The Saturday Satellites

At the beginning of the year, I've recorded a short video and submitted for the PARSEC – a niche-specific acceleration program in Earth Observation.

After a long p2p selection process, I've got an email saying that my video was voted among top 100 others and passed through the Stage 1. That includes a €10K equity-free funding, coaching, matchmaking, and promotion.

Next stop is a Bootcamp in Stuttgart and the opportunity to coop with other teams to compete for more serious funding.

It's super exciting to finally get signals that you're on the right track!

I've talked with another expert in Earth Observation, Dr Geoff Smith from Spectro Natura Ltd. As a result, here's the interview. Really happy to get some traffic and visibility – people keep saying that this content is really valuable for the EO community.

Still, the BuyMeACoffee button doesn't bring a lot – just one-two cups per interview. That's not even covering the costs of production (e.g. editor's services).

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on my Interviews with EO Influencers project.

I've sent out the first interview (https://thesatsat.com/sinergise/) via my newsletter on Saturday and published the link on Twitter, Reddit and HN today. Happy to see positive feedback, many RTs and likes.

Also, one reader even paid with for a coffee via BuyMeACoffee. That's a big deal for me actually.

I've started with my blog – https://thesatsat.com – about 6 months ago, and soon I realised that most of my audience and experts are on Twitter. Therefore, I tried to be more or less active there: tweeting and sharing my work, following the key experts, liking and commenting.

It was a New Year’s Eve when I came up with a new idea: a list on Twitter with Influencers in Earth Observation to follow in 2020.

Immediately, I made a call for contributors - asked people to mention their favourite accounts. Next morning, I was amazed to see that the whole thing went viral!

A few retweets by influencers with tens of thousands of followers brought enormous visibility — those 6 months of engagement were worth it!

All that day I kept adding people to the list, and soon it grew over 200. I’ve also tried to follow every other person and often got followed back.

It was an incredible growth hacking experience achieved in such a short period of time!

Climate and environmental issues are rarely discussed in the media. And when they are discussed, data is often poor or misinterpreted. After my kids were born, I started asking myself: "What can I do about it?"

This Summer I went interviewing environmental journalists from all over the world. I wanted to learn more about the way they do their jobs and about the problems they face. I did twelve. As expected, most of them told me that they often struggle with Earth Observation data.

Now it was a perfect opportunity to leverage my domain knowledge, technical skills, and entrepreneurial experience.

That's why I started a blog and a newsletter about things around Earth Observation called The Saturday Satellites.