Where would you be without a good map?

Hey You, Are you weary?

With NSGIC in town and AJ so occupied, those of us who are not platinum (or gold or silver) sponsors will have to have our own hospitality suite, where we always have it, at the Weary Traveler . 5:30 pm. Be there. Will our little conclave receive a visit from out-of-state dignitaries? You'll have to show up to find out.

We will also take this opportunity to bring the Weary Mappers mailing list into the 21st century. Look for automated online subscription management in the near future. And fancy schmancy HTML emails, like this one...

In honor of our esteemed GIS coordinators from across the country, I'd like to ask the question:

Where would you be without a good map?

Unfortunately, you might be at a NSGIC conference (perhaps this very day) staring at a business card-sized, accordion-like foldout asking you the same thing, but sporting a particularly awful cartoon map on the opposite side. Admittedly this is marketing material, but the purpose of marketing handouts is to convey a message. AJ argues that the maps intended audience is elected officials. If the map matches the audience, I'm not sure what that says about our elected officials. However, NSGIS does some really positive things for promoting GIS in state and federal government and its members, who know their stuff, are probably scratching their heads and having a chuckle over the map themselves. With that in mind, let's take a minute, all in good fun, to take a look at the messages that NSGIC's graphic artists are sending.

The Map

The Legend

NSGIC wants you to know...

1. Transportation planners use maps, like this one, to plan and engineer the roads and bridges that you drive on. Including the one that goes through some kind of extra dimensional wormhole from Texas to Alaska. The outlines around inset maps are just their to highlight the true location of commonly misrepresented land masses.

2. There are trees in Iowa. Which, of course, evoke images of land planners quickly assessing the environmental impact of development on wetlands, streams, and shorelines.

3. The northern Mississippi River has migrated into central Wisconsin. In fact, NSGIC 2007 conference goers should be able to take a stroll down to one of the paddle boat casinos during their breaks.

4. Local governments rely on maps to show land property boundaries and to manage their winding, mountainous interstates.

5. Watch out for those NY drivers!

6. Our nation is at risk from pirates. Darrr, hoist up the orange homeland security flag.

7. Texas has been invaded by some kind of fire-breathing alien offshore oil derrick/pinata hybrid that has brainwashed the "cartographers" into keeping their identity secret. No doubt they came through the worm hole.

8. The rocky mountains exist primarily in Nevada, Utah, and eastern Oregon and Washington. Colorado on the other hand, is an unremarkable featureless wasteland between the forests of New Mexico and Arizona (which are constantly on fire), the aforementioned Iowa-Dakotan woodlands, and the tree farms of Missouri.

9. Our national treasure is buried somewhere along the VA, MD, WV border.

10. Guess what. It snows in Canada.

To NSGIC 2007, Cheers!

What AJ wants you to know...

FOSS4G is happening as we speak with some interesting attendees as the corporate
world catches true interest.

Leica is growing like mad through acquisitions recently of IONIC and
ERMapper... this appearing to be a trend in acquisition of small
geospatial services/tech. development companies...
Meanwhile MN LIS/GIS is coming in October (as well as EWUG here in
Madison) with some interesting sessions on open source gis as well...

Andy Woodruff forwarded this (in his words) "treasure trove of viz
links" to the MACDAD list...
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

Finally, of particular note to me in the press recently are :...
Autodesk releasing coordinate system/projection technology to the open
source community
http://www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/?duty=Show&id=19164&trv=1

and this one...
http://www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/index.php?duty=Show&id=19133&trv=1
and finally,
http://apb.directionsmag.com/archives/3338-The-Mayor-and-the-Map.html