Minds Behind Maps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Cheetham is the founder of Azavea, founded all the way back in 2000 and Dan Pilone one of the founders of Element84, started in 2010. Recently Element84 acquired Azavea to expand from large scale computing to also analysis. I wanted to talk to Robert & Dan about why they went for an acquisition and why now, if both companies had both been around for so long. Both companies also have not tak...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kuo-Yu 'Slayer' Chuang is the co-founder of GeoThings, a Taiwanese company leveraging SMS to share GPS location, images & any useful information for disaster response. He was also on the board of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team; and has focused on applying mapping to supporting humanitarian endeavours mostly in Asia.  --- Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub Geoawesomeness UP42 --- Su...

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

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

As 2022 wraps up, I wanted to bring some of the most insightful moments from conversations over the past year: 12 clips from 12 conversations.  --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCage Use OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API. They have a generous Free trial you can sign up to! --- Timestamps:  00:00 Introduction  02:32 Steve Coast: The Next Thing that would Blow Up Openstreetmap  06:39 Barbara R...

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

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

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

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

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