Since he was a child, Graham has loved all things maps, poring over copies of National Geographic in rural Dorset in England. Later in life, he turned that passion into a physical sciences degree with a laundry list of majors and minors, such as hydrology, cartography, remote sensing, and surveying and computing. All while collecting a growing stack of paper maps from travels around the world.
Throughout an impressive 4-decade career, Graham added more digital mapping skills to his belt as paper maps were quickly replaced by bits and bytes. The promise of this rapidly evolving tech was amazing, heralding a new era where maps were online and available to everyone. But while technology improved and geospatial data exploded, the map world remained largely a specialist domain, outside of navigation uses.
Then while Graham was harnessing the tech and building an open global oceans geodatabase, he met a startup company in Australia, building a platform that also used advanced technology to open up the mapping world to all. He joined the mission as a Product Champion for
Soar, rejuvenating his inner ‘map geek’ and reigniting his childhood excitement.
“With a shared passion to break down the geospatial silos, the synergy was obvious and infectious.” says Graham. “The rest as they say is history and, perhaps in hindsight, inevitable”.