D Engine (O3DE) has its roots in Lumberyard. Terry Michaels, head of engineering for the Game Engine and Developer Services team at Amazon Web Services (AWS), talks with Royal about the relationship between the two, dispelling a few myths along the way. Encouraging broader contributions enables the modularity that makes the engine relevan…

Today, I am speaking with Abe Tarapani, CEO of Atlas AI. I wanted to feature Atlas AI as “Startup of the Month” on the podcast as I believe they are doing something very important and impactful with satellite data. I will let you listen to Abe explaining what Atlas AI does, but to give you an idea, they are attempting to fill the gaps in socioecono…

Today, I am speaking with Jonny Dyer, co-founder and CEO of Muon Space. Muon Space is a recently-founded startup based in California that is developing an Earth observation satellite platform that would bring remote sensing capability to organisations that lack the expertise needed to develop it themselves. Jonny Dyer is well-known in the Earth obs…

Today, I am speaking with Prof. Chris Rapley from University College London. From working on Earth observations missions to study the polar regions with radar altimetry instruments to actually researching there as the director of British Antarctic Survey, Prof Chris Rapley is an accomplished scientist. He was also the Director of the Science Museum…

Today, I am speaking with Daniel Wicks, head of geospatial intelligence at Satellite Applications Catapult in the UK. Satellite Applications Catapult is an entity set up by the UK, and is one of nine Catapults, aimed at building innovation and driving economic growth. I was interested to speak with Dan because I believe the organisation is doing im…

Housekeeping: This is the first episode after the break, after officially launching my business TerraWatch Space. As I mentioned in the blog post, I am going to be changing the format of the podcast a little. The "Startup of the Month" is where I will have an interesting startup in Earth observation on the podcast to give them a platform for highli…

Looking back at the journey of TerraWatch Space podcast and its future - some gratitude, some learnings & some thoughts on how I want to see the podcast grow, as I go full-time on TerraWatch Space with the goal of making satellite data mainstream. Usual episodes should start on Wednesday. Thank you! -Aravind…

Today, I am speaking with Thomas Ormston, Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager for the Sentinel-1 mission at the European Space Agency. Thomas has over 15 years of experience in spacecraft operations from being part of the operations team for the Mars Express mission to then becoming the spacecraft operations engineer for EarthCARE and Sentinel-1 m…