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"
October Findings, Startups out of Stealth & Getting Inspirations
Hey there,
Last month I shared some of the interesting reads I had come across during September and quite enjoyed the process, so I'm doing it again.
🔗 Recent Reads & Findings
- Element84, the geospatial consultancy company that has appeared on the podcast a couple of times now, shared their 2023 Geospatial Tech Radar. I like seeing what other people are keeping an eye on at other companies. I find this type of sharing valuable and am thankful E84 took the time to put this together and out there.
- Zephr emerged from stealth with $3.5 in funding. The reason I bring this one up is because I recently got to spend a few days with Sean Gorman, their CEO, to talk about everything they're doing on the podcast. We touch on Zephr a bit, but this conversation brings a lot of context around why people are excited for Sean (and his team's) latest endeavour.
- I found the No Boilerplate's Youtube channel and have been binging all his (non Rust) videos. I recommend starting with his video praising all plain text workflows. His videos are elegantly simple, tightly narrated and well, without any boilerplate. If you're a programming nerd his work is great.
- James Killick's (another recent guest on the podcast) 12 Maps Happenings that Rocked our World blog series is one of my favourite of the moment, and he published part 6. I keep learning a ton about the history of mapping through James and this entry is no exception. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn about the first computer maps.
- Rob Simmon's Gentle Introduction to GDAL continues to be the best resource for anyone wanting a well produced look at how stupidly useful GDAL is for anyone wanting to manipulate satellite imagery, with Part 7 being the latest entry. I got to meet Rob in person a couple of months ago and keep being blown away by the depth of his knowledge and the storytelling he brings to it.
- I finished Austin Kleon's 3rd and latest book, Show Your Work (Amazon Affiliate link). I've read all 3 of Kleon's book (which have nothing to do with maps or tech, quite the opposite). As a self describe writer who draws, his words about finding inspiration, building creative habits and sharing it to the world have been ones I keep coming back to. Although each of his books are quite short, I take a while to read them because I only allow myself to read 1 chapter at a time. I find taking time allows me to digest the ideas better rather than trying to go through it as fast as I can.
🎙️ Most recent Minds Behind Maps episode
- Sean Gorman: Startups, Coding Isn't for Everyone, Finding What (& with whom) to work on. As I mentioned above Sean's latest company came out of stealth. If that isn't enough, he sold his previous company to Snap, ended up in front of the NSA as a grad student for his work mapping fibre optic networks right before 9/11 and to top it all up is one of the most generous and kind people I know. Sean hosted me at his place for a few days before & after Satcamp, during which we found some time to record in person, so I recommend watching this one.
- Hongwei Liu: What It Takes to Actually Map the Indoors, Hard Work & Finding the Right Things to Work on. Whenever I look for guests for the podcast, the thing I search for the most is: Is this person interesting? Do they have well articulated ideas that I haven't heard before? When I stumbled on Hongwei's blog I thought this was going to be someone interesting to talk to. As I mention in the intro of this episode, this started as a conversation about indoor mapping and turned into talking about the meaning of life. Be warned.
Thinking out loud
As I've started putting a bunch of stuff online I've gotten a much deeper appreciation for how much work it takes to create good things. I think I had a vague understanding that all things from open source software take work to maintain so some of my favourite Youtube videographers take time to make their videos and podcasters research their episodes. But it wasn't until I actually started doing it myself that I realise just how much time and effort all this takes. I'm so incredibly thankful to all the people, ideas, tools, code, art, data, music is on the internet and just how much I've taken it for granted.
For whatever reason my brain spiralled into deep thinking about the nature of the current Internet when I noticed my Patreon recently surpassed €50/month.
It's not life changing amounts of money but it's starting to be significant enough that it gets me thinking about how we fund the people making stuff on the Internet enough to talk about it here.
I guess what I'm trying to say (beyond bringing up that I have a Patreon) is that I'm incredibly thankful to the people who support my work. I deeply believe there are better models than a ad-dominate Internet out there and seeing people willing to put their money behind some of the work I do is incredible.
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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