episode 16: Ep 16 - Dan Pilone - Element84, Large Scale Computing, Enabling Open Data & People Focused Growth
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.
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About Dan:
- Element84 website
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
Show notes:
- Earth Search
- Book & podcast recommendation:
- Great game of business Unlocking the Power and Profitability of Open-Book Management by Jack Stack, Bo Burlingham
- Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships and Our Path to Equity by Melvin J. Gravely II
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- Manager Tools podcast
- Tugboat Group
- Interview with Dan & his wife Tracey on co-founding Element84 together
Please feel free to reach out!
- My Twitter
- For news about the podcast
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