AI Isn’t the Product. The Workflow Is. - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
Every few days someone sends me a new demo. AI generates a house. AI designs a backyard. AI produces a digital twin from a handful of photos. The
AI demos are everywhere right now.
Beautiful renderings. Smooth flythroughs. Instant magic.
But magic isn’t a product. Workflow is.
If it can’t survive permitting, budgets, integrations, and reality… it’s just a very good video.
New post:
spatiallyadjusted.com/ai-isnt-the-...
16.02.2026 21:16
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Cloud-Native Didn’t Fail. We Just Never Finished the Sentence. - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
“Cloud-native” didn’t fail. It just stopped mid-sentence, stared confidently at the audience, and waited for applause. Cloud-native storage.
Cloud-native didn’t fail. We just stopped the sentence at “storage” and called it architecture.
Object storage ≠ systems
Containers ≠ workflows
“It scales” ≠ operations
Cloud-native didn’t remove complexity. It just stopped letting us ignore it.
spatiallyadjusted.com/cloud-native...
06.02.2026 21:33
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So no turkey sandwich?
05.02.2026 21:18
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Post-GIS, Revisited (Again): Some Thoughts Sparked by Bill Dollins - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
I read Bill Dollins’ recent post, Post-GIS Revisited, and found myself nodding along — not because it neatly resolves the “post-GIS” question, but
“Post-GIS” isn’t about GIS going away. It’s about spatial thinking no longer insisting on being the front door.
Bill Dollins’ post sparked some thoughts I couldn’t shake, so I wrote a response:
spatiallyadjusted.com/post-gis-rev...
We’re not post-GIS. We’re post pretending GIS is the whole story.
02.02.2026 20:40
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This is what people need to understand about the 1%. It’s a different world.
31.01.2026 01:05
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Lessons from Scale #10: Failure Is a First-Class API - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
Failure is not an edge case. At scale, systems fail constantly: dependencies time out partial work succeeds retries collide state drifts
Failure isn’t an edge case. It’s the default condition at scale.
If failure isn’t modeled, named, and exposed, users will invent their own handling.
And that’s where humans sneak back in.
Lessons from Scale #10:
Failure Is a First-Class API
spatiallyadjusted.com/lessons-from...
30.01.2026 19:15
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Lessons from Scale #9: Observability Is a User Feature - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
Observability is usually described as an engineering concern. Logs. Metrics. Traces. Dashboards that only a few people know how to read. At small
At scale, observability isn’t an ops concern.
It’s a user feature. The moment someone asks “Did it run?” or “What happened?”, the system has already failed to communicate. Logs don’t build trust. Visible state does.
Observability Is a User Feature
spatiallyadjusted.com/lessons-from...
29.01.2026 22:53
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Lessons from Scale #8: APIs Don’t Integrate Systems. Workflows Do. - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
Every modern system has APIs. And yet somehow, at scale, work still moves through screenshots, Slack messages, copied IDs, “just rerun it,” and
Every system I’ve worked on had APIs.
None of them actually integrated anything.
- APIs expose verbs.
- Workflows express intent.
At scale, humans become the glue only when systems refuse to remember state.
APIs Don’t Integrate Systems. Workflows Do.
spatiallyadjusted.com/lessons-from...
29.01.2026 01:55
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Revolution starts when grandma’s sit on corners in Phoenix with signs that say deport Steven Miller now. You can’t fight a grandma.
28.01.2026 23:41
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Sometimes it just works out.
Wordle 1,683 3/6
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
28.01.2026 02:53
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COG + STAC Isn’t a Stack. It’s a Contract. - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
For a long time, we told ourselves a comforting lie: “It’s just a file.” The file lived in a folder. The folder lived on a server. The name of
COG + STAC isn’t a stack, it’s a contract. A contract about access patterns, about metadata. About admitting humans can’t be the glue at scale. Cloud-native didn’t win because it was elegant. It won because it was honest.
🔗 spatiallyadjusted.com/cog-stac-isn...
23.01.2026 16:25
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What Working at Trimble Has Reinforced About Spatial Scale - Spatially Adjusted by James Fee
One of the things working at Trimble has reinforced for me—over and over again—is that scale changes everything. And I don’t just mean big data in
I’ve started a new series on Spatially Adjusted called “Lessons from Scale.”
It’s about what actually breaks (or changes) when spatial tech moves from small, local use to enterprise scale — across GIS, CAD, BIM, workflows, and people.
Post #1: spatiallyadjusted.com/trimble-spat...
18.01.2026 21:15
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Post #2 digs into a long-held myth: that interoperability is mostly a file format problem.
Spoiler: formats matter, but workflows matter a lot more.
www.spatiallyadjusted.com/lessons-from...
#GIS #Geospatial #SpatialWorkflows
18.01.2026 21:08
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Well, when I was younger, I was a huge rams fan. They moved to St. Louis and now I could care less about them.
18.01.2026 20:31
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Boy, these two look like a lot of fun!
18.01.2026 17:13
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a cartoon character is playing frisbee in a park with the number 2 on the bottom of the screen
ALT: a cartoon character is playing frisbee in a park with the number 2 on the bottom of the screen
People keep pointing out what a mess I am. These are my pro teams, it’s not my fault. I’ve moved around a lot.
MLB - @sfgiants.com
College - Arizona State
NBA - Lakers
NHL - Utah
NFL - Jets
18.01.2026 17:08
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