Making Place as Easy as Time with Drew Breunig

Why is time so easy to work with in data—and place so hard? Join us for a special live session with Drew Breunig, Strategist at Loqai and Overture Maps as he revisits his CNG 2025 keynote talk on the challenge and promise of standardizing place, the human-made world. As we’re increasingly driven by geospatial data, Drew argues that the value of any dataset depends on how well it connects to others. Yet while time is relatively easy to align, our definitions of location are fragmented. In this webinar, Drew will draw on historical examples of successful standardization appraoches—from time zones to mapping systems. He’ll also explore how we might bring the same clarity to our modern geospatial infrastructure. Whether you work with geospatial tools every day or are just getting started, this talk is designed to make you think about the role of place in data.