The 12 finalists for the GISCI* 2011 poster contest are posted on Facebook. Please go there and “like” your favorite for the People’s Choice Awards!

The winner is the one with the most “likes.” There are also three winners chosen by a panel of judges, of which I am one. I thoroughly enjoyed judging the maps. As I told the GISCI, all the maps showed effort and all showed at least a few really neat elements. So take a look and see which one you liked the best. Good luck to all the people who submitted.

*The GISCI is the GIS Certification Institute. It gives out the title “GISP,” or GIS Professional, to those who have demonstrated at least four years of professional experience in GIS, a certain level of educational attainment, and contributions to the profession. I am a GISP and I also serve on the GISCI application review committee. My involvement on the review committee involves reviewing one or two applications each month. I’ve been on the review committee for about two years now.

A year of blogging about cartography (and the occasional GIS analysis too) has gone by!

A look back at some of the serious and seriously strange blog entries:

Gallery of Maps

Motivation Gimmicks

Typography Rules: A Pictorial Tutorial

How to use Hashing Effectively

The Tourist Map

Author Pedestal?

Question to readers:What topics are you most interested in reading about? Are there certain posts you read and others that you skip? What should I focus on in the coming year in terms of content for the blog? More cartography specific tips? General business tips? Creativity science? Let me know!

When I saw @cubitplanning’s tweet about the use of infra-red imagery to detect Egyptian pyramids, I wasn’t sure what the linked article was going to be all about. This is a MAJOR thing! It’s just absolutely amazing what you can see on those images – the ancient city streets are very apparent in what was once a densely occupied city. As the article states:

Ancient Egyptians built their houses and structures out of mud brick, which is much denser than the soil that surrounds it, so the shapes of houses, temples and tombs can be seen.

Definitely check out the other image shown in the article, and the movie too and see what you think. What an amazing discovery.

As a very incidental side note, also check out the use of not one but four zoom-levels in the article’s beginning illustration, indicated by 3 location boxes. Ambitious but effective.

The Stavanger Guide Maps, Norway website was just launched today and features some beautiful maps of the Stavanger Region, Norway. The maps can be viewed in many different languages and are a culmination of what must have been A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT of work. Look at some of the details on these as well as the overall design aesthetics, and they will serve as great inspiration pieces for your next work. These were made by Kevin-Paul Scarrott.

I spent two days in Olympia, WA (well, okay, actually it was in “Grand Mound,” WA) this week at the salmon recovery conference. It was held at Great Wolf Lodge which created an interesting dichotomy considering there was a conference being held in one part of the facility and there was a waterpark full of children in the other half, complete with Radio Disney being piped everywhere. Some of the conference goers did venture to the waterpark. In fact, one of them was spotted in a suit and flip flops.

I was thrilled to share a booth space with Leaping Frog Films. Cool movies, cool people. You can order their short educational movies online or hire them to make a movie for your organization. I didn’t give out much except a large postcard, on recycled paper of course, touting my GIS services, another postcard showing off my husband’s company Mapbiquity, and some custom pens. The pens were a big hit but their efficacy has yet to be determined. At any rate, it is fun to give away pens. Another company was giving away chapstick with their company name on them. That was a nice idea.

While there I met with a new client (who wasn’t part of the conference but happens to work very nearby) and it made me think about how important it is to listen, process, and be comfortable to ask the right questions. Sometimes this is just a matter of compatibility between people and sometimes it is a matter of the consultant needing to feel like they are on a peer-level with their clients or potential clients. If you don’t feel like you are on a peer-level you can sometimes promise too much or be hesitant to ask the “dumb”, but necessary, questions that an outsider needs to ask. Remember, the client is immersed in their business so they simply cannot tell everything a newbie needs to know about it and you will have to ask those questions. Never feel like those “easy” questions are too dumb to ask or you get into a lot of trouble (at worst) or do a lot of extra, unneeded, work (at best).

It was also wonderful to see all the folks from one of my oldest clients and hang out with them. I do most of my work remotely so it is nice to reconnect face-to-face every once in a while. I firmly believe it is worth it to make that effort with your far-flung clients. Maybe that is why I’ve had the pleasure to help them with their GIS work since 2003. Most importantly, I learned at the conference that there are a huge number of people who are working toward bettering salmonid habitat in the Pacific Northwest and they will be the ones who we can thank many years from now for having helped to bolster and protect that important natural, cultural, and culinary resource!