Obsessed with compounding via publicly listed geospatial equities.
⛔️ this ep again mentions suicide.Covering all loose ends from my recollections about working at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. Finally got to a point where I can move on from #GISchat about Kuwait. Discussed: 0:00 - 3:24 - Emotional impact 3:24 - 3:42 - Agenda3:42 - 22:50 - Use of ChatGPT to interpret arterial blood gas (ABG) test results and fully understand the brutality of the context of the assistant electrician being fired. The system also tells us the consequences in general of H2S gas poisoning.22:50 - 32:56 - Use of ChatGPT to support whistleblowers more generally32:56 - 38:23 Questioning a safety item on p. 37 of the 2016 Amec Foster Wheeler Sustainability Performance Report (https://ungc-production.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/attachments/cop_2017/394131/original/AmecFW_Sustainability_Report_2016_lower_res.pdf?1497623860), 38:23 - 42:36 - Using ChatGPT to help on the North Korean workers angle, leading me to UN Resolution 2397 (http://main.un.org/securitycouncil/en/s/res/2397-%282017%29)42:36 - 50:00 - Use of ChatGPT to support whistleblowers more generally, this section also contains the system's useful summary of all that I have recounted.50:00 - 53:58 - What would be expected to happen _to someone left untreated_ who presented with the particular ABG test results this person had.53:58 - 58:56 - Justice regarding the NBTC Camp 4 building fire and respect for the dead.58:56 - 1:09:21 - Wood PLC compliance officer participation in the cover up and validity of an invitation from a colleague to do a secret investigation,1:09:21 - 1:14:54 - National Crime Agency, invitation to make a police report and plan to do so1:14:54 - 1:18:25 - International Labour Organisation and human trafficking charity (believe it may have been Unseen UK), engaging an investigative journalist1:18:25 - 1:27:41 - Financial Conduct Authority, the stock price since I began whistleblowing and risk for pensioners who depend on these firms being properly policed such that their collapse does not put people's retirement at risk. 1:27:41 - 1:28:50 - Short sellers.1:28:50 - 1:32:50 - Princess Bibi Nasser Al Sabah.1:32:50 - 1:37:32 - Emotional impact and concluding thoughts about responsibilities of the safety staff who made these reports to me.1:37:32 - The Map Maker's Border poem recital.
A final round exposing the evidence I collected during my time at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait about human rights, ethics and safety violations. This is in the service of disclosing how safety matters to do with manpower company NBTC Group were handled by Amec Foster Wheeler, superintendent's representative on Kuwait Oil Company projects. Why? In 2024 a fire in an NBTC worker accommodation facility killed 49 men. One safety breach was that a door to the roof was locked, stopping them escaping to safety. I provide this disclosure in order that the public may understand Amec Foster Wheeler did not do enough in 2017 to control the poor safety standards of this company. This was something they were required to do as superintendent's representative. If they had, the chance would have reduced of this building fire killing 49 men 7 years later.
Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.UK: 111 for the NHS.Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue.India: 9820466726 for Aasra.Continuing the testimony regarding my career in the worst country to be an expat, Kuwait. Until I joined Jacobs later on, I would also have contended it was at the worst place to be a consultant - Amec Foster Wheeler. The story of injustice whilst at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait continues.
Here we look at a missed opportunity to avoid the death of 49 people in an NBTC accommodation fire last year in Mangaf, Kuwait. The missed opportunity was in the firing of a worker in 2017 for calling an ambulance in response to an H2S gas poisoning at GC-30 in the North Kuwait Asset. Instead, he could have been listened to for stating that people are punished for speaking up about safety issues. NBTC, Amec Foster Wheeler, Petrofac and the Kuwait Oil Company could then have changed their safety practices. One is invited to wonder if the building fire killing 49 people 7 years later in 2024 would not have occurred if this change had occurred.We will have one more episode on Kuwait, then move on to Qatar and London, UK.
Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter: USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. UK: 111 for the NHS. Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue. India: 9820466726 for Aasra.Continuing the testimony regarding my career in the worst country to be an expat, Kuwait. Until I joined Jacobs later on, I would also have contended it was at the worst place to be a consultant - Amec Foster Wheeler. We went in to the weeds geospatially finally! Here is a link to the Mapillary track, showing the security workers at the first gate on the road to GC 31. This is AMEC's office at GC-31 - https://maps.app.goo.gl/mwe8FrhLCKyiY8318. This is the other gathering center they were working on in North Kuwait, GC-30: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GAsQJdn1yXNVB8Pu9. For the separate video I made years ago animating the safety and other violations mentioned at these sites: https://youtu.be/9Ko-vrcIgEk?si=-MvPPxkslS-WgWtZ. For the video uploaded years ago about my site visit to verify the circumstances of the fatal car accident at GC-31: https://youtu.be/Deg64MWKSsI?si=rKQUpyxBoDjUCjXo.For a speech I gave in 2019 summarizing all this stuff at Spatial Information Day in Adelaide, South Australia: https://youtu.be/q-xkK3tKlpk?si=AyJcviEJ7F0Xq3wP.
Caution - this episode contains some details of suicides that happened when I worked at Amec Foster Wheeler in Kuwait. If you need it, these are helplines you can call for the top 5 most popular countries for this newsletter:USA: 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.UK: 111 for the NHS.Canada: 988 for the Suicide Crisis Helpline.Australia: 1300 22 4636 for Beyond Blue.India: 9820466726 for Aasra.This is part 2 in a mini series about my career across Cambodia, Kuwait, Qatar and London. It contains reflections on my time in Kuwait working for Amec, Amec Foster Wheeler before it was purchased by Wood PLC in October 2017.I continue to use Nick Haslam's dehumanization continuum diagram as a tool to interpret what I saw. Here is the diagram again but against an animation of the bombs dropped on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam:https://youtu.be/wrIOj5zWzig
Reflections on doing geospatial in Cambodia. Prompted by Free The Map, a book about change in the way we do cartography. This is in the lead up to an episode with the author, Henk Van Houtum.Dehumanization: An Integrative Review: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6927454_Dehumanization_An_Integrative_ReviewEviction and relocation events 1982-2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: https://youtu.be/-7TEcs3lQFs?si=vL575_mAFsaENPjbKabul Falling, Episode 8, Still Falling: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4EvXclesyIwQGoL9xWHsNWUS Bombing of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This is an animation of 1.6+m bombing sorties over Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in the decade from 1965. It was an attack to stop communism: https://ndthl.carto.com/viz/3d0dbb10-a36e-11e5-91e4-0e5db1731f59/public_mapFree The Map: https://freethemap.org/Making Maps Without Borders, a travel blog I kept about my time in Cambodia: http://v2.travelark.org/travel-blog/gisnoborders/1Sahmakum Teang Tnaut: https://teangtnaut.org/en/
This episode relates to the just concluded Geo Week in Denver. I went yesterday after receiving free entry to the exhibition hall by the guest from today's podcast. Similar to the Iceye episode released during Geospatial Risk Summit 2 weeks ago, this episode is a way to get a feel for the things discussed at Geo Week and who attends.Hayden Howard is Executive Vice President atCompassData, Inc. We return to the theme of global base maps created by tech companies in this episode. It extends the last one of the topic withJordan Regenie. He mentioned CompassData as participating in the Microsoft campaign to create 3D cities and Streetside imagery for Bing Maps. Hayden was decent enough to come on and explain what they did. In their own words, they're a “Leader in providing Global Ground Control Points (GCP) Survey data for remotely sensed data by satellites and other GIS applications.”Hayden also told us a story about how epic these surveys can be - such as going around Australia.A great episode and high time we hit the surveying subindex on the pod.THE GEOSPATIAL INDEXThe Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment.NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICEBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.moneyLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindexWatchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.moneySpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Christian Rouffaert is founder and CEO of Teragence. This is a map driven web app showing mobile network signal strength. It enables such modern products as robotic lawn mowers. This is because they rely on mobile data to control and position the robot so it does not munch expensive, pretty flower beds. The conversation also covered the practice of entrepreneurship more broadly. For example, I believe he has given the most detailed answer so far about working backward from customer needs. Christian showed what it means to have a management consulting background in answering this question. The conversation was also useful for providing an outsider's perspective on what is interesting, and not so interesting, about geospatial. Here, Christian offered the perspective that what he and others are waiting for is a Tableau moment for geospatial. Tableau offered an intuitive, graphical interface for general data and information interrogation. Suddenly vastly more people had the power to derive insights where before that was the province of software developers. What will be the Tableau of geospatial? THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Leo Wang (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lwang1022/) is founder and CEO of Lucius (https://lucius.space/). This is a turnkey solution for satellite constellation operators or imagery resellers to take orders and distribute data. The conversation covered the following topics: 1:14 Introducing Lucius. 1:51 Content creation. 13:13 Imagery sales and marketplaces commentary. 27:13 Platform to store humanitarian satellite data. A key learning is that Lucius charges $USD25,000 a year for their satellite data ordering and distribution platform. Carrying on the point Kevin Bullock made in the episode about Development Seed (https://youtu.be/MOFS6il0Oj8?si=SkPv5abhwZPgQa79), a SpaceX launch costs nearly $USD70,000,000 (https://www.spacex.com/media/Capabilities&Services.pdf). Here he observed that if just 1% of the cost of those launches were spent on a platform to distribute the data during humanitarian disasters, that would make a strong impact. That is $USD700,000 for a SpaceX launch. Or 28 years to run Lucius. I should start a consulting career! Thanks Leo for contributing to the cause and the appetite for philosophical reflections on how the species uses the power of satellites. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
We are privileged to have Anke Sielker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anke-sielker-89690431) on to explain the business of Iceye and some of their unique offerings. They are a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation operator. They are also a charter partner of the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters (https://disasterscharter.org/membership-history). This has been discussed in the past few episodes in the context of the LA fires. The focus was on insurance because they are presenting at The Geospatial Risk Summit. This guest is also relevant due to heavy use of SAR to map building damage in the recent #LAfires that have been a theme of recent episodes. Additionally, it came up in the episode with SeerAI where Alex performed amplitude change detection analysis to detect surface disturbance on The Line in Neom, Saudi Arabia. As luck would have it, yesterday he informed me he extended the analysis coverage back to 2020 like I requested in the episode with him, check here:https://seerai.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=dda6a70dba2344a0afda174d6e5de6cfThe Geospatial Risk Summit is happening right now at Hard Rock Hotel, Manhattan. I confess I am distracted from a panel discussion posting this right now from the audience
For the month to 2025-01-27, a summary of: Growth of pureplay Geospatial Index and subindex breakdown. Growth of adjacent Geospatial Index. Growth of Geoawesomeness Top 100. Contribution analysis. Exposure analysis. Valuations. Job highlights by world region by Vikas: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7289542933962219520-PnZT/. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.moneyLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindexWatchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money
This continues discussion around effects of The International Charter Space and Major Disasters. This was mentioned 2 episodes ago by Andrew Schroeder of Direct Relief. Development Seed, via Kevin Bullock, continues this discussion. Kevin came up on LinkedIn shortly after the #LAfires. He catalogued all open spatial data released for example from satellite imagery providers . He provides extra detail on LinkedIn, along with several other experts in the comments. Kevin's point is that, if the industry was responding effectively to this charter, he would not have to spend a week curating this list of open data. Yes, it is 2025 and the best we've got is a Google Sheet someone volunteered their time to make. We have to ask what incentives are necessary to stop this happening again. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Jed Sundwall is Executive Director of Radiant Earth. This organization increases '...shared understanding of our world through community-led initiatives that make data easier to access and use.' This organization is motivated by our incapacity to address global issues such as accumulation of greenhouse gases and deforestation. They have identified poor collaboration and difficulty sharing data as causes. To foster easier collaboration and data sharing, we discuss a couple of Radiant Earth initiatives - Source Cooperative and Cloud Native Geospatial Forum. An example of results from the latter is CNG Virtual Conference 2024. Recordings here. Jed was an incredibly effective communicator. He also wins for having the best microphone of any guest so far. Thanks Jed for being up for this. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Andrew Schroeder is Vice President of Research and Analysis at Direct Relief. He talks about the #LAfire situation and Direct Relief's response. He goes on to cover the use of human mobility data for analysis, geospatial AI models for damage detection and health system impact analysis. It was a privilege to encounter an analyst of the world as it turns. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Priscilla Cole is the organizer of Geospatial Risk Summit. It is booked for the greatest location ever, Hard Rock Hotel in Manhattan. You can join the LinkedIn group for more info prior to the event. I am very pleased to say that one of the speakers, Will Cadell, has already come on the show. Another speaker is Ken Zockoll, CEO of Spatial Risk Systems. As it happens I've already had them on the show too, via their chief scientist Alex Vengerovsky. Then there are the tech workshops. Again I'm pleased to say I've already given you a flavor of what they'll say through having Frank Romo and Wherobots on. So I feel well prepared myself, at least, for attending on Jan 29-30th. Will be a great start to the year! If you're nearby NYC and want to chat, I recommend attending or sending me a message if you want to hang out. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.moneyLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindexWatchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money
Alex Wagner is a data scientist at SeerAI. This is a start up that has produced Geodesic, a spatiotemporal data fusion platform. The discussion was triggered by a video 12 days ago from popular YouTuber Johnny Harris, "Why Saudi Arabia is Building a $1 Trillion City in the Desert". Alex responded on LinkedIn with an animation of all evidence of construction activity at Neom since 2023. This was a perfect accompaniment to a conversation thread over the past two episodes with Valrie Grant and Jordan Regenie. Across these two episodes I have raised the issue of human rights abuses on Neom related to land ownership. The first time I did it was with Valrie, who is the deputy chair of a UN body - the private sector network of the UN's council of experts on global geospatial information management. Noting that Jordan has a law degree and that I am a new migrant to the US, I took the opportunity to discuss the first amendment with him in the context of whistle blowing about Neom. Both conversations were useful in building up a picture of how I am going to respond as a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) certification holder. I started by gaining the awareness of someone associated with the world's peak human rights body, the UN. I continued with understanding my rights regarding speech to do with this circumstance in the world's largest economy, the US. Now I am continuing the conversation here by looking at how geospatial analysis can assist in understanding the whole affair. It is good that this can occur in the context of what one of the most popular map related YouTubers recently had to say about the project. Overall it shows how dynamic insightful our industry is. This conversation highlights how we have a global bench of talent independently researching and responding to the world as it happens. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5.4% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For ~$400,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
LEGAL DISCLAIMER This episode contains commentary only on the first and fourth amendments of the US constitution. It is not legal advice. The guest is not an attorney. Do not use this episode to make decisions about what is right for you regarding these constitutional amendments. Jordan Regenie is the founder and principal consultant at Peace, Love, Freedom LLC. This is a strategy consultancy for "scaling the acquisition, processing, and production of high-quality geospatial data products" . I came across Jordan on LinkedIn through an article he wrote about working on Bing Maps. I immediately knew I had to request an episode to continue the story Stephanie May started telling about how the tech companies all made their own base maps over the past decade. He has a fantastic story to tell. We also leveraged his law background to answer some questions a new migrant to the US might have about the first and fourth amendments. This was prompted by another one of his articles, on fourth amendment implications for geospatial. Overall an incredibly fruitful conversation for me. This is because his response to my question about the first amendment involved mentioning Larry Lessig's 4 modalities of change. These are law, markets, norms and architecture. This was a really helpful framework to begin to tackle a hard problem where change is necessary. I really recommend listening to that part of the discussion. Jordan's patience, thoughtfulness and obvious taste for adventure made him a great guest and we are so very privileged to have had him on. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Interview with the deputy chair of the board, Valrie Grant. Through Mapping The Conversations, she is the most charismatic and professional podcaster of the geospatial industry. A couple of guests ago we had Nadine Alemeh on the show. She represents Taylor Geospatial Institute, but she is also on the board of the UNGGIM-PSN. I wanted to find out what this is, so I went to Valrie and she was nice enough to come on and explain it to us all. More here. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.money LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Atlas is the 11th web mapping system we have profiled. I am very pleased with this episode. The CTO and co-founder Harald was a succinct, eager and engaged interviewee who gave excellent answers to the standard set of business profiling questions. He had a particularly useful message for apprentices or graduates in our industry. I really encourage you to listen to the end and hear what he has to say. Here are some links to items mentioned. Note that I could not recall what GDAL stood for, it is geospatial data abstraction library. Harald mentioned Kyle Barron is a very worthy technical contributor to our field. S2 is a spherical projection with no compromises. Store an entire planet's data using a single dimension with centimeter accuracy. We got talking about how what holds the industry back is not web mapping systems but rather easy access to spatial data for non professionals. ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is an example from Esri. We know from listening to Stephanie May that Natural Earth is another: Another one is Overture Maps. Foursquare has also recently released its data. And that's it! Again, really cool episode, have a go on the platform, here is me adding a bunch of layers. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatial.moneyLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindexWatchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/Newsletter: www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Eldar Rubinov is Positioning and Geodesy Technical Lead at Frontier SI. This is a centre of excellence for spatial information in Melbourne, Australia (https://frontiersi.com.au). We had a great chat about a recent presentation he gave in Malaysia about use of an Australian/New Zealand SBAS for high accuracy positioning in Malaysia. He also tested Gallileo there. Even though both systems are not designed to offer high accuracy positioning in Malaysia, it could nevertheless be achieved with them. SBAS means satellite based augmentation system. It corrects a position from a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) like GPS or Galileo and broadcasts that from a geostationary satellite for a given area. A example is SouthPAN, covering Australia and New Zealand. In 2020 I arranged an Adelaide Mapup attended by Eldar. He gave us all instructions how to make our own receiver. I dutifully did so, here is the build log. We had a broader discussion about some of the technical details of these systems and how they can fail, such as spoofing and jamming. We then moved on to Eldar's comments on the Positioning, Navigation and Timing subindex of the Geospatial Index. It was good to have a review of my work by an expert. Finally, Eldar offered some reflections from his time at Fugro. I asked him for this given they are struggling in the market of late. Some links for those interested in topics discussed: Kuching location SouthPAN SBAS Galileo Galileo authenticated signals GPS PNT Subindex is found amongst this watchlist Listing of a few on LinkedIn Jammers (possibly illegal where you live) Landing in Queenstown, NZ Ramform Tita MyRTK THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Resources: Bluesky LinkedIn Watchlist Newsletter Podcast
Nadine Alameh is the best example I can find in the geospatial industry of the value of immigration to the US. We can understand through what she does now and how she got there. Nadine is the inaugural Executive Director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute. Prior to this, she was CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium. Rounding out the picture of her current service, she is on these committees/boards: 1. UN Geospatial Global Information Management - Private Sector Network 2. US National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) 3. LebNet The latter is a network to assist Lebanese Americans in tech. We started our discussion on Nadine's family connection to the country (more here). At the time of recording, Israel and Hezbollah were at war. Nadine gave a personal account of an earlier civil war in Lebanon that occurred when she was a child. She survived and went on to be an outstanding student at the American University of Beirut. She was rewarded with a scholarship to MIT, completing two masters degrees and a PhD there. She then embarked upon a glittering career leading organisations that produce and spread standards so we can all efficiently work together. We are in a period of upheaval in the US to do with immigration. As such, we are confronted with timely evidence of the value of international scholarship programmes and immigration to the United States. Nadine's career is a continuous string of achievements serving the nation. Let alone the broader impact she now has through the UN GGIM. Here are some links to things discussed: 1. WMS standard 2. Unreal Engine georeferencing 3. MapsGPT 4. Taylor Geospatial Engine 5. Ethics: Locus Charter 6. My T shirt: Conspiracy of Cartographers Neom: 1. NEOM Is The Parody Of The Future 2. Neom - The Line - The Rise and Fall of Saudi Arabia's Linear City. 3. Saudi Arabia's giant money pit: NEOM | If You're Listening THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
EXPRESS BROADCAST: COMMUNITY ORGANISING WITH FRANK ROMO OF ROMOGIS Frank Romo gives us a masterclass in community organising. He just so happens to have geospatial capability also. He provides several fantastic examples of geospatial outputs and acquisition of political power by communities that he has served. Frank is a hero. Frank provides pathways to prosperity for young men. Frank leverages the power of drones to make youngsters keen about what we do. He has had success all over the US and internationally such as in India. This is a whole new world for our profession. There is an emerging trend in consulting firms of social value. Thankfully. None however are as successful and heroic in their impact as RomoGIS. A key example is a New York community's latest gun violence dashboard. We are privileged. Thanks Frank. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Fathom is a flood modeling company based in Bristol, UK (www.fathom.global). They were recently acquired by reinsurance heavyweight Swiss RE. Hence they are a welcome addition to the list of publicly traded companies profiled on this podcast. Gavin Lewis, Head of Engineering, delivered an inspiring message about this scientific organisation. It is incredibly topical given the two dramatic hurricanes in the US last 2 months, Helene and Milton. Compounding the message here is the devastating flooding of Valencia in Spain 6 days ago (10/29/24). We are facing a barrage of messages from nature that the service Fathom provides will help us become resilient to a situation of our own making. We also have a follow on episode to the topics raised in our episode with Spatial Risk Systems (https://youtu.be/Ljfm0VNGyRU?si=RCtkWb-sfSQ8C0do). In the accompanying Substack post (https://www.geospatial.money/p/spatial-risk-systems) illustrates the consequences for insurance companies that do not properly size natural catastrophe risk. This makes it straightforward to understand why Swiss RE bought Fathom. It will be interesting to continue to observe the acquisition trend in this space amongst competitor insurance companies. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Elizabeth Christensen of Crunchy Data walks us through how to use open source tooling to avoid paying the Esri tax. It was a great tour of the options and also a nice vibe check of the industry. A headline here is she echoes former guest Stephanie May in endorsing DuckDB. She also wanted to pass on that a great way to find out more is to attend PostGIS Day! More here. On the topic of resources, Elizabeth has been very helpful and provided the following set of links: #PostgreSQL, open source relational database https://www.postgresql.org/ #PostGIS, open source GIS data store https://postgis.net/ # PostGIS Day 2024 https://www.crunchydata.com/community/events/postgis-day-2024 #Crunchy Data, Postgres and PostGIS services provider https://www.crunchydata.com/ # Open Source Geospatial Foundation https://www.osgeo.org/ #QGIS download, open source mapping https://www.qgis.org/ #Simple map SQL queries as QGIS layers https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/connecting-qgis-to-postgres-and-postgis #pg_tileserv - Tile server for PostGIS https://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_tileserv #pg_featureserv - API JSON server for PostGIS https://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_featureserv/ #OpenLayers project https://openlayers.org/ #OpenLayers + PgRouting + pg_tileserv + pg_featureserv sample code https://github.com/CrunchyData/pg_featureserv/tree/master/demo #PostGIS day videos https://www.youtube.com/@CrunchyDataPostgres#Crunchy Data's Postgres Playground https://www.crunchydata.com/developers/tutorials #Really cool open source GIS people to follow Paul Ramsey @ Crunchy Data / cleverelephant Regina Obe @ Paragon Ryan Lambert @ RustProofLabs Cliff Patterson @ Luna Geospatial Matt Forrest @ Whereabots #Elizabeth's crunchy blogs https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/author/elizabeth-christensen #Elizabeth's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-garrett-christensen/ #Elizabeth's Twitter https://twitter.com/sqlliz THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
The co-founder and CEO of Esper, Shoaib Iqbal, talks about the grit and grind required to launch Australia's first earth observation mission, a hyperspectral satellite. He and his co-founder Przemyslaw Lorenczak are on this year's Forbes Australia 30 under 30 list: https://www.forbes.com.au/30-under-30-2024-technology/. Like many start ups in the space, pardon the pun, they have met with their fair share of disaster. Despite their first launch 10 months ago failing, Shoaib comments that growth is nevertheless spectacular. They were enterprising enough to strike a deal with another hyperspectral company for the imagery they were going to sell from their first launch. There is similarity in what Esper does to Spottitt using imagery analytics to ultimately write to asset management databases from space. Esper allows resource exploration companies to, effectively, perform geotechnical analysis from space. Instead of drilling expensive boreholes, then analysing the soil for evidence of, for example, lithium, they break the light spectrum up into many bands and look for the spectral signature of this raw material. A nice point Shoaib makes here is this can reduce the environmental disturbance of a large drilling campaign. He also makes a compelling economic case - less than $5 per image tile vs hundreds of thousands per exploration borehole. On the topic of exploration, I also talked briefly about one of the small number of maps that I made over 10 years ago that appeared in an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange. This is when I worked at oil explorer Central Petroleum: An Asymmetrical Risk/Reward Equation, Asia – Australia Roadshow, 25 February 2013 – 7 March 2013 (https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CTP/01385300.pdf). More on the company: https://centralpetroleum.com.au/investors/. ABSOLUTELY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
There is a new crowdsourced mapping campaign underway in India, Indonesia and Nigeria - Proto. Founder and CEO Akshay Aditya takes the view that maps are content. Similar to social media accounts and blogs. This system is about making it just as easy and engaging to contribute. This is the coverage map, showing the majority of content is in India so far. Principally it appears to be driven by the need to send delivery drivers to front doors reliably. It relates to the variance in addressing systems across the globe covered in the OpenCage episode. If you download the app, you'll be presented with a detailed data entry form for a new address. There is also a requirement for 4 photos. This reflects how it can be easier to help a driver identify a delivery point simply by looking at pictures of a property. We also got into the incentive system Akshay has put in place to get the map populated and kept up to date. They appear to run regular mapathons, have a very active community on Whatsapp and pay people in cryptocurrency to map the world. Ultimately the system offers $USD500 per square kilometre to map it. But there are lots of qualifications on that. Have a listen to find out more. Thanks Akshay for taking the time and opening up this part of the world for us on the show. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Eric Love gives us a tour of his fantastic Australian census and real estate mapping tool. This helps me find the 3 best suburbs to buy a house in Adelaide, South Australia. A competitor system is https://heatmaps.com.au/. Following are the custom Mappage outputs from Eric for my housing utility index of maximizing public transport use and educational attainment whilst minimising price. Map: https://mappage.net.au/?s=gzxlwyh0. List: https://mappage.net.au/?s=7z8ipe1w. Scatterplot: https://mappage.net.au/?s=ny6tjksz. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
This is the second episode with Stephanie May. She talks about how the first world basemap was created for Facebook. We also spent some time covering how dark mode is produced for a map. Some discussion occurred about human factors and human/computer interface observations about the navigation display system offered by Tesla. This lead us to HD mapping and the pattern of coalitions forming between corporations that rely on this highly expensive form of spatial data. Examples include the various investors in Overture Maps Foundation (https://overturemaps.org/about/members/), Mapmaster (https://www.mapmaster.co.jp/en/company/), Here (https://www.here.com/about/investors) and Dynamic Map Platform (https://www.dynamic-maps.co.jp/en/company/overview/index.html). I have set up a HD Map subindex of The Geospatial Index to reflect this unique category of investment in our industry. Check the overall index here and scroll down to HD Map: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/. It contains 25 publicly traded companies. Continuing the overview of technology and resources used by cartographers in the context of setting up vector tile-based global basemaps, Stephanie also pointed us at Mapzen (https://www.mapzen.com/projects/) and their associated Tilezen (https://tilezen.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). In terms of data sources, Stephanie highlighted the utility of Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/). This is maintained by Nathaniel Kelso, a star of our industry, who now runs Kelso Cartography. Here is a profile of him in National Geographic (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/real-world-geography-nathaniel-kelso/). His career shown on LinkedIn is incredible: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielkelso/details/experience/. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYERNOT YOUR FIDUCIARYNOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.socialLinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindexWatchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
This is episode 1 of 4 with Stephanie May (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mizmay/). She is a veteran of the web mapping industry. She was Senior, Technical Cartographer at Apple. Next she was Lead Cartographer at Facebook creating their first global basemap. Her most recent position was Director of Geospatial at Stamen. As such we are faced with an excellent follow on guest from Linda Stevens (https://youtu.be/55urfsPH_ws?si=tDa9bQOluLwApKYj). This is because Linda described how Esri came to dominate the market through educating a global army of technicians accustomed to their software. One may describe them as having the career of 'Esri Technician' with various levels of seniority. This raises the question of what a career could look like if one did not become an Esri Technician. Stephanie May is the perfect person to illustrate that for us. Early on in our discussion we covered her viral kriging analysis of housing affordability in San Francisco. Here are some write ups from the time: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/most-expensive-neighborhoods-san-francisco_n_2967522 https://burritojustice.com/2013/03/20/rent-from-on-high/ https://goldengatexpress.org/43942/latest/news/interactive-heat-map/ https://stamen.com/stephanie-may-interdisciplinary-cartography/ She also recreated a web version of the map just for this episode in the past week: https://mizmay.github.io/RentAffordability/RentAffordability_2013_EBK.html Further on in the discussion we started to talk about the technology behind web maps. She recommended understanding these concepts to make good ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Buffers https://geoparquet.org/ https://docs.mapbox.com/help/glossary/mbtiles/ https://docs.protomaps.com/pmtiles/ The discussion turned to navigation (pardon the pun) toward the end when talking about her time at Apple Maps. Here is my journal publication on wayfinding that I mentioned: https://josis.org/index.php/josis/article/view/21 Also during our coverage of navigation aids Stephanie mentioned an NYT op-ed about flaws in Google Maps: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/opinion/google-maps-driving-apps-flaws.html Interestingly, I came across discussion from them also about the need for landmarks in route directions: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/science/giving-directions-start-with-a-landmark.html. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Ed Freyfogle, cofounder of OpenCage, tells us all about geocoding with open data. More: https://opencagedata.com/. He is also the convener of Geomob and hosts a podcast of the same name. The next event is Sept 18th, 2024 in London (https://thegeomob.com/post/sept-18th-2024-geomoblon-details). THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Linda Stevens joins us for a third time to talk about her experience as a woman leader in geospatial. We also cover how to be an effective team leader for women in this field, although these observations are applicable everywhere. This completes our first encounter with her, after discussing marketing (https://youtu.be/55urfsPH_ws) and vision (https://youtu.be/Pg2wo5kQ3pQ) in prior episodes. She is the founder of the Spatial Spirits consultancy, check it out here: https://spatialspirits.com/. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
This is an overview of geospatial in Kazakhstan with Ainur Rychshanova. We begin with some geography about the country, traditional tea and dress. Ainur then tells us about the country's space agency where she worked as an earth observation analyst. Her enthusiasm for space is clear, she has even witnessed a SpaceX launch at Cape Canaveral and shared videos to prove it! We were then very privileged to hear her efforts with 4 other women to organise GIS Day Kazakhstan last year. It was attended by 300 people. They are planning another in November this year. Ainur is the definition of an over achiever. It was a privilege to hear from her how to demonstrate true motivation in one's career. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: www.geospatial.money Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Chris Robson, CEO of Wyvern, tells us about the world's highest spatial resolution commercially available hyperspectral imaging data from low earth orbit. This is 5.3m resolution, 23 band earth observation solution can detect chemicals from space. We talked about examples like distinguishing fake from real grass and looking for weeds. The latter matters in the case of environmental rehabilitation at sites like abandoned well pads. If there is a government regulation to restore natural species but the oil company let weeds grow over instead, this can be detected from space using Wyvern. This is because hyperspectral imagery enables the detection of different plant species. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bella-mironova-64b01a222/ maintains the Russian speaking GIS and Peace Telegram channel: https://t.me/GIS_PEACE. Join us for a discussion on why she created it and other observations about studying and teaching geospatial. She also talks about transit access analyses in Moscow. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Today I am introducing the Indoor Subindex Monthly News Digest. Recently I had the pleasure of doing an episode on The Geospatial Index with Alex, the CEO of Navigine. Navigine and I have decided to collaborate on a news digest about the industry. Each month, we'll publish a video covering the most interesting customer needs, innovations and news from the Indoor subindex. See this playlist to keep track. Navigine specializes in providing indoor navigation and asset tracking solutions for a variety of industrial applications. These include manufacturing, logistics, retail, healthcare, and many others. For examples of what they do along with other subindex participants, see this first news digest video. You can also check out their open source Indoor Routing Library SDK. You may be interested in the slides or spreadsheet shown in the video. Needless to say, please provide corrections or additions to this subindex in the comments. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/
Linda Stevens is founder of the consultancy Spatial Spirits (https://spatialspirits.com/). She is also a veteran of Esri, where she was Chief Marketing Officer and its first female board member. This is the second episode of a multipart series examining the leadership that she brings to geospatial. This episode is about her observation that the vision for geospatial has become stagnant. In her own words, "somebody smart has to build the next thing that's going to be truly integrative'. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Linda Stevens is founder of the consultancy Spatial Spirits (https://spatialspirits.com/). She is also a veteran of Esri, where she was Chief Marketing Officer and its first female board member. This is the beginning of a multipart series examining the leadership that she brings to geospatial. We begin by working through her marketing playbook. The reason is that in an earlier podcast appearance on Pathfinders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uozN-maB1Q) she mentioned that Esri dominates the field not due to technology but marketing. Evidently then this is, at the very least, not something to ignore in planning dominance of geospatial. Points discussed: Education to create an industry to sell into. Personalities/heroes - credibility/proof point from an opinion leader. Celebrate users. Product management - herd the developers in the direction of customer needs. Take it industry by industry. Messaging - be ahead of sales. There is a dance between Leadership, Development and Marketing so as to create a space for Sales to do their work closing deals and bringing intelligence back from the field. Voices for customers, potential customers, markets they want to grow into that don't know they need you yet. Branding includes dressing the part. Linda differentiates sales from marketing by characterising the former thusly: "Sales has the difficult job of understanding a user's needs, crafting the right solution, bringing all the players together, and winning the business. Then they have to negotiate the details and get the money. Great salespeople love the dance and customer success." (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7217604047732703232?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7217604047732703232%2C7217617375506878464%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287217617375506878464%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7217604047732703232%29) THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~5% annually (after inflation and after adjusting for base rates). This rate varies significantly, however, by sub index. For $480,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Will Lyon, Developer Relations Engineer at Wherobots, talks about nothing less than producing a digital mind and memory for humanity. It was a very exciting conversation, finally we are into the visionary potential of our industry. Will was an endlessly patient and kind guest. For example, he did some jargon busting at the start to help those of us unfamiliar with planet scale anlytics to understand key concepts for storage and processing at scale. Thank you Will for taking the time to show us all how to deliver on a computing system that will assist our species to live the role of planetary steward. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Today we are making nature great again with Rob Waterworth, Co-Founder & Chief Science and Innovation Officer at FLINTpro. The company enables managing and reporting emissions and nature risks across a portfolio. Clients may understand the Scope 1 and 3 emissions liability, deforestation risk, and biodiversity impact of their portfolio and future investment opportunities. The company also assists to navigate evolving disclosure requirements and generate audit-ready reports. Additionally, they help identify emissions reduction and value creation opportunities to reach a client's climate commitments. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Apratim Biswas, PhD, talks about the real estate geoanalytics rap scene in Tampa, Florida. Website: https://www.realtydynamics.ai/ App: https://www.realtydynamics.app LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apratim-biswas-phd/ THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Andy Coote, director of ConsultingWhere, gives a masterclass on the nature of the UK geospatial industry. His comments on the industry more broadly were a sign of an astute observer with vast experience. We are extraordinarily lucky he spent the time. You can find them here: https://consultingwhere.com/. Phone: +44 (0) 1923 291000. Email: info@consultingwhere.com. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Can Duruk is co-founder and CTO of Felt. Join us as we talk through its new spatial analysis capabilities and the general investment case. He joins a growing roster of web map platform entrepreneurs that have come on the show. Earlier guests in the same niche were: Pablo, founder of bettermaps.ai (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTw6OS9BLo) Chris, founder of mapstack.io (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE53fX50N_k) Melinda, CEO of proxi.co/mapsgpt.com (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3n8X63zD5Y) Alex, CEO of GISCarta (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DponKtoCVoM) Can mentioned a viral Felt map: https://twitter.com/elizalian/status/1557161116962131969. More at www.felt.com, they're also on www.reddit.com/r/feltTHE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Alex tells us about his new AI agent, Aino. It is a natural language interface for geospatial analysis with an initial focus on urban planning but he describes reaching other markets as well. Find out more at https://aino.world. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
The UK government has finally caught onto the significance of avoiding death by maintaining the systems of our space ship. Namely, a couple of months ago it became law to cause a 10% gain in biodiversity for any development of 10+ buildings. A month ago this became law for smaller developments also. End of November next year, large developments of national significance will be held to the same standard. As such, a niche for biodiversity net gain measurement has emerged. A company called Map Impact (https://www.mapimpact.io/) is seeking to dominate it. They have started by introducing a tool called Biodiversity View. This measures biodiversity units at your development site. The company is gaining some traction, for example they recently featured on BBC Breakfast. It was a pleasure to take their media coverage to the next level by featuring Nina Moiseeva (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-gis/), Senior Earth Observation Scientist, on the podcast. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. This varies significantly, however, by sub index. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/geospatialindex Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Aya Data (http://ayadata.ai/) is amongst other things an AI geospatial services firm based in Ghana, west Africa. Anthony Iphy, Account Executive, talks about their contributions to digital transformation of farming in the region. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/wilfred-waters-902b16217 Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Xan Fredericks, GISP is National Map Liaison for Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. She works in the USGS National Geospatial Program (NGP). You can find out about the NGP User Engagement Office here (https://www.usgs.gov/ngp-user-engagement-office). Furthermore, Xan has her own profile at the USGS here (https://www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/xan-fredericks). Enjoy the impressive list of her publications. The US Geological Survey (USGS) is '...the science arm of the Department of the Interior, [bringing] an array of earth, water, biological, and mapping data and expertise to bear in support of decision-making on environmental, resource, and public safety issues.' (https://www.usgs.gov/about/about-us/who-we-are). Inspired by the caliber of staff at this organisation and impressive outputs such as the National Map, I had a discussion with Xan about culture. I wanted to know how the USGS builds up a workplace where people are prepared to fully commit. Xan delivered with some wonderful messages and I really recommend a listen. Toward the end I also used the topic of high speed rail mapping as a way to dig into some of the datasets they maintain. Thanks once again to Xan for a wonderful conversation. In taking the time to talk to us, she shows what it is to fully live the role of a National Map Liaison. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/wilfred-waters-902b16217 Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
In 2023 Fitch Ratings observed "Natural catastrophe business has become largely loss-making in recent years as prices have failed to keep pace with increasingly frequent, severe and volatile weather-related losses due to climate change." Let's look at what this means for an insurer named Markel. Their 2020 annual report contains the frank remark: "First, we've significantly reduced writing insurance and reinsurance with exposures to natural catastrophes... We've not earned adequate returns for the risk and capital charges associated with large property related exposures for several years. We will redeploy the capital previously allocated to this business to higher and better uses within Markel." Let's now look at how entrepreneurs are responding. Spatial Risk Systems (https://spatialrisksystems.com/) is a Manhattan spatial finance company. It is run by some of the finance industry's most experienced professionals. An example is Alex Vengerovsky, the chief scientist in this episode. He has worked at Bridgewater for example. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, is one of the world's most successful investors. SRS has developed a geographic information system for the finance industry that scores US counties, zip codes and census tracts on 4 risk dimensions. These are climate impact, environmental risk, community vulnerability and community resilience. These are also aggregated as an overall risk score. This system can then be used to rate the spatial risk of a given asset, such as by using the footprint of a building. Consider a publicly traded electricity company. The building footprints of their power plants will be available. They can be used to sample the risk scores at the building locations on these 4 dimensions provided by SRS. Through this, a clearer understanding for investors and insurers can be gained of the risks faced by each power plant in recovering from, for example, an adverse weather event. Depending on the risk score, the event impact may be increased or reduced. This may be considered from the perspective of "cost, toll, and duration of an event and affect the overall risk to a community or asset" (https://spatialrisksystems.com/spatial-risk-score-methodologies/). Considering the community vulnerability dimension, if the asset is in a location where this is high then there may be significant challenges in restoring original function after a disaster. The opposite is likely to be true where community vulnerability is low. Let us return to the Markel example at the beginning. Perhaps the geospatial analytics of Spatial Risk Systems can help Markel re-enter the natural catastrophe market through better capacity to gauge risk. For more detail, here are some really informative videos on YouTube about what SRS does: https://youtube.com/@spatialrisksystems8197?si=3OSBG5eWUAE3eyQi THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/wilfred-waters-902b16217 Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Alex Korolev is CEO of GIScarta (https://giscarta.com/). It is a web mapping platform that can be used to make beautiful maps. We talk about its functionality whilst hearing many extra details about the industry in Russia. He's also Russia's most popular GIS education YouTuber: https://youtube.com/@gis?si=vKUuT9Q0kIb77ewQ It was great to hear how he's used his success there as a funnel for business and recruiting. THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/wilfred-waters-902b16217 Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Sarah Bell talks us through her terrific hillshade tutorial: https://www.sarahbellmaps.com/drawing-color-hillshade-a-tutorial-with-time-lapse-videos/ https://www.sarahbellmaps.com/drawing-hillshade-by-hand-with-pencils-a-tutorial-with-time-lapse-videos/ I take the opportunity to reflect on my sad highly technical mapping career where there has been no art, at all. Then we talk about using beautiful maps to boost social change, like a nationwide high speed rail network for America. LET'S DO IT! Links to some resources, discussed: Cartography at Penn: https://geographics.psu.edu/ North American Cartographic Information Society, NACIS: https://nacis.org/ Alan McConchie, Lead Cartographer, Stamen: https://stamen.com/people/alan-mcconchie/ THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
Jami Dennis, principal of Geodetic Analysis LLC, talks us through the GISP, networking to assist finding a job in the US and how to start a business. Some links relating to topics discussed: Geodetic Analysis: https://geodetic.xyz/ National States Geographic Information Council: https://nsgic.org/ The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA): https://urisa.org/ The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI): https://www.gisci.org/ Attorneys for Small Business: https://www.l4sb.com/ The Small Business Administration: https://www.sba.gov/ What is a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS)? https://www.eda.gov/resources/comprehensive-economic-development-strategy THE GEOSPATIAL INDEX The Geospatial Index is a comprehensive listing of all publicly traded geospatial businesses worldwide. Why? The industry is growing at ~10% annually. For only $58,000 to start, this growth rate is $5,000,000 over a working life. This channel, Bluesky account, newsletter, watchlist and podcast express the view that you are serious about geospatial if you take the view of an investor, venture capitalist or entrepreneur. You are expected to do your own research. This is not a replacement for that. This is not investment advice. Consider it entertainment. NOT THE OPINION OF MY EMPLOYER NOT YOUR FIDUCIARY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/geospatialindex.bsky.social Watchlist: https://www.tradingview.com/watchlists/123254792/ Newsletter: https://www.geospatial.money/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5gpQUsaWxEBpYCnypEdHFC
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