Society of Cartographers Glasgow Reflections

In addition to attending the RGS annual meeting for the first time this year, I was privileged to have been able to make my first appearance at the Society of Cartographers meeting in Glasgow.  It also happens to be the 50th anniversary of the SoC.  Not only is Glasgow a beautiful and friendly city, with a wonderful University of Glasgow campus on the west side near the Botanic Gardens, but the society members themselves are a very friendly and almost intimidatingly knowledgeable group of people.  They also know how to have fun, and this shone through the entire set of presentations and workshops.

Source: SoC website

Throughout the event I was tweeting like mad, trying to keep up with the flow of information and represent it accurately for others participating in the conference through twitter and the #soc2014 hashtag.  The twitter strategy worked well, and I think I managed to boil down some of the neocartographers insights and technical tips into some useful chunks, with hashtags and handles for further questioning and follow-up.

I have been in touch with Alexander Kent, editor of the society's bulletin, and I will now be taking over book reviews for the bulletin.  Watch this space for more reviews of cartography, mapping, and maps.  I'm hoping that we can continue the trend of focusing a bit more on neocartography, geoweb, mashups, and other online mapping developments.  Keep watching this (and the bulletin's) space!