Geodesic metric spaces provide a setting in which we can develop much of nonlinear, and in particular convex, analysis in the absence of any natural linear structure. For instance, in a state space it often makes sense to speak of the distance between two states, or even a chain of connecting intermediate states, whereas the addition of two states makes no sense at all.

We will survey the basic theory of geodesic metric spaces, and in particular Gromov's so called CAT($\kappa$) spaces. And if there is time (otherwise in a later talk), we will examine some recent results concerning alternating projection type methods, principally the Douglas--Rachford algorithm, for solving the two set feasibility problem in such spaces.