If you’re lucky, you’ll meet people throughout your career who provide the necessary influence, whether they realize it or not, that you need at the time. One such person for me in recent years has been Keith Masback, who recently concluded a 10-year run as the CEO of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)….
Data Is Hard
Where I work, we have developed a nuanced philosophy to describe the niceties of collecting data, managing it, validating it, and preparing it for use: “Data is hard.” This was brought to light in a very public manner by the vandalism that was displayed on basemaps produced by Mapbox. The responses by Mapbox and their…
The Consulting Mindset and the War on Cubicle Body
I’ve been debating for a while whether I wanted to write this post, as the subject matter deviates greatly from the technical and professional writing I normally offer here. I decided to do so because my recent dive into fitness is intertwined with my professional life and affects how I approach my day, so I…
FOSS4G-NA 2018: People
A couple of my Spatial Networks colleagues and I spent most of last week in St. Louis, Missouri at the FOSS4G North America conference. Following up on attending the international FOSS4G conference in Boston, this is the most time I’ve spent with this community in quite a while. There has been no particular intent to…
Lately…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, owing to 2018 getting off to a quick start. At work, we wrapped up the year at Spatial Networks by putting the finishing touches on a strategic plan that calls for the company roughly doubling in size next year. This has been reflected in our aggressive pacing of…
Belatedly, TUgis 2017 Keynote Text
In March of 2017, I gave the keynote address at TUgis, Maryland’s geospatial conference. Despite a few requests, I’ve been remiss about posting the text until now. The following lengthy block quote is the address as I had written it. It differs slightly from what I actually said, but I can no longer recall the…
2017 Through the Rearview Mirror
The year 2017 has been one of the most eventful of my career, but changes and developments were not limited to the professional sphere for me.
Thoughts on the Updated Geospatial Data Act
Over the summer, I wrote a post commenting on a piece of legislation known as the “Geospatial Data Act of 2017.” This legislation, or something similar to it, comes up every few years and has yet to get signed into law. In my post, I raised concerns about language that would have defined the use…
Harvey and Fulcrum Community
There was a time in my consulting career where I was providing GIS software and database support to the US federal critical infrastructure protection community. Part of that work involved ‘event response,’ which most often took the form of natural disasters. I never deployed, but a lot of my co-workers did. Ground truth was always…
FOSS4G 2017 Recap
It’s been almost two weeks since I returned from FOSS4G 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), and I wanted to take a little time to regroup and get caught up before settling down to write about it. It was a busy week, highlighted for me and the Spatial Networks team by the first-ever Fulcrum Live event….