It’s raining today. Seems apt for a day usually reserved for ill omens.
But that’s depressing. Let’s ignore it and talk about maps!
November should be renamed Mapember because of all the map-related activities going on. There’s the #30DayMapChallenge, the UC GIS Week, GIS Day, and probably a host of others I’m not aware of. Do you know of any others? Let me know in the comments.
30 Day Map Challenge
This map creation challenge started in November 2019 and is going strong. If you accept the daily challenge, you will be tasked with creating one map per day that meets the day’s theme. The challenges start out easy. For example, the first day this year was “points.” On the first of November (or Mapember), you simply had to create a map that featured some sort of point features. Sounds easy, right? Just drop a pin on it. However, the theme for each day gets progressively harder as the month goes on.
I’ve never done the challenge myself, but maybe I will next year.
If you’d like to join in, it’s never too late! Jump right in. It’s just a personal challenge so feel free to do as much or as little as you want. Or simply admire the maps folks come up with by following #30DayMapChallenge on whatever social media platform you use.
UC GIS Week
This is a relatively new event hosted and organized by the University of California. For the entire week starting on the 17th (next week!), they will celebrate all things mapping and geospatial with talks, presentations, and workshops. Registration is open to all and is free. Click on the image above for registration details.
GIS Day
This event was first proclaimed back in 1999 (practically ancient by modern attention spans). It grew out of the Geography Awareness Week (GeoWeek) that began even earlier in 1987 (by presidential proclamation). Back then, it was more about encouraging school children (and the general public) to be more aware of how place and geography impacts everything in our lives. Since geographic information systems (GIS) kind of took over the geography discipline (so to speak), a special day during GeoWeek was set aside specifically to celebrate the contributions of GIS to the field of geography.
I didn’t know this but it was founded by Esri’s co-founder, Jack Dangermond. Makes sense since his software rules the GIS software offerings!
Anyway, this year it falls on November 18th—only 5 days away! What will you do to celebrate?