Minds Behind Maps

Ep 8 - Joe Morrison - Selling Satellite Imagery, Synthetic Aperture Radar & Making Predictions in Public

Oct 28, 2021

02:20:33

Joe Morrison is the VP of Commercial Product at Umbra, who builds & operates Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites. He is determined to make satellite imagery more accessible, and has shared many of his thoughts about the Earth Observation industry on this blog "A Closer Look with Joe Morrison".

We talk about how buying satellite imagery is not a solved problem, how he builds a team and how Umbra is trying to change how satellite imagery is sold. Joe compares the current Earth Observation market to the railroad companies of a few hundred years ago, and we discuss making predictions in public.

Joe Morrison:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mouthofmorrison
Substack Blog: https://joemorrison.substack.com/welcome
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-morrison/

Time stamps:

6:30 - Episode begins, Joe presents himself
8:48 - How does a people person end up in the map business?
10:25 - Joe's story entering the geospatial field
15:15 - People who use the word "geospatial" hate maps
21:20 - Is "New Space" changing the industry?
- (22:25 - Audio starts degrading a bit)
29:00 - Why work on the infrastructure when applications are lacking?
32:20 - Why Joe joined Umbra
34:25 - What if buying X were like sat imagery
37:25 - Is infrastructure ever solved?
- (Audio is better again)
40:18 - The importance of the people we work with
49:05 - Space attracts people
53:12 - Working with people who’ve interacted with your content & how we both create our content
59:22 - Coming from a Space background
1:06:10 - Fighting impostor syndrome
1:10:55- A great team isn’t just great people
1:17:40 - Is Umbra a data company?
1:26:00 - Moving towards selling data as cheap as possible
1:31:25 - Relationship between image providers and Defense & Governments
1:36:10 - Umbra’s target audience
1:42:58 - The technical barrier to entry and Joe’s thoughts on Analysis Ready Data
1:45:40 - SAR imagery isn’t valuable in it’s own, it’s like salt
- (Audio quality drops again a bit)
1:52:28 - Making predictions about the industry in public
2:00:33 - Insanity & Obsessions
- (Audio quality is good again)
2:08:02 - Joe’s Book Recommandation

Show notes:

Umbra: https://umbra.space/
Azavea: https://www.azavea.com/
NACIS (National American Cartographic Information Society): https://nacis.org/
GIS definition, video of guy trying to explaining his job to non geo people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4YsAjreOA
Musk presenting Starship in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Uyfqi_TE8
Joe’s prediction Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/mouthofmorrison/status/1447917122772946951?s=20
Book recommendation: “A river runs through it” by Norman Maclean
Band recommendation: Lawrence, their latest album: Hotel TV

Please feel free to reach out!