Marc Prioleau: The Overture Maps Foundation: Do We Need a New Open Mapping Project? - MBM#43

Minds Behind Maps

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 something new? Marc has some answers to that question, and it isn't his first time thinking about the future of mapping

Support the podcast on Patreon

---
Episode Sponsor: OpenCage
Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API.
They have a generous Free trial you can sign up to!
---

About Marc

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Overture Maps Foundation

Shownotes

Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.

• Overture Maps Foundation
• Segment Anything
• segment-geospatial
• Tackle the monkey first
• Books & Podcast recommendations
  • Never lost again by Bill Kilday (Affiliate Link)
  • The Good Fight podcast

Timestamps

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:42) - Sponsorship: OpenCage

(03:22) - Conversation begins

(06:10) - From Chemical Engineering to Mapping

(09:00) - Early Days of GPS: Innovating despite Limitations

(11:02) - Having a Long Term Vision

(13:12) - Science Fiction as a Tool to Imagine the Future

(14:07) - Defining the Overture Maps Foundation

(17:56) - But OpenStreetMap already Exists, why make something new?

(22:54) - Artist vs Merchant Analogy

(27:23) - Companies already are involved in OSM

(30:38) - Users don't care how their map was made

(33:05) - The face of updates keeps increasing

(35:22) - 10 years ago you'd be lucky to have an Estimated Time of Arrival

(40:06) - Overture's value: Data or Tools?

(44:32) - New tools: Example of Segment Anything

(46:35) - Why a Foundation rather than a For Profit?

(51:28) - Open means wider adoption

(51:28) - Open means wider adoption

(55:07) - Google & Apple aren't a part of Overture

(59:22) - There are precedents to map "domination"

(01:03:18) - Making Decisions as a Foundation

(01:10:45) - How many people work at the foundation

(01:13:11) - Engineering contributors

(01:14:16) - Hiring engineers within the foundation?

(01:17:34) - Copyright & Licensing

(01:21:30) - Commonalities with Earth Observation & Satellite Images

(01:28:20) - Books/podcasts

(01:32:36) - Back to Science Fiction & Making Predictions

(01:33:23) - Bonus question: Do you ever think about how far we've come?

- Support the podcast on Patreon
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work