Key Takeaways from GEOINT 2018

I just returned from GEOINT, in Tampa, Florida. GEOINT is an annual conference hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) that gathers professionals from across the geospatial intelligence community. Think satellites, aerial photography, drones, and other kinds of sensors flying in the sky to better understand the world we live in. Interestingly, the makeup of the conference mixes up government programs and agencies, established large companies, and startups. It’s a chance for government agencies, especially the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), to meet with industry to learn about the latest technology advancements and explore opportunities to work together.

Here are a few of my takeaways from GEOINT 2018.

• Startups are hot - this was my first GEOINT and I represent Descartes Labs, a startup trying to build a data refinery for geospatial data. I came in worried that we’d be a lone voice. Turns out that not only were we one of hundreds of startups at the conference, but the geospatial community at large is embracing startups in a way I hadn’t imagined.
• “Public-private partnerships” is a common phrase - no longer is all R&D in the secret halls of the government and three-letter agencies. Remember that satellites were classified for four decades, so this is a huge leap. The government has seen organizations like Google and Facebook move very quickly in implementing AI in commercial products and they want to tap into that kind of innovation. Not only did government officials want to know what Descartes Labs was doing with the government, they wanted to understand our commercial engagements, since that is a measure of how much private investment is going into the company to allow us to innovate.
• “Evolve” is better than “disrupt” - one of the key roles in geospatial intelligence is the analyst. These analysts have built up decades of experience and intuition about the way the world works, but people and expertise are difficult to scale. This makes the best path of forward progress about augmentation and empowerment, not replacement or disruption. The question for government is not when a machine replaces as person, but how machine and human can partner together to create better workflow.
• There are a zillion data startups, and it’s not just pictures - Capella Space, Blacksky, Planet, HE360, Spire, Trident Space, and numerous others data providers are taking innovative steps to launch and operate revolutionary capabilities at a rapid clip.  If you include all of the ground and internet-based data startups the list only gets longer. One of the most exciting aspects of all of the new data sources going online is that it’s not just optical. There are a number of interesting synthetic aperture radar sensors, which are active sensors that penetrates clouds. Not to mention radio frequency, hyperspectral, video, and many ground-based sensors.
• The government is moving fast - The government has not been caught unawares by technology, and is trying to develop an advantage as the culture changes. This was made even more clear by announcements like NGA’s GeoWorks, which “enables users to openly collaborate and collectively develop new geospatial tools and capabilities in a data science environment using unclassified geospatial data.”
• The next phase will be to organize all of the data - the government is going to be swimming in a sea of new data sources and value-added products and will need new kinds of software and analysis to organize and make sense of all of the data. There was open excitement from government officials this year about new data sources and keen interest in knowing when and why a source is useful and how to get the right data into the hands of an analyst. For a company with a global-scale intelligence platform, we got a clear picture at GEOINT about how relevant and timely our technology is and how it will help open doors to entirely new ways of thinking for the government about geospatial information and intelligence.

It’s never been a more exciting time to be a part of the geospatial community. I’m looking forward to another exciting GEOINT in 2019.