Volodymyr Agafonkin: The Story of Leaflet, Building the Simplest Mapping Library & Life in Ukraine

Minds Behind Maps

Volodymyr Agafonkin is the creator of Leaflet, an open-source JS mapping library started in 2008 that is used pretty much everywhere on the Internet today. We end up nerding out on what makes building simple open source software & rendering maps online tricky but also so endlessly interesting. Volodymyr lives in Ukraine, a country shaken by a war for the past few years, which we also talk about.

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About Volodymyr

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Website

Shownotes

Note: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.

• Leaflet
• Mapbox blogpost on adaptive map projections
• CloudMade
• How Simplicity Will Save GIS
• Books & Podcasts
  • The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (Affiliate Link)
  • My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee (Affiliate Link)
  • Reply All podcast
  • Search Engine podcast
  • Heavyweight podcast

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro
(01:50) - Sponsor: Nimbo
(03:26) - Volodymyr Describes Himself
(04:22) - The story behind Leaflet
(13:31) - Cloudmade Backstory
(16:42) - From closed software to open source
(23:43) - Maintaining high quality code
(27:56) - Cloudmade today
(31:21) - Leaflet, funding, sustainable
(35:09) - Raster vs Vector maps
(41:34) - Map projections
(46:36) - Current main challenges to mapping
(50:52) - Future of Leaflet
(51:54) - Leaflet and Ukraine
(01:05:39) - Book & Podcast recommendation
(01:09:35) - Support the podcast on Patreon

• Support the podcast on Patreon
• My video on an introduction to satellite images
• Website
• My Twitter
• Podcast Twitter
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• Edited by Peter Xiong
• Find more of his work