A manifesto for the growth of geospatial

A group of industry leaders at the 2025 #NORTH51 conference is charting a new course for the geospatial sector with their “#GEOFESTO” — a #manifesto outlining five key principles to drive #innovation and #impact in a rapidly changing world.
Author

Ralph Straumann

Published

July 24, 2025

A group of eleven participants1 from the 2025 NORTH512 conference have published a manifesto for the geospatial industry3. The authors’ motivation and ambition are stated as follows (emphasis mine):

Every headline now has a latitude and longitude. Wildfires darken skies half a continent away, supply chains reroute in hours, and satellite images expose current events before diplomats can draft statements. In this high-velocity world, whoever understands “where” outpaces the competition, protects communities, and shapes policy.

Geospatial is no longer a specialist’s hobby; it is a critical input to decision-making. This document, a “GEOFESTO,” lays out the principles and emerging trends that let practitioners ride the wave instead of drowning beneath it.

The group proposes the following five principles:

Much more is explored in the manifesto.

I am convinced that manifestos (as well as strategies) – and even more so, the discussions they spark – can truly drive change and help achieve goals that go beyond everyday business.4

I wonder what should be included in a manifesto for the geospatial industry in Switzerland in 2025.

Footnotes

  1. Kurtis Broda, Jon Neufeld, Tammy Peterson, Tee Barr, Ben Tuttle, Cade Justad-Sandberg, Kyle Ryan, Sarah Pryor, Andrew House, Will Cadell, Sam Rondeel↩︎

  2. NORTH51 is an annual conference in Canada, a self-described “dynamic gathering that embodies the spirit of modernization in the geospatial industry (…) [uniting] entrepreneurs passionate about bringing a platform to the industry to share grand, global, market-changing ideas.”↩︎

  3. They call it “GEOFESTO”, thankfully with a self-aware irony: “Paying homage to our community’s insistence on adding the prefix “geo” to almost any word. (…)”↩︎

  4. Hence, I have written or co-written some manifestos myself, for example the GeoBeer Manifesto (2013), the Data Worker’s Manifesto (2014), and “Connecting the Dots” (2024).↩︎