This episode is all about making beautiful maps ... I am not a cartographer but my guest Mamata Akella is a professional cartographer at Felt! 

So today on the podcast we are talking about Essential Elements of Map Design:

Which of course starts with questions like - who is it for, what is it for and how do we get it to them?

And then moves on to Visual Hierarchy,   Zoom-Based Styling, Color Palettes, and Interpretation

We discuss a few practical examples during the conversation and you can find links to those in the show notes 

Recommended Listening

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/felt-upload-anything/

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/communicating-with-maps-the-art-of-cartography/

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/full-stack-cartography/

Planet manufactures and manages the world’s largest constellation of earth observation satellites!

Imaging “Just about everywhere on earth just about every day – Making change visible, accessible, and actionable”

… and the hope of this episode is to help you understand how they do that – along the way

• you will hear about their two constellations and how they work together

For more information go to https://www.planet.com/gis/

Recommended Podcast Episodes

Hyperspectral vs. Multispectral

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/hyperspectral-vs-multispectral/

NICFI Program

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/reduce-and-reverse-tropical-forest-loss-with-nicfi/

Synthetic Data

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/synthetic-data-for-real-problems/

Labels Matter

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/labels-matter/

This episode is a story about wide-angle imaging for fire mapping and maritime search but it's also a story about changing the culture and getting people to trust a new way of doing things.

My guest today is Alison Harrod - mission success manager at a start-up called Overwatch imaging 

Whenever I work with a company like Overwatch Imaging it is hard to know which story to tell, we could just as easily have made an episode about AI and object detection or about smart sensors because they do those things too. 

 The decision depends on the guest and their background so after meeting Alison we decided to make this episode for you and try to give you a broad overview of what wide-angle imaging is and how it's used in the context of fire mapping and maritime search.

...but It's one thing to have a technology and it is another thing entirely to get people to use it … as you will hear fire mapping is not “a move fast and break things kind of situation”

Connect with Alison here!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonharrod/

https://www.overwatchimaging.com/

Other relevant podcast episodes that you might enjoy

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/thermal-imagery-from-space/

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/finding-water-leaks-from-space/

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/cube-satellites-of-the-stratosphere/

It's not about becoming an influencer it's about creating opportunities for yourself

In this episode, we tackle the common misconception that personal branding is solely for influencers, revealing how it's actually about creating the right visibility and opportunities in your professional sphere.

Helena Merschdorf shares her unique insights, drawing from her rich background in GIS and marketing, and discusses:

• Solving the Obscurity Problem: Discover how personal branding can help you get noticed by the right people, not just everyone.

This episode is not just about building a personal brand; it's about leveraging that brand to carve a unique path in the geospatial industry.

Connect with Helena here

https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenamerschdorf/

https://www.tales.co.nz/

Rebranding GIS and Geospatial

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/rebranding-gis-geospatial/

Python Maps

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/python-maps/

Getting Your Dream Job In Earth Observation

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/getting-your-dream-job-in-earth-observation/

Entity resolution is the process of matching and merging records from different sources that refer to the same entity.

today's episode is about entity resolution for place data, why you might want to do that, and what any of this has to do with the dollar, Unix time and the idea that If data is really driving innovation, join keys are going to become more valuable.

Today's guest is Auren Hoffman

https://www.linkedin.com/in/auren/

https://twitter.com/auren

https://www.youtube.com/@worldofdaas

If you want to try Placekey for yourself go to https://www.placekey.io/

If you want to learn more about SafeGraph listen to this podcast episode

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/building-geospatial-truth-sets/

Embracing Open-Source Geospatial Technology is easy as an individual but what if you want your organization to use FOSS4G

How do you get strategic buy-in?

It turns out that the software does not sell itself and that even in the age of AI we still have to convince a human if we want organizational change to to happen. 

I think the temptation is to say hey look at this long list of specifications and notice how FOSS4G is often better or equal to the close source equivalent. 

Or hey look at the price tag … it costs nothing which is way cheaper than this other thing which costs more than nothing.

While this might be all the argumentation you need in some cases … in general, making change happen is hard,  and it's going to require more than that. 

That's why I have invited Todd Barr back on the podcast to walk us through what it takes to get an organization to Embrace Open-Source Geospatial Technology.

Here are a few of the key points

• Getting buy-in for open-source software and addressing concerns about security and IP protection

The last time Todd was on the podcast we talked about Leadership and Mentorship in the Geospatial community

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/skills-leadership-mentorship-and-the-geospatial-community/

If you are interested in FOSS4G you might enjoy these previous episodes

A Business built on Open Source GIS

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/a-business-built-on-open-source-gis/

Monetizing an open-source geospatial project

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/monetizing-an-open-source-geospatial-project/

Or just scroll through the archive to find episodes about QGIS, PostGIS, Geoserver, Geonode, Python, and a bunch of other open-source projects

I could use some support! please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/MapScaping 

Some more episodes you might enjoy

ESRI, GIS careers, Geospatial Data Science 

QGIS, Geospatial Python, ArcGIS Pro

Google Maps, Geomatics, Cartography

Location Intelligence, Mapping

** Warning** Consuming this content may lead to educated opinions and or a better understanding of the future of location technology!

** Proceed with caution!! **

If are curious about any of the following topics this episode is for you!

Evolution of Positioning Systems

 Visual Positioning Systems (VPS)

GNSS Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellites: The potential of LEO satellites in enhancing positioning and navigation.

Future of Positioning: Predictions and expectations for the future of navigation and positioning technologies.

Connect with Sandy on LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-kennedy-569a6a4/

Recommended listening 

SBAS - Satellite-based augmentation system

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/satellite-based-augmentation-system-a-base-station-in-the-sky/

GNSS - past present and future

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/navigating-the-past-present-and-future-of-gnss/

Where does Goolge's blue dot come from

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/how-google-calculates-your-location/

On the personal front, I have just moved back to New Zealand after 13 years in Denmark. It has been pretty busy the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of published podcast episodes. 

Some more episodes you might enjoy

ESRI, GIS careers, Geospatial Data Science 

QGIS, Geospatial Python, ArcGIS Pro

Google Maps, Geomatics, Cartography

Location Intelligence, Mapping

In this podcast episode, Jennings Anderson, a research scientist at Meta, discusses the Overture Maps Foundation, a downstream product of OpenStreetMap.

He explains his background in open map data and his interest in studying collaboration within the OpenStreetMap community.

Jennings then dives into the Daylight Distribution, an open data product produced by Meta, and how it combines building data sets from various sources into one unified theme.

Jennings emphasizes the importance of a stable ID system within the Overture Maps Foundation and the potential for easy conflation and integration of third-party data.

Jennings also explains the relationship between OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps, highlighting how they complement each other.

Relevant podcast episodes 

OpenStreetMap Is A Community Of Communities

Cloud Native Geospatial

Cloud Optimized Point Clouds

The Rapid Editor

With regards to accessing Overture Map data, you might find this YouTube video helpful

https://youtu.be/fZj6kTwXN1U?feature=shared

Just in case you are interested in the Google building footprints here is a link to that :) 

https://sites.research.google/open-buildings/

Some more episodes you might enjoy

ESRI, GIS careers, Geospatial Data Science 

QGIS, Geospatial Python, ArcGIS Pro

Google Maps, Geomatics, Cartography

Location Intelligence, Mapping

100 billion Points Every Day

100 billion is a very large number, let's say that I gave you a spreadsheet with 100 billion rows in it, each row consisted of five columns Latitude, Longitude, Device ID, A Timestamp, and a column telling the name of the data provider

What would you do with that? 

How would you clean it? Make sense of it? Extract value from it? What would people use it for? And how would you do this in a way that could be systematized?

FourSquare does this every day with the help of something they call a movement engine.

To help understand more about how they do this I have invited Gabriel Durkin the director of data science on the podcast. This is the last in a series of episodes I have worked on together with FourSquare and I have to say it's been really enjoyable working with them. 

If you are interested in hearing some of the previous episodes just check out the links below!

From Pixels To Patterns AI In Spatial Analysis

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/from-pixels-to-patterns-ai-in-spatial-analysis/

Big Data In The Browser

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/big-data-in-the-browser/

Spatial Knowledge Graphs

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/spatial-knowledge-graphs/

Designing For Location Privacy

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/designing-for-location-privacy/

All Of The Places In The World

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/all-of-the-places-in-the-world/

Geospatial Jobs

There are a few new jobs on our Job Board! The most interesting one is the role of Social Media Manager at Felt - United States (Remote) 

( If you want to apply for this one, it might be a good idea to listen to this episode first ;) 

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/felt-upload-anything/ )

See more at https://mapscaping.com/jobs/

As a bonus for reading all the way to the end :) 

If you are looking for free terrain data for anywhere in the world you might find this useful 

https://github.com/openterrain/openterrain/wiki/Terrain-Data

Some more episodes you might enjoy

ESRI, GIS careers, Geospatial Data Science 

QGIS, Geospatial Python, ArcGIS Pro

Google Maps, Geomatics, Cartography

Location Intelligence, Mapping

Computer vision is everywhere! But teaching an algorithm to identify objects requires a lot of data and this is definitely the case when we think about GeoAI  

But it is not enough to have a lot of data we also need data that is labeled

If we are looking for cars in images we need a lot of images of cars and we need to know which pixels are the car! 

Of course, I am oversimplifying but I hope you get the idea, 

Now imagine that you can automatically generate a large labeled data set of realistic images of cars based on the specifications of a specific sensor.

These data sets are often referred to as synthetic data or fake data and to help us understand more about this I have invited Chris Andrews from Rendered AI on the podcast.

Here are a few previous episodes you might find interesting 

Computer Vision And GeoAI

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/computer-vision-and-geoai/

In this episode, the discussion is aimed at an increased understanding of the differences between computer vision and the AI that is used in the Earth Observation world.

Labels Matter

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/labels-matter/

What it takes to create labeled training data manually. If you are new to the idea of labeled data sets this is a good place to start.

Fake Satellite Imagery

https://mapscaping.com/podcast/fake-satellite-imagery/

This is a good episode if you want to know more about Generative AI and Generative Adversarial Networks. 

Also, check out this website https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/ to get an idea of where and how these Generative Adversarial Networks can be used. Look for a website called This City Does Not Exist  http://thiscitydoesnotexist.com/

On a silently similar note try uploading an image to https://bard.google.com/ … it's pretty interesting!