Greetings to all NACIS Members and Cartographic Perspectives Readers,
These are exciting times for NACIS. We had a successful and well-attended Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh in October 2014, board committees and members continue to push forward new initiatives, and Cartographic Perspectives continues to be a respected, widely-read, and informative platform for publishing cartographic content.
As organizer for the Pittsburgh meeting, I know there were great talks and presentations for Practical Cartography Day, Geographic Data Collections Day, and for the main NACIS conference. I only wish I could have been present at more of them! I would like to offer a big thank you to all who attended and participated. It was a lively gathering for talking about maps, making new friends, and renewing contacts in the mapping community.
Our opening and keynote presentations at the Pittsburgh meeting gave added insight to the city and of the theme of the conference. In his talk, “Taking the Measure of the Topographical City,” Martin Aurand, of Carnegie Mellon University, discussed the unique physical position of the city of Pittsburgh at the forks of the Ohio River. Anne Kelley Knowles and two of her students from Middlebury College presented a thought-provoking talk titled, “Do Maps Really Tell Stories? The Problem of Narrative Time in Cartography.” The conference theme of Time and Cartography was further explored in several sessions during the conference with presentations on “Treating Time in Atlases,” “Why are Timelines Maps?,” “Spatial-Temporal Displays of Daily Climate Data,” and “1 Minute to 100,000 Years: Mapping The Out of Eden Walk Project.”
Well-established features such as the Map Gallery, the Student Map and Poster Contest, and Geo-Dweeb Geopardy were all successful parts of the conference. We were also happy to welcome a new event: the NACIS Fun Run.
The current Vice President, Amy Griffin, and VP-Elect, Anthony Robinson, are busy preparing for the next meeting, in Minneapolis, and welcome any and all ideas for participation. The theme is Mapping Interactions. The 2015 Call for Participation is provided at the end of this issue of Cartographic Perspectives and is posted at nacis.org. Abstracts are due by May 31, 2015.
The NACIS Board has been active in its work of running the Society and preparing for the future. I would like to thank the Board members for their time and dedication. I would also like to extend a special thanks to the Executive Office for all their help over the past year: Executive Director Tanya Buckingham, Director of Operations Daniel Huffman, and Business Manager Susan Peschel. In this all-volunteer organization, we are indebted to those who step up to help.
If you are ready to give back to the NACIS community, please let me know. You can help in many ways large and small, you will get to know your colleagues better, and you will gain a sense of satisfaction from helping to maintain our group of mapping enthusiasts.
I hope that you have time to delve into this issue of CP. Martin Lukas’ article on using maps to reconstruct environmental change is a valuable contribution to better understanding a method of historical research and analysis. And we can all benefit from the valuable insights provided by the knowledgeable team of cartographic authors in the article “A Process for Keeping Pace with Evolving Web Mapping Technologies.”
Section editors have provided many more items for your perusal: a collection review, cutting edge digital techniques, a practical cartography tool, and book reviews. The rich content of the current issue is a testament to the effectiveness of our Society’s open access journal and to the hard work of the CP Editor. Enjoy!
Alex Tait
NACIS President, 2014–2015