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Minds Behind Maps

Maxime Lenormand

Maps Are Everywhere.
These are conversations with those building them.

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20 episodes
Avg 1 hr 20 min
English

Episodes 20

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#79
Jan 7, 2025 · 40 min
My Favourite Books of 2024 - MBM79
On every Minds Behind Maps episode I ask guests for books they've read they think are worth sharing. This time I'm sharing with you the books I read & recommend from my 2024 reading.
#78
Dec 16, 2024 · 57 min
How Bloomberg's Data Scientists use Satellite Images for Reporting: Krishna Karra - MBM78
Krishna Karra is a data scientist & report for Bloomberg, having used machine learning & satellite images for reporting. Recent stories from him & his team include mapping refugee camps in Rafah & exposing illegal ship oil transfers in the middle of the Ocean.
#77
Nov 23, 2024 · 1 hr 36 min
How Ex-Vox Video Producer Phil Edwards thinks about Maps to tell stories - MBM77
Phil Edwards is a video producer who worked at Vox for nearly 10 years, and now runs his own Youtube channel exploring the history of businesses, and lately has been using more and more maps. We go over one of his latest videos, “The Secret Economics of Google Street View” as a case study of how Phil thinks about maps to tell stories. We also talk about journalism on Youtube, and the business behind running a Youtube channel today.
#76
Nov 1, 2024 · 1 hr 20 min
What Hyperspectral constellations have to offer: Pixxel’s example - Awais Ahmed #MBM76
Awais Ahmed is the co-founder & CEO of Pixxel, a company building a constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. Unlike “traditional” cameras, these satellites can see across hundreds of bands, opening up a lot more applications. We talk about the engineering -and funding- required to pull this off and how Awais manages a company between India (where Awais is from) and the US. But that’s just the 1st part of the interview. Then we talk about his vision for the company, which goes way, way
#75
Oct 15, 2024 · 1 hr 8 min
The Ex-Uber Data Scientist Who wants to simplify Data Science with Serverless Computing: Sina Kashuk
Sina Kashuk is the co-founder & CEO of Fused, who wants to make iterating & deploying in Python faster with serverless computing. We break down what that actually means, why it matters and what data science workflows could look like over the next few years. This also isn’t Sina’s first company, a few years ago he started Unfolded.ai, focused on making visualisations for data scientists faster. The company was acquired by Foursquare in 2021.
#74
Sep 15, 2024 · 1 hr 55 min
Meet the man trying to build a 20cm 3D map of the world: Andrew Peterson - #MBM74
Andrew Peterson is the Co-Founder & CEO of Array Labs, with a simple mission: Mapping the whole world in 3D, at 20cm in near real time. We peel the layers as to what it takes to get there: the engineering that’s required, how to build a constellation to do that, how you fund such a project.
#73
Sep 2, 2024 · 56 min
Jamie McMichael-Phillips: How We're Planning to Map All our Oceans by 2030 - #MBM73
Jamie McMichael-Phillips is the Director of the Seabed 2030 Project, which aims to map all of the world's oceans, by 2030. For context, in 2024, we’re at 26.1%. This is conversation is about why, how we get to 100% and why it’s important in the first place.
Aug 31, 2024 · 2 hr 4 min
[Bonus] Books, Tech & Life: A Long conversation with Jed Sundwall
This is a bous episode: For once, I’m the guest! This is a cross-post of Jed Sundwall’s Techs on Texts podcast. We talk about some of the books that have influenced me, “Night Flight” and “The Little Prince” by Antoine de St Exupery’s If you’re a regular MBM listener, you might enjoy this one
#72
Aug 22, 2024 · 1 hr 32 min
Jean-Martin Bauer: How the World Food Program tackles Hunger - #MBM72
Jean-Martin Bauer has been working at the World Food Program for over 20years, and the author of the “The New Breadline”. Most recently he was the Country Director for Haiti, in charge of helping make sure the country doesn’t run out of food.
#71
Aug 7, 2024 · 1 hr 21 min
Ashlee Vance: The Man telling us the Stories of the New Space Industry - #MBM71
Ashlee Vance is a Tech Journalist, the author of Elon Musk's 1st biography in 2015, the host of "Hello World" on Youtube and the author of "When the Heavens Went on Sale" as well as the accompanying documentary "Wild Wild Space" following 4 New Space companies. We nerd out on rocket companies, 1 rogue NASA administrator, and the time I got to meet Vladimir Putin years ago.
#70
Jul 20, 2024 · 1 hr 34 min
Luke Fischer: Who would want to start a Satellite Image Marketplace? SkyFi - #MBM70
Luke Fischer is the Co-Founder & CEO of SkyFi, a company that we'll describe in a few ways in this episode, but boils down to an Earth Observation marketplace. We talk about Luke's 20 year time in the military before getting into startups, why Luke is bullish on their approach and many more
#69
Jul 11, 2024 · 1 hr 5 min
Ben Strong: We have Foundation Models of Earth, now What? Earth Index - MBM#69
Ben Strong is the Science & Machine Learning Lead at Earth Genome, an NGO working on the intersection of data, science & digital design. Most recently they've been working on Earth Index, an application built on top of Earth embeddings from foundation models. This conversation is the "so what" of Earth foundational model
#68
Jun 1, 2024 · 52 min
Ib Green: Browser based visualisation rendering - MBM#68
Ib Green led the development of 3D visualisation tools like for example Uber’s deck.gl and is now working at Foursquare, after having started Unfolded, which Foursquare acquired. During this conversation we touch on how browser based visualisations are changing
#67
May 24, 2024 · 1 hr 25 min
What does a Foundational Model of Earth look like? Clay Foundation: Bruno Sanchez-Andrade Nuño - MBM#67
Bruno Sanchez is the Executive Director of the Clay Foundation, which just released their v1 of a “Foundational Model of Earth”. We talk about what that means, building open source & non profits and can’t help but draw parallels to the not-so-open anymore OpenAI. Previously Bruno was the Program Director of the Microsoft Planetary Computer
#66
May 1, 2024 · 1 hr 15 min
How to Map Mars (to Land Rovers) - Fred Calef III - MBM#66
Dr Fred Calef III has the unofficial title of "Keeper of Maps" at NASA JPL, he's the Lead Mapping Specialist for most of JPL's Mars Rover missions, most recently that being Perseverance & Curiosity. But to land -and navigate- a rover, one needs maps, and Fred makes them.
#65
Apr 15, 2024 · 1 hr 25 min
Creating the most used map animation tool: GEOLayers - Markus Bergelt - MBM#65
Markus Bergelt is a motion designer and the person behind GEOLayers, a video editing plug-in simplifying the creation of map animations in Adobe After Effects. Most map animations you’ve seen online are most likely made with this plug-in. We touch what makes map tricky to animate, how to simplify the process, the state of software development and of course, about Markus’s business model behind it all
#64
Apr 1, 2024 · 1 hr 11 min
Volodymyr Agafonkin: The Story of Leaflet, Building the Simplest Mapping Library & Life in Ukraine
Volodymyr Agafonkin is the creator of Leaflet, an open-source JS mapping library started in 2008 that is used pretty much everywhere on the Internet today. We end up nerding out on what makes building simple open source software & rendering maps online tricky but also so endlessly interesting. Volodymyr lives in Ukraine, a country shaken by a war for the past few years, which we also talk about.
#63
Mar 15, 2024 · 1 hr
Qiusheng Wu: Building & Sharing Open Source Software - MBM#63
Qiusheng Wu is an Associate Professor in Geography, an active open source contributor behind projects like geemap, leafmap or segment-geospatial also sharing tutorials on his popular Youtube channel. Qiusheng has a desire to teach, share and lower the barrier to entry to geospatial, all things I'm always curious to talk more about
#62
Mar 1, 2024 · 1 hr 7 min
Ryan Abernathey: Taking Scientific Computing to the next level - MBM#62
Ryan Abernathey is a Climate Scientist, open-source software developer and the CEO & co-founder of Earthmover, a company trying to simplify how scientific computing is done. Ryan also co-founded the Pangeo project in 2016, one of the major efforts to build better tools for scientific computing today.
#61
Feb 15, 2024 · 2 hr 19 min
Gilberto Camara - Brazil's Fight Against Deforestation; Politics & Open Data - MBM#61
Gilberto Camara was the director of INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research from 2005 to 2012, working there 35y in total and leading the use of satellite imagery to fight deforestation in Brazil, leading to what Nature declared “One of the biggest environmental wins of the 2000s”

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