Put the problem in the poem*...

*title courtesy of...Matthew Zapruder in conversation with Brad Listi on Otherppl podcast

What if the new year wasn’t about lofty claims and reimagining.

How about we just finish the stuff we started or said we would start but without the drama and champagne?

A big learning from 2024? The staying power of python for working with geospatial data. The first book I wrote with a traditional publisher, Python for Geospatial Data Analysis: Theory, Tools, and Practice for Location Intelligence, might be due for a refresh.

I am an Amazon Associate and get a few pennies if you use affiliate link…

It was a wild experience. Not at all what I expected but often in a good way. I continue to work with python especially when creating content for conference circuits. I notice what is new, recording aha moments that explain a concept so clearly that I wish I had discovered it sooner. I see all of the new libraries and AI integrations and can’t wait to begin exploring.

Time to update the introductory concepts I was discovering right along with you in the first book. Perhaps this is why, put the problem in the poem resonates with me. Often, the art of working something out needs a public breath of air. Long gone are any concerns of imposter syndrome or getting something not quite right. Hopefully Penny over on Amazon reviews has moved on to other writers to spew hateful rhetoric towards.

Years and years ago I pedaled 109 miles across a race course in Arizona. El Tour de Tucson was an epic adventure and fundraiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Foundation. Through the pain, exhaustion and mistakes I managed to finish with the silver medal wave of cyclists. I still hold the moments where I wanted to quit dear and close. But I also think of President Roosevelt when embarking on challenges of the spirit or the physical.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

―Theodore Roosevelt

My favorite thing about my little python book might be the young women that wait for me to come off the stage asking for me to sign their copies. We share ideas, journeys and workflows—always laughing and connecting no matter where we meet across the globe.

I am launching partie deux on behalf of these voices. The plan is to self publish so I can include the public in the development of the book. We covered much of the foundational information in book one although I will touch on concepts by way of review we will hop right into storytelling with geospatial python libraries!

Paid subscribers will get the chapters as they are drafted in their raw pre-edited form. The table of contents, although it might evolve along the way should be available around the first of the year.

Not to worry, I will share a few posts along the way for everyone but since this will be a self-funded labor of publishing we need a teeny paywall here and there.

There will continue to be free learning resources on YouTube as well as an affordable storytelling course on Udemy, Maps as a powerful metaphor for geospatial storytelling, currently 2 hr and 44 minutes of video content and growing…

If you are anything like me I assume you like to hear about vulnerabilities and spontaneous decisions that don’t make any sense. Well, meet Blue.

I went to grab a coffee on the Upper East Side with my son Harrison. Yada yada yada — I now have a second dog. It was that skeptical arched eyebrow that did me in…

Fa la la la my friends…