First Fix: Let’s start a conversation

Matteo Luccio

Last year, GPS World marked its 30th anniversary. That is a testimony to this magazine’s continued relevance, its commitment to its marketing partners, and its unmatched audited audience of 54,000 GNSS/PNT buyers, integrators and specifiers.

Taking on my new role on GPS World’s edit team was a homecoming of sorts because I began my current career a little more than 20 years ago as this magazine’s managing editor. I look forward to an ongoing conversation with many of you in the GNSS/PNT community — scientists, engineers, civil servants, uniformed service members, company executives and product managers. You may get an email message from me, and I will always welcome yours, at the e-mail address below.

“I look forward to an ongoing conversation with many of you in the GNSS/PNT community.”

Let me tell you a little about three passions that led me to this job.

Navigation has been one of my passions since I was a kid. When I was five years old, I lost track of my mother as she entered a store in Berkeley, California, and I kept walking down the street. It happened again when I was seven and had insisted on walking home alone from school in Milan, Italy. I was determined never to get lost again. So, when I was 11 and my family moved to Pisa, I was the only kid I knew who walked around — from school to sabre-fencing practice, to piano lessons, to my bus stop — studying a map and a compass. When I was 13, in shop class, I built a crude optical-range finder, based on trigonometry. Next, came the topo maps I used for hiking the hills and mountains of Tuscany. A few years later, as a graduate student at MIT, I began to sail around the Boston Harbor islands and off the coast of Maine. I learned to navigate using nautical charts, sextants, radio direction-finders, sonar, radar, Loran-C and, finally, GPS receivers.

Magazine journalism has been another one of my passions, since I co-founded a public policy magazine, Oregon’s Future, 25 years ago and became its editor. That was the first of seven editorial positions with magazines I have had over the past quarter century. Finally, my passion for public policy led me to degrees in political science and to my previous career as a research analyst — first for an independent research institute, then for state and local government. It gave me a solid grounding in public policy, statistical analysis and querying large databases.
So, this navigation enthusiast, policy wonk and experienced writer and editor is now in position to report on and advocate for the continuing growth and development of GNSS. I will also showcase new products and projects, and present facts and opinions from across the GNSS/PNT community.

This month’s cover story on autonomous vehicles is a perfect example. It confirms the central role of GNSS in one of the most significant technological advances we can expect to see in the coming decade — having vast implications for our society and environment — with facts and opinions from four industry leaders.

Matteo Luccio | Editor-in-Chief
mluccio@northcoastmedia.net