Minds Behind Maps

Ep 16 - Dan Pilone - Element84, Large Scale Computing, Enabling Open Data & People Focused Growth

Mar 1, 2022

01:39:36

Creator website

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Is There a Barrier to Data Accessibility?

03:07

Esa and Nassa - What's the Difference?

05:06

The Culture of a Company

01:53

Introduction

3min

Elements 84 - What's Your Background?

4min

What Does El 94 Offer?

3min

Geo Special, a Piece of What We Did at the Beginning

2min

What's the Main Thing You're Doing?

5min

What's Changed in the Data Science Industry?

2min

Is the Data Science Changing as Well?

3min

Is It a Big Deal?

3min

10.

Esa and Nassa - What's the Difference?

5min

11.

Is There a Barrier to Data Accessibility?

3min

12.

I'm Curious as to What You Think of Pengio and Dask

2min

13.

Goigto Replace Python or Something Like That

4min

14.

Data Scientists Are Getting More Capabilities, Right?

2min

15.

What's the Model Behind the Open Data Program?

3min

16.

The Altruistic Side of Open Source, Right?

5min

17.

Open Source Software

6min

18.

I'm Not Complaining About Itk, It's Just the Reality of It

3min

19.

We've Got an Outsider's Perspective, Tracy and I

3min

20.

The Culture of the Company

5min

21.

The Culture of a Company

2min

22.

How Do You Approach Bringing in New People?

2min

23.

We're a People Focused Growth Company.

6min

24.

The Interview Process Is Longer Than You Think

4min

25.

How Do You Build a Culture as the Company Grows?

2min

26.

Putting the Leadership Team in Place Was Critically Important

5min

27.

Are You Still Wearing the So Hat?

3min

28.

Do You Want People With Batteries Included?

3min

29.

What's Your Marketing Plan?

3min

30.

Are There Any Books That You've Just Read That You Like?

3min

Dan Pilone is the CEO and co-founder of Element84, a software engineering company focused on building geospatial solutions at scale. We touch on Dan's experience working on geospatial software engineer problems and how those have changed over the past decade. We discuss the work Element84 has done to contribute to AWS's Open Data program, as well the journey of co-founding a company with Dan's wife Tracey, and how they're thinking of growth through a people-focused mindset.

---

Find previous episodes and other show notes at mindsbehindmaps.com

If you'd like to help support the podcast, please consider leaving a review directly on the website, or on Apple Podcast. This helps showcase the value of the podcast when reaching out to new potential guests.

---

About Dan:

Time-stamps:

03:16 - Conversation starts, Dan present himself
07:03 - Presenting Element84
09:33 - Element84’s early days - Moving towards geospatial over time
12:16 - Problems change over time
16:15 - Scale changes too
20:48 - Contributing to Amazon’s Open Data Registry
26:16 - Making Sentinel data more accessible
34:30 - Getting nerdy: What do Dask & Xarray mean for the future of geospatial data processing
40:16 - Moving towards more layers of abstraction
41:52 - Business model behind different open data contributions
45:11 - A game theory approach to Open Source
50:28 - The Openness of Geospatial compared to other fields
56:16 - Co-founding a company as a couple
1:04:21 - Preventing people “careering out” of the company
1:11:19 - People-focus growth
1:16:58 - Element84’s hiring process
1:21:14 - Changing culture as the company grows
1:27:54 - How Dan’s role has changed over the years
1:30:47 - The relevance (or not) of keeping a foot in the code as a CEO
1:33:29 - Opportunity cost from Dan’s point of view
1:36:34 - Book & podcast recommendations