Interested in maps, satellite images & all things geospatial
Netherlands
Joined May 2017
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After 7 years as a geospatial data scientist, I quit my job.
I'm going all in to tell you stories hidden in satellite data
I've worked on cocoa and coffee supply chain monitoring, near real time flood maps with radar satellites that see through clouds, mapped trees in 3D to prevent wildfires and built pipelines that analyse crop yields at the scale of the US
But I've always kept going back to telling stories
I've done 70+ interviews of data scientists, CEOs, engineers, policy makers and artists all trying to better understand the impact of data, maps & satellites images in our lives
I've made videos seen by hundreds of thousands of people on how satellite & maps work.
So now I'm going all in
I believe the worlds need more people telling stories, of people; that statistics and data changes the world, but people and stories are what resonate.
A few weeks ago I already put a video out with @OurRadiantEarth about millions of people being miscounted in Argentina. One of the largest press outlets picked the story up, and now there's a conversation about this problem, that's what I want to go do
This is probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life, but I'm also really excited about it
If you're a company doing cool, impactful stuff with satellite images, geospatial & data and can't get the world to pay attention, let's work together.
I have some cool stories coming up and some collaborations in the pipes.
So, if that sounds cool, I'll see you around on the internets
This is a great piece
I think (like many others) that you should strongly fight the urge to ask your LLM of choice to write for you for most cases
Writing helps to think, editing helps to clarify
I don’t think those are things that can and really should be delegated
Made the previously paid article "Becoming a better writer" free.
I see too many devs writing low quality slop with AI. Hopefully this helps those of you who want to share more of your own experiences, using your own words - we need more of these!
newsletter.pragmaticengineer…
Some of the older Landsat designs art styles are awesome
ALT Landsat 8 mission design
ALT Landsat 9 mission design
ALT Landsat 3 concept art
ALT Landsat D (Landsat 4) Logo
There’s a chapter in @morganhousel's book ‘Psychology of Money’ that has had a lasting impact on me: The best story wins.
I wrote about how I think we need to tell better stories about data, science and maps
maxlenormand.com/posts/2026-…
The team at Ai2 also created an interactive site explaining the Earth embeddings they released, I really encourage you to take a look at it: narrative.allen.ai/olmoearth…
When I say I want to make data more accessible, this is exactly the kind of stuff I also want to make! (does anyone know who made this in the team? I want to nerd out with them!)
Max Lenormand retweeted
Go watch it its amazing
youtu.be/z0i-gtwCm98?is=BLaQ…
Max Lenormand retweeted
This guy makes awesome videos, most definitely worth the watch
I'm so f*cking proud so I'll share it again:
I pulled all the maps, weather, sun & moon patterns from all the GTA maps to compare to real data and find how real the games are
If you're into nerdy videos, I honestly think this one is gonna be worth your time
Here's the intro:
So many people commented they clicked on it and found this was worth their time
I even ruined one guy's sleep because it was too captivating
I don't care if this bragging, this was too much work for you not to watch it
Tweets from @ObbeVermeij like these were a primary source for the deep dive mapping video I did
What a time to be alive, x posts are the primary sources now
25 years ago, on October 22, 2001, Grand Theft Auto III was released.
This is the team that made it. (I'm second from the right)
Here's what I remember about making it.
For most of development, GTA3 was in a sorry state. It crashed frequently, the frame rate was terrible and the map was full of holes. Only in the last six months did everything come together.
For the longest time, it looked like the frame rate was going to be 20 fps. Only in the final months did we manage to hit 30.
In 1999, DMA Design, based in Dundee, Scotland, was going through some changes. The company had recently been bought by Take-Two Interactive, and a satellite office had opened in Edinburgh.
Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 had been finished in 1998, but there was no new project lined up. Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut started working on GTA3. Unprompted.
Meanwhile, the original GTA1 and GTA2 team had started work on GTA2.5, set in Miami. It was called 2.5 because it used the 2.5D (isometric) perspective.
In March 2000, the Dundee office was closed and GTA2.5 was cancelled. Take-Two/Rockstar gave GTA3 the green light.
Everything was written from scratch. Only two people worked on both GTA2 and GTA3, and no code or art from GTA2 was reused.
The way we worked was organic. People would come up with ideas for missions and we'd just try them. If they were fun, they were in. The story was secondary. In fact, the opening plot involving Catalina trying to kill Claude was added well into development.
Leslie Benzies (the producer) plastered a wall in the boardroom with Post-it notes. They were yellow, green and pink, representing missions, contacts and locations.
Missions were moved around all the time, often handed from one contact to another. Only once the voice acting was recorded were these things set in stone.
You sometimes come across locations on the map that are more detailed than you'd expect. Chances are there used to be a mission contact there that got moved elsewhere.
Working on GTA3 was a lot of fun. Every day there was something new going in. A new mission, radio station, car, pedestrian, building or whatever. The game was growing at an incredible rate.
Other than the multiplayer mode we did some work on, I can’t remember a lot of wastage.
Although everybody worked hard, I don't remember many people doing crazy hours. On the rare occasions I was in over the weekend, there were usually only one or two others. Even during crunch time, most people left the office around 9 or 10 in the evening.
I always thought it was better to work eight focused hours than spend your life in the office.
Although we liked the game, it wasn't at all clear that it would be a hit.
GTA3 had a disappointing showing at E3 in May 2001. Most people weren't interested, and those who were thought it was too violent.
It had an OK launch, but sales never tapered off.
Our office was in Leith, Edinburgh. It was a fairly run-down neighbourhood at the time. Just a couple of years before we arrived, J.K. Rowling had been writing the first Harry Potter in that very same neighbourhood.
The thing I remember most is the camaraderie. In a small team, everybody relies on each other and everybody has a lot of input. Most of us were young and had only recently moved to Edinburgh. We went to the pub together.
It felt like a group of friends who happened to be working on a project together.
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How real is the sun in GTA 3?
I pulled the sun's path form the game files and compared it to the real path of the sun in New York to find out
What are your favourite product launch or company vision videos?
Looking for some cool inspiration and people to follow
I think about this chart a bunch lately
It’s incredible that a dude in his bedroom like me can make 45min nerdy videos and literally hundreds of thousand of people watch it
Friends sent me pictures of them watching on their TV in the evening. They’re watching YT instead of putting on a movie
What wild times
The GTA mapping video is the most ambitious video I've made to date:
- Final video has 59 unique, individual animations over 43min
- I made 14 versions of the intro
- I experimented with over 156 different animations variations across the whole video
I made a Behind the Scenes on Patreon where I wanted to show you a bit about how I'm thinking about AI agents to make videos like this one possible while not creating slop, where I use them (and how) and where I don't.
I'll talk about:
- Pulling the maps straight from the game files
- Building my own QA tools to check the AI analysis
- Blender miniatures look intro animation across 14 versions
- Experimenting with animations in Claude Code: ~156 built, ~60 used
- Fact-checking a 10k word script
- What it all costs
This is also the best way to support this kind of work, co check it out here:
patreon.com/maxlenormand/pos…
The 'how real is GTA VI' video is gonna go hard
(Jk I don't have a PS5 :') )
Weasel News and Burger Shot physical ads on display in Miami for GTA 6.
(via: @OfficialJoelF & benjirr/TikTok)
