Systeme D

31 May 2007

I am not at Where 2.0

But, were it not for the trifling matter of a magazine deadline, organ-playing appointments, etc. etc., I would quite like to be. Come to mention it, Anna has expressed an interest too. I don't think it's so much that she wants to find out the latest in the geohacking sphere, more that she'd like a holiday in San Francisco.

However, I will be at State of the Map, Britain's - and, in particular, OpenStreetMap's - answer to Where 2.0. To be held in Manchester on July 14th/15th, it has a pretty impressive panel of luminaries for an inaugural event: Ed Parsons (Google, ex-Ordnance Survey), Sean Phelan (Multimap), Steve Chilton (chair, Society of Cartographers), and, of course, leading lights from the hacking contingent such as Steve Coast, Mikel Maron and Andrew Turner.

And I'm giving a talk, too: Why Mash-Ups Suck (and Cartography Matters). It's not a talk on how to do cartography, but rather, why to do it.

After all, who's really spending time on cartography right now? Google, for example, seems to be trying its utmost to supplant cartography with reduced reality - whether through its new StreetView photos or Google Earth's physical modelling. And that's a shame, partly because an illustration can often convey information that a photograph doesn't, partly because good cartography is good art.

Meanwhile, third parties - all these zillions of mash-ups - are simply adding pushpins and squiggly lines to the same old road atlas and streetmap base tiles. True, these pushpins and squiggly lines are sometimes in really significant places, but you'd barely believe it from the presentation.

So come and listen to me rant, and to a further series of marvellously titled talks: 'OSM and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance', 'The Cathedral and the GPS', 'Map Room 101', and my favourite title, 'This Mapping Stuff Could Really Take Off'. Register here.

(Being the first in a series of three long overdue mapping-related blog posts.)

Comments

From the look of Yahoo's new tiles, maybe there's an impossible triangle at work? Data, cartography or imagery: pick 2?

Posted by Tom Carden on 31.5.07 19:49

I would love to see your presentation but won't be able to make it to the UK (I'm in California, US).

Any chance I can see your PPT or it will be recorded? If so, please contact me @ jeff _ hobbs at sjwater.com

Posted by Jeff Hobbs on 22.6.07 00:08

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