How Standards Emerge: Lessons from STAC

[Jed's audio in this sounds terrible because of a hardware setting that Marshall Moutenot very kindly helped us identify. Will sound better in future episodes!]Jed talks with Matt Hanson from Element 84 about the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification and its role in making geospatial data findable and usable. Matt describes STAC as "a simple, developer-friendly way to describe geospatial data so that people can actually find it and use it." The conversation covers how STAC emerged from a 2017 sprint in Boulder with 20 people and grew into a specification now adopted by NASA, USGS, and commercial satellite companies worldwide. Matt discusses the concept of "guerrilla standards," why adoption is the only metric that matters, the limitations of remote sensing, and why credibility can't be skipped when launching standards efforts.Full show notes and transcript: https://greatdataproducts.com/episodes/2025/12/hanson-stac/Links and Resources:STAC Specification: https://stacspec.org/STAC: A Retrospective, Part 2: https://element84.com/software-engineering/stac-a-retrospective-part-2-why-stac-was-successful/Emergent Standards white paper: https://tial.org/publications/white-paper-003-emergent-standards-enabling-collaborations-across-institutions/STAC Auth Proxy: https://github.com/developmentseed/stac-auth-proxy FilmDrop UI: https://console.demo.filmdrop.element84.com/Planet Planetary Variables: https://www.planet.com/products/planetary-variables/CommonSpace: https://www.commonspace.world/"You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc9F0bh5OXcGreat Data Products is brought to you by Source Cooperative: https://source.coop