Next: Patrick Cunningham is mapping a far-flung future, in 3D
PHOTo / Tim Greenway
Patrick Cunningham, CEO of Blue Marble Geographics in Hallowell
Blue Marble Geographics, led by Patrick Cunningham, this year expanded to Brunswick, investing in research and development driven by a focus on 3D mapping tools. Plans are to increase the workforce from 40 to 75, mostly in R&D.
Mainebiz: How did you get involved in GIS?
Patrick Cunningham: I graduated with a masters in sociology from the University of New Hampshire, and my career led to creating return on investment tools for software companies. Eventually I established my own company, Cunningham Consultants. I was a project manager for everyone from IBM and Microsoft to companies you’ve never heard of, probably for good reason. Through the dot.com era, then “dot.bomb” era, I learned a lot about the software industry. And I really learned how to drive value in products and the proper way to build a software offering.
MB: You began as business development director at Blue Marble in 2003, how have things evolved?
PC: Within a year of starting there, I helped [retiring founder Jeff Cole] sell the company to private investors and took over as CEO. Because of my exposure to the dot.bomb and what venture capital can do to a company, we’ve focused on what our customers were doing with our software and what they needed. We’ve always taken a conservative approach to growth. We grew slowly, then acquired the company and product Global Mapper in 2012, and saw faster growth. Our Global Mapper offering is pushing the envelope with 3D mapping and data processing and drone imagery processing. Our customers are doing everything from mapping the daily path for the Mars Rover to making virtual worlds for gaming or mobile apps for playing golf.
MB: Is Maine a good fit?
PC: I love Maine and Maine professionals. We know we have a good thing and we have a lot of talent that’s underutilized. But we absolutely need state government to embrace technology with a sense of urgency. We need research and development tax credits, better recruitment of technical workers, and we absolutely need to invest tens of millions in broadband. If there ever was a time for the state government to promote living and working in a place where it’s safe and quality of life is good, it’s now. We still have employees who don’t have broadband at their homes, and they live south of Augusta. Our new office in Brunswick is great, but cell reception is horrible near it. These things should be unacceptable. Those tools would help companies like mine provide better, career-oriented tech positions, and also allow that executive from Manhattan to live and work here remotely.
MB: How do you see Blue Marble evolving?
PC: We opened our Brunswick office to expand our R&D software team to develop the next generation of our 3D mapping products. We are focused on mapping tools that are pushing the envelope in a lot of industries — the technology and approach for self-driving cars, LiDAR [light detection and ranging] point cloud mapping, 3D gaming and more. Long term, we want to be the next generation of mapping, ubiquitous to business engineers and surveyors, but also in data creation, analysis and processing.
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