Gary Gale

Posts about lokku

Of Geocoders, Open Cages, Mapping APIs and Going It Alone

one of these posts, in fact it's been almost a year. A lot has happened since December of 2013, when I wrote "Who knows precisely where 2014 will take me?". To be more precise, this is where 2014 took me ...

Firstly if you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that my blogging and tweeting frequencies have dropped right off. Put it this way, someone's been paying attention.

you-tweeted

Emerging from the embrace of the large corporate mapping organisation that used to be Ovi Maps, dallied briefly with the name Nokia Maps and ended up calling itself HERE Maps, I found myself in the complete antithesis of a corporate. I joined Ed and Javier at Lokku, in the trendy part of London known as Clerkenwell, with possibly the best job title I've ever had; I was Lokku's Geotechnologist in Residence. I've known Ed and Javier for a good number of years and have watched them grow Nestoria and reinvigorate and rejuvenate London's #geomob meetup. I knew this was going to be a very different experience.

On my first day in the Lokku office, Ed thrust a piece of paper into my hand, saying "here's your email login credentials, the wifi password and how to access the wiki; your induction is now complete" ... and it was. So what does a resident geotechnologist actually do? The first and foremost task was to sort out Lokku's lack of an espresso machine and to run a tech talk, briefing the rest of the team on how to make the hot, caffienated beverage that the geo industry relies on. See? I told you this wasn't going to be your everyday corporate existence.

Armed with a fresh, hot espresso I took a look at the technology that Lokku and Nestoria had put in place. My hunch was that to make Nestoria work well across the countries they served, the Lokku crew had solved one of industry's key puzzles, namely how to geocode address listings well in countries that don't really take the need for unique addresses that seriously. My hunch was good and I came up with a series of recommendations to the Lokku board on what they should do next, this included the concept of what Ed later termed as a meta-geocoder.

A meta-geocoder does the same as the geocoders that the larger geo companies have; a single geocoding interface with multiple geocoders hidden behind, each one doing what it does well, be that country specific geocoding, or language specific geocoding or some other speciality. With the help of the incredibly smart Marc Tobias Metten, one of the few people I know who can get a global Nominatim instance up and running, we built what's now become the OpenCage Geocoder.

greenwich

When you're in a small organisation you have to roll your sleeves up and be prepared to get your hands dirty. Need a website? You end up writing it yourself. Need code samples and scripting language wrapper? Write them yourself too. Need to launch a product? You end up writing a talk, getting yourself to an applicable conference, in this case State of the Map EU, and launch it yourself.

sotm-eu

In the six months I spent at Lokku, Ed, myself and MTM brought an entire geocoding API from the roughest of concept notes to something that's up and running and is, to paraphrase Aaron Straup Cope, a real thing and it's a thing that I'm very proud of. I also became one of the select group known as the Lokku Alumni, and that meant I got another map to add to the collection.

lokku-alumnus

My stint at Lokku ended in July of this year and overnight I transformed myself from being a resident geotechnologist to being an uncivil servant and taking on the role of Head of APIs for the oldest mapping agency in the world, the UK's Ordnance Survey. In doing so, I also struck out into the murky waters of consulting and, together with Alison, founded Malstow Geospatial. The story of how Malstow got its name is the subject for another blog post entirely.

So for now, I've swapped getting on a plane to Berlin on a weekly basis and taking the train and Tube to Clerkenwell on a daily basis and instead joined the daily diaspora out of London and down the Southampton, where the Ministry of Maps makes its home.

occulus I've spent the last 4 months working out best how to bring the Ordnance Survey's maps to the internet and the internet to the OS. Much is happening and I've found myself an amazing team of geotechnologists and cartographers. As soon as there's something to show for our endeavours, you'll probably read about it here first.

"Who knows where 2014 will take me?" It's been one heck of a ride and a whole lot of fun and hard work combined. Now let's see what happens in 2015 ...

It's been a while since I've written one of these posts, in fact it's been almost a year. A lot has happened since December of 2013, when I wrote "Who knows precisely where 2014 will take me?". To be more precise, this is where 2014 took me ...

Firstly if you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that my blogging and tweeting frequencies have dropped right off. Put it this way, someone's been paying attention.

you-tweeted

Emerging from the embrace of the large corporate mapping organisation that used to be Ovi Maps, dallied briefly with the name Nokia Maps and ended up calling itself HERE Maps, I found myself in the complete antithesis of a corporate. I joined Ed and Javier at Lokku, in the trendy part of London known as Clerkenwell, with possibly the best job title I've ever had; I was Lokku's Geotechnologist in Residence. I've known Ed and Javier for a good number of years and have watched them grow Nestoria and reinvigorate and rejuvenate London's #geomob meetup. I knew this was going to be a very different experience.

On my first day in the Lokku office, Ed thrust a piece of paper into my hand, saying "here's your email login credentials, the wifi password and how to access the wiki; your induction is now complete" ... and it was. So what does a resident geotechnologist actually do? The first and foremost task was to sort out Lokku's lack of an espresso machine and to run a tech talk, briefing the rest of the team on how to make the hot, caffienated beverage that the geo industry relies on. See? I told you this wasn't going to be your everyday corporate existence.

Armed with a fresh, hot espresso I took a look at the technology that Lokku and Nestoria had put in place. My hunch was that to make Nestoria work well across the countries they served, the Lokku crew had solved one of industry's key puzzles, namely how to geocode address listings well in countries that don't really take the need for unique addresses that seriously. My hunch was good and I came up with a series of recommendations to the Lokku board on what they should do next, this included the concept of what Ed later termed as a meta-geocoder.

A meta-geocoder does the same as the geocoders that the larger geo companies have; a single geocoding interface with multiple geocoders hidden behind, each one doing what it does well, be that country specific geocoding, or language specific geocoding or some other speciality. With the help of the incredibly smart Marc Tobias Metten, one of the few people I know who can get a global Nominatim instance up and running, we built what's now become the OpenCage Geocoder.

greenwich

When you're in a small organisation you have to roll your sleeves up and be prepared to get your hands dirty. Need a website? You end up writing it yourself. Need code samples and scripting language wrapper? Write them yourself too. Need to launch a product? You end up writing a talk, getting yourself to an applicable conference, in this case State of the Map EU, and launch it yourself.

sotm-eu

In the six months I spent at Lokku, Ed, myself and MTM brought an entire geocoding API from the roughest of concept notes to something that's up and running and is, to paraphrase Aaron Straup Cope, a real thing and it's a thing that I'm very proud of. I also became one of the select group known as the Lokku Alumni, and that meant I got another map to add to the collection.

lokku-alumnus

My stint at Lokku ended in July of this year and overnight I transformed myself from being a resident geotechnologist to being an uncivil servant and taking on the role of Head of APIs for the oldest mapping agency in the world, the UK's Ordnance Survey. In doing so, I also struck out into the murky waters of consulting and, together with Alison, founded Malstow Geospatial. The story of how Malstow got its name is the subject for another blog post entirely.

So for now, I've swapped getting on a plane to Berlin on a weekly basis and taking the train and Tube to Clerkenwell on a daily basis and instead joined the daily diaspora out of London and down the Southampton, where the Ministry of Maps makes its home.

occulus I've spent the last 4 months working out best how to bring the Ordnance Survey's maps to the internet and the internet to the OS. Much is happening and I've found myself an amazing team of geotechnologists and cartographers. As soon as there's something to show for our endeavours, you'll probably read about it here first.

"Who knows where 2014 will take me?" It's been one heck of a ride and a whole lot of fun and hard work combined. Now let's see what happens in 2015 ...

Farewell Ovi, Nokia And HERE; It's Time To Open The Next Door

I left the Geo Technologies group at Yahoo! and departed from a very Californian large company to take up a new role with a very Finnish large company called Nokia. Though Nokia started life as the merger between a paper mill operation, a rubber company and a cable company in the mid 1800's, by the time I joined Nokia it was best known for mobile and smart phone handsets and the software that makes these ubiquitous black mirrors work.

In addition to mobile data connectivity, apps and GPS, one of the things that defines a smartphone is a maps app and the suite of back-end platforms that drive that app as well as all of the other APIs that enable today's smartphone location based services. Just as TomTom acquired digital map maker Tele Atlas in 2008, Nokia had acquired rival maps provider NAVTEQ in 2007, putting in place the foundations for Nokia's maps and turn-by-turn navigation products, part of the company's Ovi brand of internet services.

This may be a personal foible but when I join a new company I mentally set myself two targets. The first is what I want to achieve with that company. The second is how long it will take to achieve this. If you reach the first target then the second is a moot point. But if the first target doesn't get reached and your self allocated timescale is close to coming to an end, then it's time to take stock.

Sometimes you can extend that timescale; when reaching your achievement target is so so close and you can be happy to stretch those timescales a little. Sometimes though this just doesn't work, not necessarily for any reason of your own making. Large companies are strange beasts and a strategic move which is right for the company may not align with your own targets and ideals.

In 2010, I left the Geo Technologies group at Yahoo! and departed from a very Californian large company to take up a new role with a very Finnish large company called Nokia. Though Nokia started life as the merger between a paper mill operation, a rubber company and a cable company in the mid 1800's, by the time I joined Nokia it was best known for mobile and smart phone handsets and the software that makes these ubiquitous black mirrors work.

In addition to mobile data connectivity, apps and GPS, one of the things that defines a smartphone is a maps app and the suite of back-end platforms that drive that app as well as all of the other APIs that enable today's smartphone location based services. Just as TomTom acquired digital map maker Tele Atlas in 2008, Nokia had acquired rival maps provider NAVTEQ in 2007, putting in place the foundations for Nokia's maps and turn-by-turn navigation products, part of the company's Ovi brand of internet services.

IMG_1559

I spent the first 18 months of my time with Nokia commuting weekly from London to Berlin, where the company's maps division was based. The pros of this weekly commute of almost 600 miles each way was rapid progression through British Airway's frequent flyer program, getting to know the city of Berlin really well and developing deep and lasting friendships with my team, who were behind the Ovi Places Registry, but more about them in a moment. The cons were living out of hotels on a weekly basis and the strain it placed on my family back in London.

IMG_0593

In 2011, Nokia pivoted its strategy as a result of new CEO Stephen Elop's infamous Burning Platform memo. The company's NAVTEQ division finally started to be integrated into Nokia, resulting in the rebranding of Ovi Maps to HERE Maps, by way of a brief spell as Nokia Maps and just before we were ready to ship the next major revision of the Places Registry, effectively powering all the data you see on a map which isn't part of the base map itself, the project was shelved in favour of NAVTEQ based places platform. This was probably the right thing to do from the perspective of the company, but it had a devastating effect on my Berlin based team who had laboured long and hard. The team was disbanded; some found new roles within the company, some didn't and were laid off and after spending several months tearing down what I'd spent so long helping to create, an agonising process in itself even though it was the right thing to do, I moved to help found the company crowd mapping group, driving the strategy behind the HERE Map Creator product. Think of a strategy not dissimilar to OpenStreetMap or Google Map Maker, only with a robust navigation grade map behind it.

Gary-Gale

All of which is merely a prelude to the fact that after almost 4 years with Nokia I've been taking stock and it's time to move on. The door marked Nokia, Ovi and HERE is now closed and it's time to look to the next adventure in what could loosely be termed my career. The metaphor of doors opening and closing seems fitting as Ovi just happens to be the Finnish word for door.

There's been a lot of high points over the past 4 or so years. Launching Nokia's maps and location platform at the final Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Negotiating the places section of Nokia's first strategic deal with Microsoft in a meeting room set against the amazing backdrop of Reykjavik in the depths of an Icelandic winter. Judging the World Bank's Sanitation Hackathon in Dar es Salaam.

8239688161_a4267c0d8d_b

But most of the high points have been people.

Someone who leads a team is only as good as the team and in the original Ovi Places Registry team and the subsequent Nokia Places team I found an amazing group of individuals, who made a roving Englishman feel very much at home in Berlin.

There's also been a lot of lows over the past 4 years, but I don't want to go into them here.

Instead, I want to close the door on the Nokia chapter with a brief mention to five people who made my time in Berlin so rich and rewarding. There's Aaron Rincover, HERE's UX lead, who taught me so much about the user experience in a relatively short period of time. There's also four members of the Places Registry team, Enda Farrell, Jennifer Allen, Mark MacMahon and Jilles Van Gurp, who made me welcome in a new city, who it was an absolute pleasure to work with and who will, I hope, remain close friends. Enda and Jennifer are still both at HERE as Senior Technical Architect and Product Manager and a damn fine ones at that. Mark and Jilles were amongst those who moved on when the Places team was disbanded and are now the founders of LocalStream. Thank you all of you.

So where next? My last two companies have been large multinational affairs, but to open 2014 I'm looking to keep things a lot smaller and more agile. I'm going to take some time to do some freelance consulting, still in the maps, location and geo space of course; this industry continues to grow and innovate at an astounding rate, why would I want to work anywhere else?

For the first quarter of 2014 I'm going to be joining London's Lokku, consulting for them as their Geotechnologist in Residence. Since 2006, Lokku have built up an impressive portfolio of geospatial and geotechnology assets under the lead of Ed Freyfogle and Javier Etxebeste, both alumni of Yahoo! like myself. Through the success of their Nestoria and Open Cage Data brands and the #geomob meetup, Lokku are in a great position to take their expertise in open geospatial data, OpenStreetMap data and open geospatial platforms to the next level. My role with Lokku will be to help them identify where that next level will be and what it will look like. It's going to be a refreshing change to move from the world of a large corporate, with staff ID badges and ID numbers to a world where everyone fits into the same, albeit large, room and where everyone literally knows everyone else. So say I'm excited by this challenge would be a massive understatement. If you want to know more about Lokku, check out their blog, Twitter feed or come and say hello.

As for the rest of 2014 and beyond, it's time to follow up on all those conversations that you tend to have about the next great thing in maps and location. Who knows precisely where 2014 will take me, but no matter where, it's going to be geotastic and I can't wait.