I was asked to give bio for a conference. It wasn't approved, but here nobody can stop me: "Maxime Lenormand doesn't have a clue what he's doing with his life: at the moment he plays around with satellite imagery hoping to make something useful out of it. When he's not doing that he asks people long winded questions about the meaning of life, what books they like and how the heck they ended up also playing with maps all day"
(Late) November Findings & Starting to reflect on the year
Hey there,
New month, new readings, findings & podcast episodes!
🔗 Recent Reads & Findings
- Jed Sundwall shares some thoughts about governance, using the latest OpenAI leadershpi back-and-forth as a stage for his thinking. Jed is someone for whom I have a lot of respect and know puts a lot of thought on how we should build data & software. If you're not familiar with him, Jed spearheded Amazon's open data program, is now at the head of the Radiant Earth non-profit (which aims to expand access to Earth data & machine learning models). I had him on the podcast a few months ago, where we did end up talking about ChatGPT's impact on the value of data. I don't agree with everything Jed writes in his blogpost, but that's why I believe it's worth sharing. Also it's about business models, and I like a good business model conversation.
- Kurzgesagt put out a video on social media and the modern Internet going wrong. I've been thinking a lot about my own online consumption, knowing that I at times spend too much time on social media, or don't leverage the opportunities of being exposed to different opinions enough. Of the many resources online, Kurzgesagt is one who's approach I appreciate: well researched and with attempts to clearly separate reporting from opinion.
- It's probably no secret that I really like a good conversation. I listened to Andrew Huberman on Cameron Hanes podcast this month. Huberman is someone for whom I also have a lot of respect for he embodies the balance between mental and physical challenges that I would like to aspire towards, all while staying impressively humble. I had not heard of Cameron Hames before, but in the spirit of the link I shared just before, I've been trying to listen more to people who have different backgrounds and opinions as mine. This guy is a bow hunter, not necessarily what I would gravitate towards at first glance, but this was a great conversation about sharing science, academia, mental health and doing hard things.
🎙️ Most recent Minds Behind Maps episode
- I had Javier de la Torre on, a biologist researcher turned multiple times founder, having started Vizzuality and more recently Carto, both geospatial software companies. We talked a lot about Javier's desire to tackle climate related problems, how AI is impacting geospatial and why his software company hosts a conference, in this case the Spatial Data Science Conference. I'm always curious as to what companies decide to focus on, and this -a software company doing conferences- stood out to me.
- I also spent a few days with Jason Boone, who has a background in film production, now turned Youtuber teaching thousands how to use maps as part of visual animations. He worked with some of the biggest Youtubers on the platform, like Johnny Harris. I've mentioned multiple times now being heavily inspired by Johnny Harris' use of maps to tell stories, so talking to one of the people who actually worked with him on making this happen, and hearings how Jason thinks about maps as a visual medium to tell stories through was music to my ears. I'm also very happy with how this episode visually looks like in the end, having recorded at Jason's home in his way-better-than-my-bedroom looking studio.
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I also recorded a Behind the Scenes episode about how I make these Minds Behind Maps episodes, using Jason's episode as an example. This episode is available on my Patreon, for the 'Producer' Tier.
I go over how I find my guests, prepare for interviews, run the conversation itself, edit, do all the post production and finally publish these episodes.
Starting to reflect on the year
Every year, in the second half of December I like taking some time to look back on the year that is coming to an end. It’s a practice I’ve been doing for a few years now and get a lot of value from.
Just like last year, next MBM episode will be a aggregate of some of the best conversations I’ve had throughout the year, and I would like to write a newsletter reflecting back on the past 12 months of running the podcast. Last year I shared how much money I made & spent running the podcast and I plan on doing the same thing this year too. Spoiler: both categories went up!
Until next time,
Maxime
Maxime Lenormand
I was asked to give bio for a conference. It wasn't approved, but here nobody can stop me: "Maxime Lenormand doesn't have a clue what he's doing with his life: at the moment he plays around with satellite imagery hoping to make something useful out of it. When he's not doing that he asks people long winded questions about the meaning of life, what books they like and how the heck they ended up also playing with maps all day"
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