Hi everyone,
for several years now I have been a devoted reader of Christopher Beddow’s newsletter Worldbuilder. Chris works in the mapping team at internet giant Meta (having joined them when Meta acquired image crowd-sourcing platform Mapillary), and so he is in the frontline of thinking about how literally billions of people interact with maps and geospatial services every day. And for those who haven’t been following, Meta (unlike some of the other large internet brands!) have been significant supporters and users of OpenStreetMap over the last years.
It is that context that provides the though-provoking material for Worldbuilder, Chris’s semi-regular newsletter where he explores themes around mapping and geospatial and how we as a society interact with these new and continually developing technologies. As Worldbuilder’s tagline explains, this is a newsletter about “Building the virtual earth, OpenStreetMap, and the parallel reality of geospace”. This is very much a continuation of the discussion we attempt to foster (albeit in a much different format) at our Geomob events.
Thus, I am very pleased to announce that we are now a sponsor of Worldbuilder - you can see our ad near the top of yesterday’s edition, titled Synchronization of the Editable World.
I have to admit the sponsorship was at least partially motivated by the desire to nudge Chris to a more consistent and regular publishing schedule, and am pleased to report he has set that as a goal for 2025. I encourage you to subscribe to the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out.
We look forward to many more thoughtful editions of Worldbuilder in the coming months and years, and are delighted that we could play a small part in supporting the project. One of many things we do to try to give back to the geospatial community.
Keep up the great work, Christopher!
- Ed
Final note, it is my hope to speak with Chris on the Geomob podcast in the near future to discuss the themes has has been exploring on Worldbuilder. Stay tuned!
Final, final note - long-time readers will of course have noted that we interviewed Chris here on the blog all the way back in 2018 about OpenStreetMap in Montana, where he is originally from. Also an interesting read.