Later this month, TerraGo will mark its 12th year delivering software and solutions for our customers. The history goes back further, but 12 years is a long time in software and technology. The iPhone didn’t exist, being released, coincidentally on TerraGo’s second anniversary in 2007. What didn’t exist then is deemed an economic necessity today.

We’re doing some exciting new stuff in the realm of zero-code apps with our work with TerraGo Magic, but the more I think about it, it’s as much riffing on a theme as it is something completely new. We’ve always been in the zero-code app business with our GeoPDF software and TerraGo Toolbar. In hindsight, we should have called GeoPDF GeoPDApp – Geospatial Portable Document-Application. The F in PDF stands for format, and formats, by-and-large, are not interesting, and the undue focus people seem to put on GeoPDF-as-format is to miss the point.

People spend all this time collecting and curating data, distilling expertise and insight, creating cartographic products (map is too limited a word for what many folks make with ArcMap) and at the end of it all, they print out a piece of paper or a PNG to embed in a Word doc or PowerPoint. What Publisher customers do for the consumers of their hard-won products is give them the option to have a GeoPDApp by publishing a GeoPDF map that has a wealth of interactive capabilities unlocked by TerraGo Toolbar with no coding for the map maker and no cost for the map consumer.

At GEOINT 2017 held this year in San Antonio, TX, Robert Cardillo, director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, spoke about the role of GEOINT and how it will drive the next generation of intelligence in his keynote address, “Riding the Wave.”

Robert Cardillo, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, speaks to the GEOINT 2017 symposium June 5. Credit: USGIF