125: Dan Pilone and the Impatient Optimists of Element 84

There are *billions* of dollars' worth of invaluable imagery, information, and data available, for free from NASA, NOAA, ESA, and more but unfortunately, sometimes it can be hard to get to… and hard to use. The folks at Element 84, a software development firm specializing in large scale geospatial data systems and remote sensing believe that the more they can help make that data accessible and usable, the more we can learn about our planet and how it's changing.

"How hard can it be?" is a question Dan Pilone often asks his team. As the CEO & CTO of Dan oversees the architecture, design, and development for Element 84's commercial and government data clients including NASA, USGS, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Capella Space. "

About Element 84 "We are impatient optimists."

"It's not magic, but it can *feel* like that - you can literally *see* the world changing, see storms, progress of wildfires, patterns of burning and growth, how to plan for changing water levels, how to help people impacted by disasters, or even just see some fantastic images of leaves changing in the fall.... Space gives us an incredible view of the planet we live on- and we want as many people to be able to take advantage of that unique view as possible." – Dan Pilone

More at: www.element84.com

Dan mentions:

FunCube: https://amsat-uk.org/funcube/funcube-cubesat/

More about Dan Pilone:

​Dan has supported NASA's Earth Observing System for over 15 years; currently acting as Chief Technologist for the NASA EOSDIS Evolution and Development contract. He has supported transitioning NASA's Petabyte scale archive to the cloud, contributed to metadata standards, led multiple working groups on data services and cloud architectures, authored studies on architecture and transition plans for cloud-native data management solutions, and helped shape software development processes for both government and commercial clients. Mr. Pilone has authored multiple books on software development and taught Software Engineering at Catholic University in Washington DC.