Always listen to your wife


As James Fee correctly points out, hardly a week goes by without Google dropping a bombshell. The latest few are the new functionality in the Google Maps Data API and the update to the Google Fusion Tables API. As Archie Belaney says in their comment, many basic geoweb sites from ESRI, Autodesk, MapInfo and Intergraph just started looking expensive.

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The GIS blogosphere is abuzz about these developments, so I will not rehash them here for you (you should read James’s blog post for the full scoop). Instead, I will tell you how my wife Mayia Entcheva, who knows very little about GIS, saw all this coming, back in 2005.

The year was 2005. I was working at a small startup. We were developing and marketing a web-based GIS application. It was written in Java, it was cross-platform, it had a small footprint, it was fast, and it was light-years ahead of ArcIMS – the dominant web-based GIS app at the time. We were going to take the GIS world by storm. We were going to be millionaires in no time. I was picking out color schemes for my Maserati.

Google was also doing something with mapping at the time, but it wasn’t GIS. It was a lightweight, consumer mapping app. It was called Google Maps. I showed it to my wife just for kicks, as a novelty. The following conversation occurred:

Wife: “Isn’t this what you guys are doing?”
Me: “No! We are doing much more. We are doing web-based GIS!”
Wife: “I think you should move on to something else.”

What did she know? She is an architect.

I left that startup anyway, for a different reason, and founded ENTCHEV GIS Architects in December of 2005. I shifted my focus away from application development and on to high-level design and GIS system integration. We are doing fine, but I still don’t drive a Maserati.

Always listen to your wife.

Posted by Atanas Entchev at 12/17/2009 10:42 AM
Categories: blog, Technology, GIS architect, Business, IMS, Maps, MapInfo, ENTCHEV, GIS, Online Mapping, Autodesk, Intergraph, ESRI, Google
Tags: blog Business IMS Maps MapInfo ENTCHEV ESRI GIS architect Online Mapping GIS Autodesk Intergraph Technology Google
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  • 12/17/2009 11:35 AM David wrote:
    ESRI is just starting to look expensive now?!
    1. 12/17/2009 2:04 PM atanas entchev wrote:
      It depends on your definition of "expensive." From an economists's perspective (I am not one), the only way to determine whether something is expensive or not would be to evaluate what *else* you could be doing with the money.

      If we go with that, back in, say, 2002, ArcIMS wasn't expensive, regardless of the numbers, because if you wanted a web-based map, it was ArcIMS or nothing. Not so today.
  • 7/25/2011 2:32 PM Mayia Entcheva wrote:
    Always listen to your wife.

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