GEO & Human Interoperability

Steven Ramage is my guest on Episode 157 of Inside Ideas with Marc Buckley.  Steven’s lowest grade (C) at school was geography, but he has been working in the geospatial sector and evangelizing location as the third global currency alongside time and money for the last two decades. Steven started studying French, German, Russian and Spanish in the 80s, but moved to commerce and information systems because his grandfather (who supported him through university) didn’t think languages would be useful! Today, Steven works in 3-4 languages most weeks, but his background in computing and information systems has served him well.     He works extensively on collective intelligence in an intergovernmental partnership spanning more than 100 countries and probably close to 1000 organisations with countless individual contributors. He believes in the words of Margaret Mead about the power of individuals and has been promoting the concept of human interoperability for over a decade. Steven would like organisations to think more about behaviour, incentives, and motivation as they develop data strategies and work towards access and sharing of data to address key global challenges, but he knows and understands that data is meaningless without buy in and use.    Steven was part of a management buyout, has created a government start-up, been on the board of an industry start-up and been in numerous leadership positions. He was a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (lapsed), is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was recently invited to be a Fellow of the World Economic Forum (not yet fulfilled). He’s a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Future Cities at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and an advisor to the UK Space Agency. He’s an avid storyteller and keeps thinking about writing a book. He’s also mentored 100+ younger, professional women in the geospatial sector.   earthobservations.org