Vacation

Hard to believe the Outer Banks kept me for a full week. Yes, beach and pool every day, golf with in-laws and daughters, compelling eats... delightful. But who does the uninterrupted vacation? Pressing commercial concerns always seem to intrude.

This year, the canceled talk and careful planning made it possible. A little luck too... one RFP hit four days after return, not at the beginning of vacation.

Admittedly, I'm happy to be back working the day to day issues, but quite grateful for last week's change in scenery.

Maps and Routes

This week we briefed our business plan to the Harvard Business School New Venture contest. We described a pad market that will grow to $60 billion in 2015 and target segments including outdoor leisure and military/Homeland Defense.

While envisioning an easy to use interface for off-road route planning (and selecting maps or map data) may not be trivial, the top-level interface can be captured on "story board" within a couple weeks. The true challenge is managing standards according to the Federal Geographic Data Committee and the Open Geospatial Consortium, while delivering the easy to use interface on a pad.

We're looking for GIS, GPS and map data gurus. Folks with a deep understanding of pad hardware implementation and futures would help. Outdoors-y folks aren't necessarily tech-y folks, so hitting this market well requires a dramatic improvement in approachability... visit geo-pad.com for more info.