Writing
Long-form, occasionally opinionated, grounded in the systems we build and eighteen years in GIS. We publish when we have something to say, which is not every week.
August 14, 2026
The economics that let a one-person practice run real client systems on infrastructure that costs less than a team lunch, and the honest point where a single cheap box stops being the right answer.
August 8, 2026
The single design decision that separates a spatial-AI demo from a system fit for regulated work: the model plans, and typed code executes.
August 1, 2026
The point of automating a small firm isn't headcount. It's giving the owner back the one hour a week they spend reconstructing what already happened.
July 22, 2026
A field guide to porting a legacy ArcPy codebase off proprietary tooling: the parts that lift out in an afternoon, and the parts that will eat your quarter if you promise a date too early.
July 8, 2026
Bolting a chat box onto a spatial database is a weekend demo. The part that makes it trustworthy, and slow to build, is everything the demo skips.
May 18, 2026
The constraint is the client. Notes on why we choose to build inside procurement rules, records law, and audit trails, and what it does to the work.
February 9, 2026
GIS departments are asked to make maps. What institutions actually need from them is a durable record of why anyone believed anything about the ground.
October 27, 2025
Why we cap the practice at five, what breaks at six, and the arithmetic of teams small enough that everyone has read the source data.