A good POV example

Bonus: it's about satellite imagery :)

Philip Morgan

Examples of clear, good, or interesting points of view out there in the wild always catch my eye. Here's one:

https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-your-fancy-algorithm

Here's an excerpt to give you a flavor of the whole article, which is an interesting read:

There’s an almost ubiquitous cliché in the satellite imagery business that goes something like, “Nobody wants pixels, they want insights.”

It sounds really wise. After all, 99% of the people who can benefit from satellite imagery do not need to ever see it directly to receive that benefit (and wouldn’t even know how to open the file if you sent it to them).

Most beneficiaries of satellite data can’t open a GeoTiff or tie their own shoes.

It turns out some people do just want pixels and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on satellite data, so that part of the aphorism is wrong.

Even worse, the second part is wrong, too. It turns out nobody wants insights, either!

I keep trying and not quite managing to define point of view in a truly useful way. I'll keep dancing around it here.


One of the characteristics of a good point of view (POV) is that it floats one level above the specific concerns of any particular client project. It's generalizable to most or all of the client work you do.

Expertise can be reactive. It responds to the particulars of a client problem. Expertise co-exists with "well, it depends".

POV is removed from the particulars of any one client's problem(s). POV is more the domain of broad, un-changing statements about what is, or what should be, true. In this way, a POV feels "leader-ish". It feels like a claim about what we should all be doing, rather than a statement about what client X should be doing about their particular situation.

I realize this isn't at all a definition of POV. It's more gesturing at the vibe or feel of POV.

Anyway, the Joe Morrison piece is a good example of point of view, and I think it expresses this "leader-ish" quality of POV. Recommended! https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/nobody-wants-your-fancy-algorithm

-P