Locate Podcast

In a world with an increasing rate of technological advancement around location technologies along with automation and machine learning, the spatial industry is moving ahead in leaps and bounds. We already see how spatial underpins every other industry on earth and is no longer special. So the question is - how do we navigate these new waters confidently and retain our place as custodians of quality location data without better telling our story?

Adam Ferrier is one of Australia's leading consumer psychologists, a brand strategist and an authority on behavioural economics – and we are excited to welcome him to Locate21. As geospatial professionals, custodians of all things related to the creation and management of location data, we are used to thinking in very logical ways. Understanding how everyday people make decisions - people who make up our current clients and the future client base we are seeking to engage with - can pose huge business benefits to us, not only financially but in terms of business development and employee satisfaction. While historically, we have been great at telling our story to ourselves, it takes another way of thinking to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are not from or within our industry, and this is one that we may sometimes find challenging to grasp. With his many years of experience in solving this sort of challenge, Adam provides sage guidance around broadening our ways of thinking about the story we tell about ‘geospatial’ when we approach new and diverse clients as we innovate, and how we can expand our ways of doing business to collaborate.

Join us next time as we speak with Graeme Newton, CEO of Cross River Rail, Queensland’s top priority infrastructure project: creating Brisbane’s first underground rail line. Cross River Rail will unlock a bottleneck at the core of the city transport network and provide social and economic benefits across South East Queensland.

We’re excited to be joined today by Bruce Thompson, one of Locate20’s plethora of interesting and engaging plenary keynote speakers.

Bruce Thompson, Executive Director of Spatial Services with the NSW Government. Bruce is responsible for the State of New South Wales’ geodetic and positioning infrastructure and for its spatial and mapping functions. Bruce has twenty-five years’ experience in the spatial sector, in the Queensland, Victorian and New South Wales governments. He is the Chair of the Australia New Zealand Land Information Council (ANZLIC).

While speaking with Bruce, we delve into the many ways in which spatially-enabled digital twins will revolutionise and change the future of the ways in which other industries work.

Join us next time to speak with Adam Ferrier, one of Australia's leading consumer psychologists, a brand strategist and an authority on behavioural economics. We’ll discuss with Adam how we, as an industry, can get better at telling our story to others, and ways in which we can become more outward-facing to better engage in new ways with existing and future collaborators and clients.

Today we have Dr Karen Joyce joining us, who we’re excited to hear from during out plenary keynote presentations at Locate20. Dr Karen Joyce is a scientist, academic, educator, and business co-founder who loves to prove that science is more than lab coats and test tubes. She has a diverse history in geospatial science spanning academia, industry, government, and military over the past 20 years. As a Senior Lecturer at James Cook University in Cairns, she focusses on research and education into acquiring and processing drone image data for environmental monitoring, particularly on the Great Barrier Reef. Her She Maps STEM ‘education on location’ programs are taught around the world engaging thousands of students and teachers in drone and geospatial technology.

While catching up with Karen, we explore a plethora of topics ranging from rethinking the way we measure success, diversity and inclusion in the industry, and the ways in which we can come together as industry to support academia and the future of our industry.

Join us next time to speak with Bruce Thompson, Executive Director of Spatial Services with the NSW Government, where we will explore the many ways in which spatially-enabled digital twins will revolutionise and change the future of the ways in which other industries work.

With us today is one of our Locate20 plenary keynote presenters, Nyall Dawson. Nyall has been a developer with the QGIS project since 2013. During this time he has contributed over 5000 additions to the project, and today is one of the most active developers on the project. Nyall’s contributions cover a wide range of areas – from improvements to the map rendering and symbology engines, enhancements to labelling and print layout functionality, right through to optimisations of the underlying spatial processing algorithms utilised by QGIS. Nyall is also the proprietor of North Road Consulting, an Australian based spatial development consultancy which predominantly utilises international co-funding and crowdfunding campaigns to finance development into open source GIS applications.

We’ll speak with Nyall about why open data is important for the future of the industry, what the future of the industry could look like, and more!

Join us next time to speak with Dr Karen Joyce from SheMaps, as we delve into rethinking the way we measure success, diversity and inclusion in the industry, and the ways in which we can come together as industry to support academia and the future of our industry.

I’m very pleased to introduce you today to Dr Nadine Alameh, our guest for this episode and one of our plenary keynote presenters at Locate20.  Nadine takes us through a whirlwind of an episode covering wide-ranging topics from why the world needs interoperability, the challenges industries all over the world are facing with innovation, why diversity is so important for preparing for a better future, and more.

Dr Nadine Alameh is the recently appointed CEO of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). She is a recognized leader in the GIS field, having built a career out of her dedication to interoperability and innovation in several domains including Aviation, Earth Observations, Public Safety and Defence. Prior to OGC, she held various roles in industry from Chief Architect for Innovation in Northrop Grumman’s Civil Solutions Unit; to CEO of a small international Aviation data business; to senior technical advisor to NASA’s Applied Science Program. Nadine graduated from MIT with a Ph.D. in Information Systems Engineering and 2 MS degrees. She holds a BS degree in Computer Engineering from the American University of Beirut.

Join us next time for to speak with Nyall Dawson, a long-time developer on the QGIS project and proprietor of North Road Consultancy. We’ll speak with Nyall about why open data is important for the future of the industry, what the future of the industry could look like, and more!