Why I Joined Wherobots, Apache Sedona, Spatial Cypher & More!
Hi friend -
It's been a while since my last newsletter post so I'll share a bit about what I've been up to since the last update.
Why I Joined Wherobots & Getting Started With Apache Sedona
The biggest change for me is that I've left Neo4j and joined a new company called Wherobots! Wherobots is building a cloud-native spatial analytics and AI database.
As I said in my LinkedIn post, the main reason I joined Wherobots is that
Fundamentally I believe that the world's most pressing problems are geospatial in nature and Wherobots in at the center of emerging trends in geospatial data analytics.
I wrote a blog post that goes into a bit more detail about why I'm so excited for what Wherobots is building and the spatial data analytics space in general: "Why I Joined Wherobots Plus A Look At Apache Sedona"
In that blog post I also take a look at the Apache Sedona project, which is a spatial analytics framework created by the founders of Wherobots and at the foundation of the cloud-native spatial analytics data and AI engine that Wherobots is building.
Coming from Neo4j, this technology ecosystem is a bit new for me so I'm trying to "Learn In Public" while I get up to speed. As part of that effort I posted a "Getting Started With The Apache Sedona Docker Image" video on my YouTube channel that shows how to use Apache Sedona for some basic geoprocessing taks (in this case working with watershed data).
Working With Spatial Data In Neo4j
I've published a few posts, tutorials, and workshops about working with spatial data in Neo4j. The one I enjoyed making the most was the Spatial Cypher Cheat Sheet!
Introducing the Spatial Cypher Cheat Sheet - A resource for working with geospatial data in Neo4j
Importing Overture Maps Data Into Neo4j - A look at new public data from the Overture Maps Foundation using Neo4j's visual import / data modeling tool.
Spatial Search Functionality With Neo4j - How to perform spatial search operations with Neo4j using the Daylight Earth Table OSM distribution, plus a bit on routing with graph algorithms
Build A Routing Web App With Neo4j, OpenStreetMap, and Leaflet.js - A workshop we did on building a web app to find the shortest path between two points of interests, including full text search to power autocomplete dropdowns for search
Analyzing The Physical World With Graphs & Neo4j [video] - A workshop on using Neo4j and graph algorithms to analyze watershed data
Building Geospatial GraphQL APIs By Leveraging GraphQL Database Integrations [video] - Recording of my talk from GraphQL Conf 2023
What I'm Reading
"The Road to Composable Data Systems: Thoughts on the Last 15 Years and the Future" - From Wes McKinney, a look at the evolution of columnar data analytics tooling and why this is an exciting time for the data analytics industry
What's Next?
I've been traveling a bit recently for a few conferences: GraphQL Conf, NACIS, & All Things Open. Next week I'll be at FOSS4G NA with the rest of the Wherobots team. If you'll be in Baltimore for FOSS4G I hope you'll come by the Wherobots booth to say hi or join us at the Wherobots afterparty.
I'll be digging further into spatial data analytics, but I'd love to hear from you all what type of content, examples, demo apps, etc you'd like to see. Please feel free to reach out by replying to this email or schedule a call with me here.
Cheers!
Will