Hamed Alemohammad: Open Machine Learning for Satellite Imagery - MBM#34

Hamed Alemohammad was the previous Executive Director of the Radiant Earth Foundation, a Non-Profit focused on building open machine learning tools & datasets for satellite imagery through projects like the ML Hub & STAC, Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog. --- Episode Sponsor: OpenCageUse OpenCage for your geocoding needs with their API. They have a generous Free trial you can sign up to! ---About Hamed - Twitter- LinkedInShownotesLandCoverNetPaperML Hub datasetsRadiant Earth FoundationData DrivenClark names inaugural director of Clark Labs: Center for Geospatial AnalyticsBook RecommendationAtomic Habits by James ClearTimestamps 00:00 Introduction 03:01 Hamed's Interest for Earth Observation 08:53 Joining the Radiant Earth Foundation 10:25 What is the Radiant Earth Foundation? 12:14 Why a Non-Profit? 15:34 Finances & Incentives: Where does the money come from? 19:10 Choosing to focus on Machine Learning; ML Hub 26:43 Capacity & Community Building 30:42 Only a 10 people team 34:44 Comparing to Google Earth Engine, AWS & Microsoft Planetary Computer 41:01 Making Decisions & Measuring Progress in a Non-Profit 44:12 Machine Learning Competitions & Kaggle 48:22 Challenges of Working with External Organizations 51:19 Building Models is Sexy but only a small part of Machine Learning 55:55 Who is the ML Hub build for? 57:59 From Researcher to Executive Director 01:01:37 What does being on the Board of Directors Mean? 01:06:18 Hamed's Journey from Iran to working in the US 01:11:03 Advice for people outside the US & Europe 01:15:46 The limitations of English for a truly worldwide reachFeel free to reach out! - Website- My Twitter- Podcast Twitter- Read Previous Issues of the Newsletter- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work