SplashMaps on Stage

We love trade events. Especially when they get SplashMaps on Stage! 

This final quarter of 2015 I delivered plenary speeches at the combined British Cartographic Society (BCS) and Society of Cartographers and, last week, at the Association for Geographic Information (AGI).  That’s a hat-trick!

The British Carotgraphic Society focused keenly on the trends that shape the modern map world.  Crowd sourced data dominated the agenda and OpenStreetMap and the neo-geographers (OED: “people who dress casual, never confess to being geographers, but employ all the latest and most freely accessible location tech”) were there in force.

My talk was slightly sharkish… so I’m told, and was aimed at getting cartographers to explore new outlets for their craft.

The response was electric.  We’re now working with Harper Collins, Lovell Johns and the British Antarctic Survey on new concepts shortly to arrive on the website.

At the AGI my talk was on resilience of business strategies when employing location technology.  See, it’s not all about fabric maps with me.  I’ve clients in the automotive, domestic wifi and leisure industries where mapping tech has become a driver for innovation.

I was able to highlight that those with a grounding in moden mapping will have encountered all the trends in cloud computing, agile working patterns and big data before most other businesses.  This could double the value of this “traditional” sector for growing UK’s innovations.  For my own part, I’ve now become a Growth Coach so I can work with businesses in and beyond our sector to help them realise their true potential.

We’re big fans of the charity, MapAction, so it was a great pleasure to put 2 of our maps up for auction; a personalised map voucher & a London Illustrated Map.  Andy Murdock of APMgeo was the generous benefactor at the end of a nail biting bid-war with last year’s SplashMap winner, Autodesk’s Christina

That’s the last of SplashMaps on stage this year, so Happy Christmas Geo Nerds!