Spatial Thoughts Newsletter #47
Cloud-Native Remote Sensing with Python, GeoLibre, Building Your Geospatial Portfolio, Reflections on AI
New Course: Cloud Native Remote Sensing with Python
Building a learning resource for a completely open-source, cloud-agnostic stack was one of the more challenging projects I undertook this year. Finally, I launched our Cloud Native Remote Sensing with Python course - modeling it closely on our very popular End-to-End Google Earth Engine course - showing how the same results can be achieved with a completely open-source stack and without having to learn a proprietary API. The course helps you navigate the vast ecosystem to build fast, reproducible Python-based workflows with zero vendor lock-in.
If you work with satellite imagery, land cover, climate, or geospatial data in Python, this is worth a look. ⬇️
As usual, all the course materials are freely available and released under a liberal CC-BY license. If you’d like to join a live instructor-led class, you can join our next global cohort for this course.
GeoLibre: An open-source GIS you didn’t know you wanted
GeoLibre is my new favorite open-source project. It is a web-based GIS that runs in your browser - no installation, no login and no download. It can load and view any geospatial data you throw at it, comes with hundreds of processing tools that work out-of-the-box, can create story maps and 3D tours - and a lot more. It has become my go-to tool for daily geospatial work, and I cannot emphasize how big of a deal it is. You should definitely head over and check out GeoLibre Web. Kudos to Dr. Quisheng Wu for building a truly modern GIS for the cloud era.
See my video on how to use it to create interactive story maps. ⬇️
New Workshop: Building Your Geospatial Portfolio Website
For the longest time, it was on my wishlist to create a beginner-friendly workshop on Git and GitHub. I finally built and launched a new workshop Building Your Geospatial Portfolio Website, which is a gentle introduction to Git, GitHub, and Web Development. If you are a geospatial professional and do not have a personal website yet, I highly recommend following the workshop. You’ll end up with a beautiful, modern and customized portfolio website that is hosted for free on GitHub Pages and ready to be shared with your network. Get started ⬇️
If you need inspiration, you can check out the portfolios created by Luciano Rivas, Somdeep Kundu, Alex Maverick Pabillaran, Gokul Gopan and Yashas Ramesh after taking this class.
If you’d like to join our next instructor-led class where you’ll build your portfolio alongside a group of peers and receive personalized support, sign up on the waitlist for the next live cohort later this year.
Reflections on AI as an Educator
Lastly, I’ll leave you with some of my thoughts on how AI is changing how we learn and how to keep your skills relevant. I published a new blog post Reflections on AI as an Educator, with some concrete examples from the geospatial world on how to navigate the evolving AI landscape.