u/apaceo

ive recently gradated Masters of Business and took the jump to start my own Earth Observation business. But ive come across friends and friends of friends etc more interested in knowing more how im automating the business - doing it solo - including all the tech stack. small businesses who are services based like lawnmowing, nails, cleaning.. not in the tech field and too small for IT consulting I wonder if i change direction? or maybe have a go at both businesses./. Earth Observation is hard and a very specific niche to break into confused on the direction of my effort now

HI ive gone out on my own and passionate on Earth Observation + Education. I see a rather frustrating trend in the industry today - in trying to address it, I also do not want to waste time on Earth Observation training content that goes under utilized, spend my time in the real problems

Graduates aren't entering fast enough to keep pace with how quickly the tech is moving. Meanwhile, people are arriving from adjacent fields, never formally trained in GIS/Remote Sensing, but doing real geospatial work every single day. Organisations are asking everyone to do more with less.
So how do these people get trained? Two options, really. Generic online courses that don't go deep enough, or training that only teaches one specific tool, taught behind sales incentives for that tool.
Either way not giving the industry the technology agnostic, thought driven capability development it deserves.

When someone's only training is tool specific, they're locking themselves into a platform. They start pressing buttons because they can, not because they understand why. We get vendor lock in as it's too hard to re-train on something else, and we get users who can operate software but not the reasonings we were taught in university behind it.

I'm not saying industry training should replace university training. University trained practitioners stay vital. What I'm saying is there's a need RIGHT NOW that isn't being met: true capability development. The transferable kind. Technology agnostic, faster paced, and built to evolve, without the sales incentives that bend tool specific training out of shape.
We need a space where everyone's learning different tools for the same job - not just tool specific communities as we see now - so we can grow and change and adapt in the industry known for change.

So I'm trying to build it. The problem I am facing however is the platform and engagement - coursera and other training platforms seem quite siloed - i want something more engaging with students. SKOOL has been the closest so far - good balance between user engagement but also course structure. The engagement i see here on Reddit is absolutely amazing but its not really a platform where someone could engage and retain focus along a course? So my question - is it valuable if i push out free content free community but then only white label to departments or businesses my polished course content? I see the need out there in Earth Observation but lacking means to address an audience to get the knowledge out there, effectively any suggestions here would be appreciated. Just a solo consultant trying to get EO out to a broader audience