I’ve been working with Urban Mapping to make some cool maps out of their data and API. It’s been a great project. The work has been somewhat along the lines of  what I described in the recent Cartographic Statistician post. I got to sift through their fairly extensive data catalog and pick and chose things to map. Yes – a cartographer’s dream! It looks like I’ll be making more of these, but the one shown below is the first:

The Urban Mapping basemap is really nice. I’d like to showcase it a bit more in upcoming maps by creating maps that the user needs (or wants) to zoom into, thus unveiling more detail in the basemap. This particular map is pretty sweet as-is but of course it is more of a small-scale type of thing that is best at the U.S. zoom level. Incidentally, they are responsible for the basemap used in Tableau software, which is a great data-visualization product to be aware of. In fact, Stephen Few is a big fan of Tableau.

Coming to us via Jill Terlaak (@geofeminia) and David H (@dvdhns) is a story by Mathew Ericson When Maps Shouldn’t Be Maps. This is a well put-together piece discussing the fact that some data are good for mapping; some data are better illustrated via graphs, charts, and other information layouts; and some data are better for behind-the-scenes analysis.

From @gisuser and written by Greg Rose (@gregrose), is a feature article in GISuser on How to Land that Entry Level GIS Job. Especially helpful is Rose’s assertion that you need to be creating your own GIS analysis and cartography to show off at interviews. I know I would be impressed if an entry-level candidate were to show initiative like that. I would add that sample work like that should be real-world oriented, tell a good story, and be easy to discuss in an interview. When discussing your sample work in an interview, be sure to elaborate the middle of the story so that you can discuss what challenges you encountered and how (or if) you solved them.

The NACIS 2011 cartography and information design conference was just held. Several of the presentations have been made available and can be found on this CartoTalk thread. So far Hans van der Maarel (@redgeographics) has posted slides on improving text placement, Robert Roth has posted his slideshare link on the topic of interactive cartography, a link to Aaron Straup Cope’s art in cartography ideas is posted, and Mamata Akella’s presentation on online basemap design is also linked to.

FOSS4G 2011 anticipates about 1,000 people to attend this year’s global conference in Denver this week. Over 13,000 (reference) attendees were at the 2011 Esri International User Conference. Now, Esri’s suite of software and “other” products is quite large. But so is the FOSS4G suite. In fact, here’s twitter’s @spara’s fantastic mind map that shows most of the FOSS4G projects as well as the Esri products, just to give a visual of how much is out there:

So this leads one to wonder…Is the FOSS4G user-base really only 1/13th that of Esri’s? There is a lot of evangelism out there on the superiority of FOSS4G products. Is this just hype, then, or is it reality? If reality, then FOSS4G has a huge user-base out there waiting to embrace it.

As I scanned the Esri User Conference tweets last week (I wasn’t there), I got to wondering if my book was being offered for sale anywhere at the conference. Sometimes my publisher is represented at these conferences but my editor tells me that book sellers aren’t allowed on the exhibition floor at the EsriUC.

However, the conference does feature a geo store so it came to me that someone on twitter could probably find out if it was there. Thus was launched my first twitter contest with the tweet:First person to send me a pic of my book at #EsriUC gets a free Colors For Maps or Type For Maps.

About a half hour to an hour later @GISTweet responded with this picture:

So @GISTweet won but about one minute after their submission, @albertda sent a picture too, telling me that he had been standing next to @GISTweet, “opening my phone, as I watched him take his picture. :)”

So that was my first twitter contest. Very fun. And an ego boost at that – to see my book displayed right next to a Tufte book! I also wasn’t following those two twitter-folks until then so it helped expand my circle* just a little bit.

*Using the term “circle” reminds me to mention that I joined Google+ this week, thanks to an invite from @GeoDawg and am still figuring out how it works.

This is great, Dave Bouwman is jotting down notes from the Esri UC plenary and we get to read them as he types…

Just visit his Google Docs page to read, ask your own questions, etc. He may move it over to Google + for later sessions, but not everyone is on Google + yet (I’m not but apparently I’ve got an invite headed my way).

*Updated to say: Okay, now I’m confused. Perhaps its James Fee who is writing these plenary notes as I see he’s got the same stuff written over on his blog. Either way, check it out.

Today is the first day of the 2011 Esri International User Conference. Since I’m not able to be there, I’ll be keeping up with the chatter on twitter from those who are there.

There was a tweetup last night (#esriUCtu) at which @gletham and @Merrick_Geo attended, among others.

@johnjreiser is apparently promising lots of snarky esriUC tweets.

@geoparadigm is there and excited about the spatial outlet (wonder if my book is there?!)

@EsriUC is the official Esri twitter account covering the conference.

@dbouwman will probably have a lot to say. If you are at the conference, you should check out Dave’s BackChannel website to participate in the unofficial photo scavenger hunt.

There are definitely others on twitter who are attending. If you’ve got other good twitter folks that you follow who are covering the conference, please let us know! You can search for the hashtag #esriUC also.