Geospatial Product Swiss Army Knife 1. The “Build It and They Won’t Come” Trap We have all seen it: a talented geospatial professional spends months—perhaps years—perfecting a technically sophisticated web map or a niche data service, only to release it to a deafening silence. In our industry, the “build it and they will come” philosophy…

Why Machine-Writing Code is the Best (and Most Dangerous) Thing for Geospatial:   The current discourse surrounding AI coding is nothing if not polarized. On one side, the technofuturists urge us to throw away our keyboards; on the other, skeptics dismiss Large Language Models (LLMs) as little more than “fancy autocomplete” that will never replace…

How can you accurately aggregate and compare point-based data from different parts of the world? When analyzing crime rates, population, or environmental factors, how do you divide the entire globe into equal, comparable units for analysis?   For data scientists and geospatial analysts, these are fundamental challenges. The solution lies in a powerful class of…

The Open-Source Conundrum   Many successful open-source projects begin with passion, but the path from a community-driven tool to a sustainable business is often a trap.   The most common route—relying on high-value consulting contracts—can paradoxically lead to operational chaos. Instead of a “feast or famine” cycle, many companies find themselves with more than enough…

Open-source software is often described as “free,” a cornerstone of the modern digital world available for anyone to download, use, and modify. But this perception of “free” masks a growing and invisible cost—not one paid in dollars, but in the finite attention, time, and mounting pressure placed on the volunteer and community maintainers.   This…

What if communities could map their own worlds using low-cost drones and open AI models instead of waiting for expensive satellite imagery? In this episode with Leen from HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team), we explore how they’re putting open mapping tools directly into communities’ hands—from $500 drones that fly in parallel to create high-resolution imagery across…