Minds Behind Maps

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.

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About Renny:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• AllSource Analysis

• AllSource
• 2021 NPR Report “A New Tunnel is Spotted At a Chinese Nuclear Test Site”
• Jeffrey Lewis Interview
• Washington Post Chine Nuclear Missile Silo Article
• Renny's book
• Books & Podcast recommendations:
  • The Realignment
  • Making Sense by Sam Harris
  • Industry (could not find it!)
  • China Built the Bomb by John W Lewis & Litai Xue (Affiliate Link)
• Flipping the tables, Max's book & podcasts:
  • Lex Fridman
  • Joe Rogan
  • Kanye West on Lex Fridman
  • “La Horde du Contrevent” by Alain Damasio (Affiliate Link)

Timestamps

(00:00) Introduction 

02:51) Conversation starts: Renny's Journey with the NGA 

(12:45) AllSource's work 

(15:55) Defining Open & Proprietary 

(18:42) Deciding which Analysis to publish 

(23:12) Researching China's Nuclear Program 

(29:43) How Projects Get Started 

(34:39) Starting from Known Areas of Interest 

(37:50) Automating Change Detection 

(42:20) The Importance of Communicating Nuance 

(48:13) Misinformation vs Disinformation 

(51:21) The Hard Execrcise of Social Media Communication 

(55:21) Twitter 

(57:08) Sources & 'Peer Review' 

(01:03:19) Working with Outside Analysts 

(01:10:03) Teaching Geospatial Intelligence 

(01:13:09) Teaching Soft Skills & Communications 

(01:18:33) Renny's book 

(01:23:52) Importance of staying hands on 

(01:27:59) Micromanaging 

(01:30:23) Book and podcast recommendation 

(01:35:32) Flipping the tables: Max's Book & Podcast recommendation

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

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. 

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Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub
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Support the podcast on Patreon

About Slayer:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• GeoThings

Shownotes:

• Cell Tower data source (used in the intro animation): OpenCellid
• GeoThings
• CrisisMappers
• Asian Development Bank
• Open GeoSMS Standard
• HOT: Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
• ITRI: Industrial Technology Research Institute
• Line
• Book Podcast (and games) recommendations:
  • BBC Podcasts
  • Xbox Game Pass

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:20) Conversation starts: Slayer describes himself

(07:47) Tech, Preparation & Emergency Situations

(12:18) Deciding what to work on

(16:56) From Idea to Application

(22:03) Focusing on Humanitarian Applications

(26:17) Apps are only useful if people have phones

(31:42) Mobile App or SMS?

(33:30) Aggregating data (Command center)

(36:25) Dealing with Sensitive Data

(40:25) Emergency phone notifications

(42:27) Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

(48:54) State of OpenStreetMap (& open source) in Taiwan

(53:44) Language barrier in Open Source & Programming

(58:26) Line, the most popular app in Taiwan

(01:05:55) Tech literacy

(01:11:06) Taiwan's jump directly to mobile

(01:16:22) Social Enterprise Company

(01:19:40) The Incentives of a Social Entreprise

(01:24:19) GeoThing's Business Model

(01:27:46) Long term support

(01:36:42) Geopolitics of working in Taiwan

(01:47:57) Book/podcast (& games) recommendations

(01:52:04) Sidetrack conversation on Xbox's business model

(01:54:49) Launching a Patreon

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

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.

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About Benjamin:

• Overview's website
• Daily Overview on Instagram
• LinkedIn

Shownotes

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

• Overview by Planetary Collective
• Planetary Collective's Twitter
• Benjamin's Books on Amazon (Affiliate Links)
  • Timelapse (2020)
  • Overview: A New Perspective on Earth (2016)
• Books & Podcast recommendations:
  • Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman (Affiliate Link)
  • Lex Fridman's podcast

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
03:01 Conversation begins: Benjamin describes himself
04:42 What is Overview?
06:50 The Origin Story of Overview
21:43 The serendipitous value of unexpected software use
25:20 Is it Photography or Curation?
32:23 Talking about Climate, without being Doom and Gloom all the time
36:24 Overview's Access to Images; Partnerships & Collaboration with image providers
50:01 Thinking of satellite images like a photographer
54:10 The Louis Vuitton collaboration
01:00:53 Financials: How does a business like Overview run?
01:04:47 Using anything else than optical?
01:09:50 Having a specific audience in mind when sharing something
01:14:17 Changing formats in social media
01:18:28 Feedback from people following Daily Overview
01:21:57 Books and podcast recommendation
01:25:15 Benjamin's collaboration offer to the industry

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

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.

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About Iain

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Blog
• Iain's current course on Earth Observation at the University of Edinburgh

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

• Introduction to Microwave Remote Sensing (Affiliate Link)
• Echoes in Space MOOC by ESA
• How Earth Observation Ends: or, Everything you wanted to know about typing pools but were afraid to ask.
• Earthblox
• 101 Tips for PhD Students: (Affiliate link)
• Book & Podcast recommendation
  • Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Affiliate Link)
  • Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss (Affiliate Link)
  • Harvard Business Review Podcast

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

02:03   Conversation Begins: Getting Into Earth Observation

07:30   Remote Sensing in the 80s

10:25   NASA's Inspirational Power

13:47   The Moment Iain Knew He Wanted to Become An Educator

16:10   Free Education

19:11   Explaining SAR from the beginning

24:56   The 'Intuitive' Way of Understanding SAR

29:08   The Most Interesting Aspects of SAR

37:20   Comparing Optical to Radar

40:17   SAR's Military History

45:48   Military Contracts Subsidise Commercial SAR

49:35   The Impact of New Space on SAR

52:41   The trendline of SAR

57:41   What most excites Iain in Earth Observation today

01:01:44    Earthblox

01:03:57    Who is Earthblox for?

01:05:33    Earthblox's business model

01:08:37    Open Source & Closed Platforms

01:13:58    Closed Platforms in an Educational setting

01:20:04    Typing Pools: Automation Is Coming

01:30:30    Having a foot in Academia & Industry

01:35:59    The Importance of Art

01:40:51    Fostering creativity for scientific people

01:44:25    Advice for People entering Earth Observation

01:48:21    Book and Podcast Recommendation

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

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. 

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Timestamps: 
00:00 Introduction 
02:32 Steve Coast: The Next Thing that would Blow Up Openstreetmap 
06:39 Barbara Ryan: How Landsat Became Free & Open 
17:52 Jeffrey Lewis: Calling Out the Invasion of Ukraine an hour before it happened 
23:47 Arjen Vrielink: Using Remote Sensing to Prevent Deforestation 
32:07 Indra Den Bakker: Finding Product Market Fit with Satellite Image Analytics 
37:49 Jeff Crusey: How Venture Capitalism Works (Applied to Earth Observation) 
44:01 Mo Islam: Why Investors Don't Quite Understand Earth Observation Just Yet 
50:46 Kevin Pomfret: Why Law Makers Don't Understand Geospatial 
54:50 Andrew Blum: Concerns About the Privatisation of Weather Forecasting 
58:32 Hamed Alemohammad: Difference Between Google Earth Engine, Microsoft Planetary Computer & AWS 
01:03:47 Catherine Nakalembe: Food Security is More than Food in Stores 
01:10:00 Jean Martin Bauer: We Need More than Knowing Where Food is Needed 
01:15:10: Conclusion

Links to full conversations: 
- Steve Coast
- Barbara Ryan
- Jeffrey Lewis
- Arjen Vrielink
- Indra Den Bakker
- Jeff Crusey
- Mo Islam
- Kevin Pomfret
- Andrew Blum
- Hamed Alemohammad
- Catherine Nakalembe
- Jean-Martin Bauer

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter

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.

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UP42

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About Andrew:

Website

Twitter

Shownotes:

Andrew Blum's books

• The Weather Machine
• Tubes

Micheal Lewis, author of the Big Short

Book & Podcast recommendation

• Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Carbon Copy
• Wind of Change
• Patrick Radden Keefe

Timestamps: 
00:00 Introduction 
02:50 Andrew Presents Himself 
03:46 Difference between author and journalist 
08:14 Choosing What to Write About 
12:35 The Goal of Writing a Book 
14:34 The Importance of Going on Location 
17:04 The Duality of Talking About People / Facts 
20:12 Initial Email Outreach is takes a lot of care 
25:37 Weather Is International Yet Competitive 
27:52 Bringing An Outsiders Perspective to Understanding the Weather 
32:55 Being Knowledgeable is Simply Asking Better Questions 
37:36 The Difference Between Facts, and how we Find those Facts 
41:13 The Need for Separating Building & Owning 
45:10 Feedback on the Weather Machine, a few years After its Release 
51:52 The Dangers of Privatising Weather 
01:01:11 How Good do we Actually Need Forecasts to be? 
01:05:23 Weather is THE mainstream Earth Observation application 
01:09:00 Data Inequality in Weather Forecasting Quality 
01:14:44 How Much Does it Cost to run the Weather Machine? 
01:18:15 Tips on Writing & Editing, for non-writers 
01:21:44 Advice for the Scientific Community 
01:27:21 Book/podcast recommendation

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

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. 

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About Hamed 
- Twitter
- LinkedIn

• LandCoverNet
  • Paper
  • ML Hub datasets
• Radiant Earth Foundation
• Data Driven
• Clark names inaugural director of Clark Labs: Center for Geospatial Analytics
• Book Recommendation
  • Atomic Habits by James Clear

Timestamps 
00:00 Introduction 
03:01 Hamed's Interest for Earth Observation 
08:53 Joining the Radiant Earth Foundation 
10:25 What is the Radiant Earth Foundation? 
12:14 Why a Non-Profit? 
15:34 Finances & Incentives: Where does the money come from? 
19:10 Choosing to focus on Machine Learning; ML Hub 
26:43 Capacity & Community Building 
30:42 Only a 10 people team 
34:44 Comparing to Google Earth Engine, AWS & Microsoft Planetary Computer 
41:01 Making Decisions & Measuring Progress in a Non-Profit 
44:12 Machine Learning Competitions & Kaggle 
48:22 Challenges of Working with External Organizations 
51:19 Building Models is Sexy but only a small part of Machine Learning 
55:55 Who is the ML Hub build for? 
57:59 From Researcher to Executive Director 
01:01:37 What does being on the Board of Directors Mean? 
01:06:18 Hamed's Journey from Iran to working in the US 
01:11:03 Advice for people outside the US & Europe 
01:15:46 The limitations of English for a truly worldwide reach

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

Mo Islam is the Co-Founder & CEO of Payload, a Modern Media Company build around a daily newsletter reporting on the Space Industry.

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Episode Sponsor: GeoAwesomeness & UP42 EO Hub
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UP42
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Shownotes: 
- Subscribe to Payload! 
- Pathfinder, their podcast
- Crowdfunded SpaceX round of investment
- Book & Podcast Recommendations 
     - Engines that move markets
     - The Portal, Episode with Peter Thiel
- For All Mankind
- Payload's space-themed playlist

Timestamps: 
00:00 Introduction 
03:34 Episode Begins: From Banking to Space Media 
07:41 Deciding to start a Newsletter 
12:19 Doing to Media what Happened to New Space 
14:21 Deciding to Focus on 'High Value Readers'' 
19:50 Getting Feedback 
21:52 Payload's Target Audience 
31:21 Earth Observation 
35:33 Challenges of Reporting on Technical Fields 
38:18 What Is Worth Reporting On 
43:05 Earth Observation is Tough for Investors 
50:18 Information Over Opinion 
55:04 What Happened to the Earth Observation SPACs 
59:35 Predictions: Earth Observation companies Getting Acquired 
01:01:58 Would Google or Facebook buy an EO Company? 
01:05:19 Other Forms of Media & TikTok 
01:09:11 The Media Funnel 
01:13:27 Focus & Analogy With Software Products 
01:15:34 Payload's EndGame 
01:18:10 Books & Podcast Recommendations 
01:22:59 Music & Other Arts Around Space 
01:24:24 Pathfinder Spotify Playlist 

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

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

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

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

• Mapscaping podcast
• My interview with Steve Coast
• The million follower instagram account that only shows satellite images
• Podcast Recommendations:
  • Akimbo
  • Hidden Brain
• Podcast Addict
• Fountain
• Overcast

Timestamps: 
00:00 - Introduction 
03:17- Daniel's Evolution Over the Past Year 
06:16 - Why Daniel Quit His Job 
14:40 - Learning from Past Experiences 
16:46 - Stay Motivated Over the Long Run 
19:25 - Deciding To Show Up As A Professional 
25:24 - Authenticity 
28:49 - Editing Is Caring 
30:09 - Behind The Scenes of Steve Coast's Interview 
34:20 - Packaging Ideas & The Burden of Understanding 
38:55 - A Piece of Unsolicited Advice 
41:53 - Mentorship 
45:30 - What Daniel Gets Out of Mentorship 
49:04 - What I Get Out of It 
52:41 - Finding Mentorship in Your Career 
56:14 - What's Next For Daniel & Mapscaping? 
01:01:55 - Hiring 
01:07:35 - Having Been An Employee Helps Hiring 
01:13:56 - Marketing in Geospatial 
01:20:58 - The Million Follower Instagram Account About Satellite Images 
01:25:25 - Getting Better at Communicating 
01:28:20 - Daniel's Twitter Isn't His Name 
01:31:48 - Podcast Recommendations 
01:33:29 - Youtube is The Biggest Podcast Player (Or Is It?)

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work

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.

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Episode Sponsor: Geoawesomeness & UP42
EO Hub
Geoawesomeness
UP42
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About Joshua:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Website

• FEMA
• NASA Earth Observatory
• Tom Patterson
• Book & Podcast Recommendations:
  • Radio Lab
  • Thematic Cartography and Geovisualization

Timestamps 

00:00 - Introduction 

02:46 - Conversation Begins: Joshua Presenting Himself 

04:52 - From Photography to Computer Science 

06:14 - Joshua's Current Role: Lead Visualizer at Nasa Earth Observatory 

07:04 - Why are Visualisations Important 

08:25 - Is it Important that the Public Understands Satellite Imagery? 

11:50 - Graphic Design & Scientific Data 

16:35 - Storms: Visualisation Example 

18:20 - Deciding where to look at, which Stories to Tell 

22:18 - Collaborations: Governmental Agencies & Media 

27:20 - Accessible Designs: Colour-blindness 

31:47 - A Tangent on Data Formats: NetCDF & GeoTiff 

37:34 - Teaching 

38:54 - Tools & Methods 

42:42 - Interactive & Online Media driving different Visualisations 

46:41 - Satellite Data in the Movie & Ad Industry 

48:43 - Interactive Data 

51:02 - Advice for People Working with Scientific Data 

54:20 - Writing & Being Present Online 

55:35 - Favourite Visualisations 

57:46 - Books & Podcast Recommendations

Feel free to reach out! 
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter
- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work