In this episode of The Mappiest Hour, Tee and Silas prepare for the global stage as they discuss the upcoming FOSS4G 2019 conference in Bucharest, Romania. The hosts dive into the controversy surrounding corporate editing in OpenStreetMap, debating the balance between open data purity and corporate utility. They also tackle the ever-present "imposter syndrome" in the tech industry and share their excitement (and travel anxieties) about bringing their podcast to an international audience.

Linda Stevens (Hecht) discusses her career at ESRI, the future of GIS, and the role of Open Source Spatial in that future.

In this mind-bending episode of The Mappiest Hour, Tee and Silas step away from the map interface and into the multiverse of Meow Wolf. The duo explores the spatial chaos of Santa Fe’s House of Eternal Return, discussing how the immersive art installation challenges traditional concepts of navigation and space. They also dive into the "Geospatial in the Jungle" conference, debating the logistics of mapping in extreme environments, and reflect on the importance of "unmapping" to truly get lost in an experience.

In this episode of The Mappiest Hour, Tee and Silas welcome Blake Thompson and Damon Burgett, two Mapbox engineers with wildly different backgrounds—from aerospace engineering to garbage field trips. The conversation starts with the technical evolution of vector tiles and the creative misuse of mapping tools (dubbed "Hackbox"), but quickly pivots to the real-world impact of gentrification. Silas shares his "Data Hoods" theory, using alcohol license data to map neighborhood boundaries and track displacement in San Francisco. From electric scooters littering the streets to the skyrocketing cost of rent in mid-sized cities, this episode explores the intersection of tech, geography, and urban life.

This week on The Mappiest Hour, Tee and Silas crack open a "Box of Maps" with special guests Blake Thompson and Damon Burgett from Mapbox. The group explores the evolution of web mapping, moving from standard slip maps to complex, browser-based analysis using vector tiles and WebGL. Damon shares his concept of "Hackbox"—creatively misusing tools to build joy division-style elevation maps—while Blake teases the upcoming Vector Tile 3 specification. From training machine learning models on raster data to the "scooter wars" of San Francisco, this episode covers the bleeding edge of geospatial tech.

In the first episode to actually clock in at a full hour, Tee and Silas are joined by Anna Miller to cover the full spectrum of the geospatial experience. The conversation spans from the fields of precision agriculture—where Anna explains how GIS helps forecast berry yields—to the streets of San Francisco, where Silas recounts his time as an Uber driver and the crew debates the "scooter invasion" in modern cities. Along the way, they analyze the "City of Bonita Springs" job listing that demands an IT department's worth of skills for only $18.44 an hour, discuss the challenges of teaching Python to students, and celebrate the release of Silas’s third book.

From aquatic biology to mapping raspberry yields, guest Anna Miller joins Tee and Silas to explore the burgeoning world of agricultural GIS. The trio discusses how farmers are (and aren't) using drone data, the challenges of predicting crop yields from space, and why "precision agriculture" is more than just a buzzword. The conversation shifts to the broader industry, tackling the persistence of "imposter syndrome" among professionals and a scathing review of a job posting in St. Petersburg that demands cloud architecture skills for less than $19 an hour.

In this episode of The Mappiest Hour, hosts Tee Barr and Silas Toms fly solo to tackle the nitty-gritty of geospatial careers. They start by discussing the challenges of teaching advanced Python and the shift toward tools like Jupyter Notebooks and the Orfeo Toolbox for machine learning. The conversation takes a sharp turn into the realities of the job market, where the duo roasts a job posting for the City of Bonita Springs that requires an entire IT department's worth of skills for less than $18 an hour. They wrap up by discussing imposter syndrome, the importance of mentorship, and why "Data Cleaning" should be a mandatory class for every aspiring geographer.

In this episode of The Mappiest Hour, Tee and Silas welcome their very first guest, Alex Morrow from GEEI Consulting, to discuss his controversial blog post about the "identity crisis" currently facing Esri. The trio dives deep into the friction caused by the industry giant's shift from traditional desktop software to a cloud-based, "named user" model, debating whether this move leaves the average GIS analyst behind. From the rise of developer-centric tools like Mapbox to the eternal struggle of data cleaning, this conversation covers the growing pains of a changing geospatial landscape.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Mappiest Hour! Hosts Tee Barr and Silas Toms kick things off by sharing their "accidental" journeys into the world of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)—from 90s Excel macros in DC to water resource policy in Northern California. In this episode, the duo explores the intersection of ancient history and modern tech, discussing how LiDAR is revolutionizing archaeology by uncovering lost Maya cities in the jungle. They also dive into a debate on "Geospatial Big Data," the transition from desktop clicking to Python scripting, and the real-world frustrations of data silos in city government.