Courtenay Teska
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Professional Philosophy


I create powerful and easy-to-use
 decision-making tools that help people in every walk of life
strengthen the interdependent web of existence.

My premise is that to do that successfully we have to make two worlds come together.

One world is cutting edge, hi tech,
where people create the means to store, access, value, manipulate,
cross-cut and query
the massive volumes of data.

The other world is "local" - where all "good data*" resides. 

The places where accurate, real time data reside and has to be collected,
the places where people need instant access to information
to make on-the-spot life-and-death decisions
aren't behind desks with massive server-supported mega-powerful computers.
Those places are local - in villages, on boats, in jeeps.

And even then, what works down a manhole in New York City or on a jeep in Wyoming
probably won't work in Cirebon Regency, West Java,
under the giant C19 iceberg in Antarctica
or on the road up the Caucus mountains to Ushguli, Republic of Georgia.

Which takes us back to the other world,
to tie in mobile computing and wireless telecommunications networks,
create partnerships and methods in a user-friendly,
field-ready and affordable-to-everybody way. 

* "good data" defined as accurate and valued (meaning possible to find out who collected it, when, under what conditions, how it was certified, what changes have occurred over time and when and why those changes took place)

Affiliations

Professional Mentors

  • Dr. Linda Mabry -- who taught me that analysis can be "outside the box" and lots of fun

  • Dr. Thea Bruhn -- who taught me how to navigate in the ultimate "large organization" when the water was very rough

  • Dr. Douglas Arion -- entrepreneurship mentor par excellence

  • Dan Horton -- who has given me such great advice

  • Dr. William Jones -- NASA software engineer and extraordinary inventor

  • Dr. Suresh Chalasani -- software engineering collaborator par excellence

  • Dr. George Benwell -- who continues to bring the two worlds of GIS and IT together and develop more people with both skills and vision

  • Mark Reichardt -- whose commitment to OpenGIS and sustainable development is literal, figurative and contagious

  • Dr. Rama Viswanathan -- without whom I would never have found computer and spatial information science


Courtenay Teska

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