Before the conference on 30-31 August I have attended Map Design with ArcGIS workshop led by Dr Cynthia Brewer. It was very well attended (actually quite big one - 45 attendants) and over two days various aspects were covered. Being a very large workshop Igor asked me if I could assist and help out students when needed. Of course, I was more than happy to help. Technically, there wasn't any unknowns for me but Cynthia's and Chris's experiences and advices were very helpful. Most interesting parts were relief shading exercises and generalization. For sure I'll be going back to notes and "playing" more with generalization.
On Wednesday, GeoCart started. I have no intention to write about each keynote or paper presentation. For full details of programme check this link. As usual (for last 3 GeoCart conferences that I can speak for) keynote presenters and presented topics were very well picked. If you have William Cartwright, Cynthia Brewer, Manfred Buchroithner, Phil Allen, Colin MacDonald and David Crossman as keynote speakers it can't fail.
Paper presentations were divided in two streams: applied cartography and academic papers. This was a nice balance and change from previous conference. I prefer to see more applications and products then just cartographic theory and research. In some cases paper presentation quality was below par. I would like to see more skilled presenters delivering these papers. Unfortunately, this is up to author(s) to decide - present it yourself of let the more skilled presenter/colleague to deliver it.
Most valuable part of GeoCart (and any other conference) is seeing old friends and meeting new people interested in cartography. Being relatively small conference (my guess is about 80 attendees) it is easy to talk to anyone. As a result, presentation were sometimes 5 minutes or more delayed.
There were only two vendors present - us (Eagle Technology Group) and GeographX. Igor Drecki did a great job organizing this conference but he run out of time to get more vendors. Both stands had a reasonable attendance as visible from photos below.
This GeoCart, like several previous was put together by Igor Drecki and his team. Thank you for hard work and see you again at next GeoCart.
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