GIScussions

475 posts

Geomob London – a Cracking Night of Maps

I must have said this before but I will say it again, if you live anywhere near to London and you are into geotech, maps or location influenced applications then you should give Geomob a try. I’d offer you a money back guarantee but as it’s free that isn’t necesary but more on that later. On Wednesday night (24th Jan 2024) we had nearly a hundred people attending what truly was a cracking event, the […]

That Crystal Ball Thing Again – 2024

We published the Christmas Chaos edition of the Geomob Podcast just after Christmas. It has become a tradition that the participants make some lighthearted predictions of what might happen in the coming year. Usually they prove to be completely wrong but it is fun to look back on them a year later. Ed Freyfogle and I have just started to use a new podcast recording platform that provided quite decent transcriptions so that has ensured […]

Paying it forward

A few months back I had their pleasure of talking with Maxime Lenormand , the man behind the podcast Minds Behind Maps. It was a sort of meta podcast with me interviewing another geo podcaster. Ed had pointed me at Max’s two and a half hour long podcast interview with Steve Coast, I had thought that I could never listen to something that long but of course I did (in chunks)! After the podcast recording […]

“Using” Open Source

At a recent tech conference hosted by a proprietary software company one of the presenters said “We’re serious about open source, and we use it to build our software“ I guess he thought that this was a virtuous statement of coolness and openness. The speaker then went on to talk about the ways that the company was giving back to the open source community. It prompted me to think about the absorption of open source […]

Crystal Ball Gazing 2023

So we did our Christmas thing again, Denise, Alex, Ed, Jeremy, Ken, Mark and I sat down for our review of the year with a glass or two of wine and a microphone. You can listen to the Geomob podcast Christmas Chaos edition here. This year there were justifiable claims that some of last year’s predictions were at least partly correct, or they had happened but slower than anticipated, but some were just plain wrong. […]

Another.Red.Year w3w

Today is the day that geo-geeks around the world have been waiting for, a little later than expected, What3Words have published their 2021 accounts. I have expressed some doubt about the usefulness of what3words and I may have also commented unfavourably on their business model even doubted that investors could ever get a decent return on their investment. Well I was wrong! Yes, I said that – I was mistaken in my assessment about what3words. […]

Looking Back

Leaving Death Valley by me This week the team at Astun got together for their Spring Event in Richmond, it was the first time that we had all been together since December 2019 so there was a lot of laughing, hugging and catching up to do with friends and colleagues, old and new. Mike Saunt asked me if I would talk about some of the changes in Astun since I have been working with them […]

On the side of the angels?

This is going to be a brain dump, I don’t know if it will make any sense! I have been an evangelist for open source software for a decade or longer and I sincerely believe that the open source model offers a strong alternative to proprietary software, particularly for public sector and even more so in recent years as we have seen an accelerated move to the cloud. This is not going to be another […]

Predictions 2022

Another year passes with a record low of blog posts. My excuse/explanation is that Ed Freyfogle and I have put a lot of time into the Geomob Podcast – over 50 conversations this year including OpenStreetMap, Earth Observation, the Locus Charter, cartography and map based art, marketing, open source, interviewing several book authors, drones, neogeography (remember that?), hobby projects, products and politics – phew that really is a lot isn’t it? In December 2020 we […]

Malena Libman

This post is reposted from Mappery Yesterday the open source and open data geo communities were devastated by the tragic news of the passing of our friend and colleague Malena Libman. There was an outpouring of grief and celebration of her zest for life, humour, warmth and contribution to open geo. Jody Garnett posted this picture of Malena’s tattoo which is truly a Map in the Wild today. I met Malena in 2018 in Dar […]

The Locus Charter

Yesterday I sat in on the launch of the Locus Charter by the Benchmark Initiative. I was more than a little sceptical about yet another initiative in the location space, I have listened to national strategy launches, addressing initiatives, new community/organisational launches and open data policies and commitments. Most of these have over promised and under delivered or fizzled out – I think the Locus Charter may be the exact opposite. The Locus Charter is […]

Predictions need to be written down

Pah to 2020! There is little about 2020 that can be looked back on with affection but one of of my highlights has been recording over 50 episodes of the Geomob Podcast with Ed Freyfogle. I don’t think either of us really thought that it would become a “thing” but it certainly has. Plus recording a podcast is something that you sort of have to do from home so it has become a lockdown past-time. […]