Last week I was in Missoula, Montana at the annual NACIS Meeting.  The meeting is one of my favorite events of the year, bringing together so many cartographers in one place.  Every year I look forward to seeing the awesome people that are a part of this organization, and it always feels like “old home week.”

The meeting is a 3 day event, with the first day dedicated to “Practical Cartography Day” which showcased software demos and presentations about the processes of actually creating maps.  For the 2009 meeting in Sacramento, I will be coordinating the PCD session along with Neil Allen of Allan Cartography.  The sessions on days 2 and 3 are papers and presentations with typically a more theoretical approach, with lots of interesting topics.

This year I went a day early to participate in the MapGiving event, a 12-hour map-a-thon where 2 teams produced maps pro-bono for the Hank Aaron State Trail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I was the captain of the team producing the interactive version of the map, along with Jim Meacham (Univ. or Oregon InfoGraphics Lab), Jeremy White (Blueshirt.com and a grad student at the Univ. of Wisconsin), and Nat Case (Hedberg Maps). (more…)