Ep 11 - Dan Hammer - Global Forest Watch, Design & Story Telling

12/15/21 • 84 min

Dan Hammer co-founded & build the first few versions of Global Forest Watch, and is now working on Earthrise Media, a non-profit that brings data scientists, designers and storytellers together to tackle global environmental challenges.

We talk about how Global Forest Watch was built, how journalists have leveraged the platform to tell stories and how it lived on until today. We also touch on the importance of design in addition to data science, and the power of telling stories.

Dan Hammer

Show notes:

Time stamps:

03:00 - Conversation starts, Dan presents himself
08:30 - The tools behind monitoring deforesting back in 2009
12:00 - How Global Forest Watch 2.0 started
18:45 : Why Global Forest Watch continued on
25:40 - Collaborating with journalists
29:50 - An example of leveraging Earth Observation data for policy making : Global Plastic Watch
31:00 - Having an impact
38:50 - Precision vs Accuracy
45:45 - Earthrise Media: Design, Data science & story telling
51:35 - The importance of Design
56:50 - Dealing with & communicating uncertainty
1:02:00 - Non-profit or for-profit?
1:08:10 - Building a team
1:10:20 - Origin of the name "Earthrise" & Inspiration through space
1:21:15 - Book / Media Recommendation

Please feel free to reach out!

Dan Hammer

Show notes:

Time stamps:

03:00 - Conversation starts, Dan presents himself
08:30 - The tools behind monitoring deforesting back in 2009
12:00 - How Global Forest Watch 2.0 started
18:45 : Why Global Forest Watch continued on
25:40 - Collaborating with journalists
29:50 - An example of leveraging Earth Observation data for policy making : Global Plastic Watch
31:00 - Having an impact
38:50 - Precision vs Accuracy
45:45 - Earthrise Media: Design, Data science & story telling
51:35 - The importance of Design
56:50 - Dealing with & communicating uncertainty
1:02:00 - Non-profit or for-profit?
1:08:10 - Building a team
1:10:20 - Origin of the name "Earthrise" & Inspiration through space
1:21:15 - Book / Media Recommendation

Please feel free to reach out!

Previous Episode

Ep 10 - Charles Blanchet - Finding focus, Building a scalable product & Dedicating time to thinking

Charles Blanchet is the VP of Solutions at Iceye. Charles has over 20 years of experience building start ups, more recently in companies focused around data. Iceye owns a constellation of Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, and is also working on providing flood monitoring insights derived from the images these satellites take.

We talk SAR, how Charles joined Iceye, the importance of finding focus as a company, and how thinking is an important task in itself.

Charles Blanchet:

Show notes:

Time Stamps:

04:00 - Episode begins: Charles presents himself
8:45 - Finding product-market fit in Earth Observation
13:10 - The importance and need for focus
17:00 - Is the space industry different than any other field?
21:30 - Is SaaS a good model for companies like Iceye?
26:30 - "Deriving value out of imagery and turning it into information is a tough business"
36:20 - Can there be too much focus?
39:00 - Charles thoughts on Iceye’s current focus on flood monitoring
41:46 - Building startups over and over again
48:30 - Assembling a team
58:10 - The life story interview question
1:08:40 - How Charles joined Iceye
1:12:20 - Charles’ next 5 years
1:14:10 - Taking dedicated time to think
1:25:25 - Media recommendation

Please feel free to reach out!

Next Episode

Ep 12 - Tyler Erickson - Google Earth Engine, Curiosity & Working With and For a Community

Tyler Erickson is a Developer Advocate at Google, more specifically working on Google Earth Engine - a platform providing access to many different Earth Observation datasets merged together - allowing users to focus more time on building their solutions.

We talk about the importance of curiosity across fields to foster innovation, go behind the scenes of Google Earth Engine, and explore OpenET, an application Tyler has worked on that leverages Earth Engine.

About Tyler:

Shownotes: