The world*#8217;s population is increasingly urban. By 2045, close to 6 billion people are expected to be living in cities (UN report). An increasing urban population and ever-changing dynamics in a cities mean that we need a (way) better method to understand our cities and how we as humans interact with the physical environment around us. We need to be able to have the same amount of knowledge a local would have in a small town and be able to understand our cities in the same way. Can social media (and spatial AI) help? Spatial, the startup from*Cincinnati certainly thinks so!I am really excited to talk to*Lyden Foust, CEO of Spatial about his vision for building *#8220;a dashboard for the living city*#8221; using conversations from social media. Lyden and Spatial ai literally *#8220;blew my mind*#8221; when I first spoke to them last year and its a pleasure to interview them as part of the #TheNextGeo series. Here*#8217;s what Lyden had to say about Spatial and his vision. Read on!*https://i1.wp.com/geoawesomeness.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Spatial_Team_TheNextGeo_Geoawesomeness.pngThe team behind Spatial ai. From Left (Jimmy Chase, Jack Schroder, Griffin Morris, Nathan Rooy, Phillip Martin, Will Kiessling, Lyden Foust, Chad Gardener).Spatial is a location data company that uses conversations from social networks to understand how humans move and experience the world around them.Q: You used to work as an ethnographer before you started spatial.ai, what motivated you to dive into the world of maps and data science? When did you decide that you wanted to start your own company?A: First of all, since playing Sim City 2000 I have been hooked on how cities move and change. Then while reading Lord of the Rings I became fascinated with Tolkien’s maps. I thought this had little to do with my day job as an ethnographic researcher, where I studied communities for companies like Procter * Gamble or Johnson * Johnson.As a researcher, I found it difficult to get a “human” understanding of a community before I was sent to research. This, of course, was a big issue, because if we picked a bad place, it could result in months worth of wasted research at a minimum. One research trip, in particular, I found myself at the wrong place/wrong time and ended up getting held at gunpoint. Talk about bad location choice.Even if we picked the right place to research, it was still very hard to develop the type of relationship with the people there where they would behave naturally, and not like there was a researcher around. At some point in late 2015, I stumbled across an epiphany. While researching, I noticed people would tell their social media more than they would ever tell me. Geolocation with phones allowed folks to share location publicly *#8211; thus creating essentially a huge map of conversations. I realized at that point that there was a layer of data above every city, that was constantly moving and changing *#8211; a map that could give you the emotional heartbeat of a community *#8211; the thing I had been searching for since popping in that floppy disk to play Sim City. (Side note: Yes, floppy disks did exist even in 2000 and you could play games with it..)Q: To say that Spatial is working on building an API that answers “Location questions” is to do injustice to the awesomeness of what spatial ai is all about. Could you tell us a bit more about what you are working on? What problem are you trying to solve? How does location data play a role in it?A: At the most basic level, the problem we solve is: “How do I make the right location decision without knowing social context of the community?”. As you can tell, this is particularly important for the brick and mortar stores that define our communities and the roads that connect them.Retail brick and mortar companies use our 500 categorized social segments to pick the right spot in cities. We have improved retailers site forecasts by 15 *#8211; 30%, such as when we showed pay less that tracking bikinis, babies, and versace impacts bottom line revenue.
Companies like Ford, and cities like Pittsburgh, Miami, and Grand Rapids are using our data to design transportation. Tracking a community’s access to the intellectual, financial, relational, health, and spiritual resources they need to thrive. For example, we can understand intellectual access by tracking to what extent a community talks about like philosophy, STEM, history, science, sculpture etc. The traditional way of doing this by measuring the distance from POI’s like schools or museums ignores the fact that you don’t have to be in a school or museum to have access to this type of thinking. It could very well happen in a pop-up event, or with street art *#8211; or within homes. Again making what was once immeasurable, measurable.It is obvious that the personalities of communities are extremely important in how we design cities, but until now we have never been able to quantify them. Now we can.Q: Most of the data and the analysis that powers spatial ai is from social media. How do you ensure that all these insights are not just being driven by tourists visiting places that they read about on the internet in the first place?A: Most of the data we collect is from locals. Think of it, you are probably only vacationing a short percentage of the year. That being said, we have a few very clear tourist related segments in our dataset, delineating that from the way locals talk *#8211; these segments are important to cities for tracking how “inviting” + “accessible” certain areas are for people not acquainted with the city.Q: As an ethnographer, it must be hard for you to have a tool like Spatial ai at your disposal and not try to explore the human geography of different cities.*Oh man, I do explore the human geography of cities A LOT! More digitally now with Spatial than I used to do with boots on the ground research. More interesting than what a community is like today, is how it has changed in the past few years. Then you get a sense of the trajectory of a community and begin seeing patterns.Q: Is a Tesla better than a smart ranger? What do you think, Lyden? Side note: You guys need to watch the YouTube video, to get why this question makes sense
Companies like Ford, and cities like Pittsburgh, Miami, and Grand Rapids are using our data to design transportation. Tracking a community’s access to the intellectual, financial, relational, health, and spiritual resources they need to thrive. For example, we can understand intellectual access by tracking to what extent a community talks about like philosophy, STEM, history, science, sculpture etc. The traditional way of doing this by measuring the distance from POI’s like schools or museums ignores the fact that you don’t have to be in a school or museum to have access to this type of thinking. It could very well happen in a pop-up event, or with street art *#8211; or within homes. Again making what was once immeasurable, measurable.It is obvious that the personalities of communities are extremely important in how we design cities, but until now we have never been able to quantify them. Now we can.Q: Most of the data and the analysis that powers spatial ai is from social media. How do you ensure that all these insights are not just being driven by tourists visiting places that they read about on the internet in the first place?A: Most of the data we collect is from locals. Think of it, you are probably only vacationing a short percentage of the year. That being said, we have a few very clear tourist related segments in our dataset, delineating that from the way locals talk *#8211; these segments are important to cities for tracking how “inviting” + “accessible” certain areas are for people not acquainted with the city.Q: As an ethnographer, it must be hard for you to have a tool like Spatial ai at your disposal and not try to explore the human geography of different cities.*Oh man, I do explore the human geography of cities A LOT! More digitally now with Spatial than I used to do with boots on the ground research. More interesting than what a community is like today, is how it has changed in the past few years. Then you get a sense of the trajectory of a community and begin seeing patterns.Q: Is a Tesla better than a smart ranger? What do you think, Lyden? Side note: You guys need to watch the YouTube video, to get why this question makes sense