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We recently moved spatialthoughts.com from WordPress to a static site built with Hugo. The new site is a static site that is deployed with GitHub Actions to GitHub Pages. The redesign is not merely a frontend change, but enables us to automate the whole process of running our live cohort-based classes. The interesting part of the whole migration is the backend design - where all the data for our courses and cohorts is stored as YAML files - and all pages are generated from them. This post explains our design choices and how the new site is put together from the data files. The new spatialthoughts.com home page, built with Hugo ...

I was recently asked to deliver a session on Earth Science for kids. My daughter goes to an after-school science program at Max Science where they teach science with unique and fun hands-on experiments. They wanted to do an interactive session to introduce the kids to Earth Science and asked if I could deliver a guest talk for their kids in Grades 1 to 4. I loved the idea and developed a module titled The Science of Satellites to introduce the magic of remote sensing to primary school kids. The session ended up being a lot of fun, for the kids and me. In this post, I want to go through the materials and my experience teaching this session. All the content developed for this session - including high-resolution graphics - is available freely for download. Scroll to the bottom to find the download link. The 1.5 hour session was split into 3 parts: Part 1 Guess the Place A game to guess the place from satellite images Part 2: The Science of Satellites Learning what satellites do and how can you build and launch a satellite Part 3: Your Name from Space An activity where kids create their from letters seen from satellite images. ...

As everyone who is involved in teaching and training knows, the past few months have been hard. We all had to make changes to accommodate working from home and adopting online teaching methods. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, I used to conduct all my training in-person. Either hosting it at a training center or at a client location. My materials, structure and instruction style was tuned to this setup. I was skeptical whether the experience of a classroom can be replicated - even partially - online. Over the past 2 months, I have conducted numerous online training sessions. All my courses have been moved to a ’live’ online class and even started offering short-format classes. I did a lot of research, talked to other trainers and spent a considerable effort in trying to make this transition. I thought sharing some of the lessons and best practices here will help fellow educators. ...

I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on Geospatial Intelligence for #LetsTalkDeepTech Webcast hosted by Swiggy. I talked about the history and evolution of this space and gave a deep dive into solutions for deriving intelligence from imagery. Below is the a longer version of my talk on evolution of location intelligence with some references. I also share a copy of my presentation at the end. Hope you find it useful. Agree/Disagree with my views? Let me know in the comments. ...

A long pending weekend project is done. Printed, cut and folded a sturdy globe using the template from Le Paper Globe. This is not only fun, but a good prop to learn more about Geography. I envision it would make a fun do-it-yourself project with kids of all ages. ...

Many students have asked me for ideas on what topic they should choose for their Thesis. I have debated this myself when I was a student. The ideal topic would be the one that allows you to dive into a topic deeply as well as give you some practical skills that will help you landing a job. Here are some pointer that may help you make that decision. ...