We partnered with NACIS to bring you this Atlas in a Day at a Conference Challenge. We announced the theme at 7:30p.m. Pacific time, right before the keynote.

The theme of this Atlas in a Day at a Conference Challenge is FLOW!

See the scrappy version of FLOW.

Like every atlas we’ve published, we’re dropping a one-word theme on you. That’s it. The rest is up to you. And with this Atlas in a Day at a Conference Challenge, you have until Saturday, October 19, at 9pm. to submit a map on the theme.

We invite you to explore the theme with all your senses. Say the word out loud. What do you feel when you hear it? What happens when you see the word as shapes? Does the word evoke tastes or smells or sounds? What might the word feel like if you touched it…or if you could make it touchable?

Maps are the favorite teaching and learning tool of so many because they offer all types of learners a way in; maps are the ultimate egalitarian learning technology. Visual learners come in through imagery, layout, and color interactions, reading learners start with the text and let words guide them in, number and data people find the key or data scale to begin their map decoding, and kinetic learners feel movement in the points, lines, and shapes swimming on the page. Now each is in and they can move around in all the realms, creating individuated meaning of a shared document.

There are no first words on a map. But the maps created for this challenge will start with a single word.

DETAILS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Watch this space for specifics and updates. Here are some basics:

• The printed volume will be formatted at 8.5” x 11” with landscape (horizontal) orientation. Plan your map design accordingly.

• We encourage collaboration and skills sharing.

• We encourage all media. If your map is sculpture, embroidery, sticks, or made from jell-o, you will need to submit it as a photo.

• Submit your map here

• Send questions to info@guerrillacartography.org and check back here as more information will be posted throughout the challenge.

It’s done! Here is the scrappy version of Atlas in a Day: Community (posted on May 16, 2020).

And here is the downloadable ready-for-print version of Atlas in a Day: Community. The atlas will be ready for purchase around July 1, 2020.

Scroll down to view the speakers you missed and definitely check out the map show-n-tell. (These videos, too, will be cleaned up in the coming days. For now, you get raw.)

The theme of this Atlas in a Day Challenge is COMMUNITY!

We encourage mapmakers to reconsider Community in the broadest terms. Ecological or ecclesiastical. Nomadic or sedentary. Intentional or circumstantial. Lost and found. Colonies, covens or collectives in clouds—all ideas are welcome. 

We also encourage all mediums—from digital maps to painted maps to sculpted maps; employ clay or collage, pixels or found objects. Interpret COMMUNITY in a geographic way and send us your map!

Guerrilla cartographers from around the world will had slightly less than 24 hours to make a map on the theme and we compiled the atlas by (about) 9pm PDT on Saturday, May 16, to complete the 24-hour Atlas in a Day (AIAD) Challenge. The theme was announced by Board member Mattie Naythons on Facebook Live at 9pm PDT on Friday, May 15.

Below is the event schedule with day-of instructions and links to the presentations.

Getting started

These talks from our first AIAD challenge on October 4-5, 2019, will help you get started with:

• data mining (specific to US census data)

• map layout and design

• ethics of mapping representations

on the challenge day

See the speaker schedule below to tune in live to hear the speakers. (A Zoom link will be sent to your email, send a note to info@guerrillacartography.org if you don’t receive the link.) Between speaker sessions, GC will link speakers’ names to recordings of their talks. If you miss one or the times aren’t right for you, you’ll be able to see/hear the talks at your convenience.

Use this timezone converter to track the challenge countdown and to know when to tune in to talks.

Speaker schedule

• 9am PDT: Meet the Board of Guerrilla Cartography
  Board members will be online to meet and greet participants

• 9:15am PDT: Welcome by Darin Jensen, GC founder and President of Board of Directors
  Darin will speak about the global community formed by Guerrilla Cartography since its first atlas, Food: An Atlas, was published in 2012.

• 9:30am PDT: Speaker session #1

  • Daniel Raven-Ellison, Guerrilla Geographer, London, UK:

    • Mapping a 90K network of Slow Ways walking routes while in Lockdown

  • Sahoko Yui, Kalai Ramea, Aina Smart-Truco, Oakland, California:

    • Hidden stories of Atlas in a Day

  • Martina Neuburger, Katharina Schmidt, Katrin Singer, Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany:

    • Questioning own mapping practices: academic feminist communities, postionality and historical legacies

  • Annie Brulé, Brulé Illustration & Design, Vashon, Washington:

    • Decolonizing the Map: Indigenous-led Mapping Initiatives

  • Q/A begins at 10:30am PDT

• 10:45 - 12pm PDT: Mapping time and freeform collaboration

• 12pm - 1:15pm PDT: Speaker session #2

  • Anirvan Chatterjee and Barnali Ghosh, Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, Berkeley, California:

    • The 1940 Singh Census: Visualizing the story of the Punjabi/Mexican community

  • Alex Tarr, Assistant Professor of Geography, Worcester State University, Worcester, Massachusetts:

    • Cartographers are not Computers

  • Annita Lucchesi, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona:

    • Mapping for Justice: Creating Cartographies of Social Change

  • Melissa Brooks, GIS Analyst/Map UX, New Plymouth, New Zealand:

    • Quick tips to review and refine your map

  • Speaker session #2 Q/A begins at 1pm PDT

• 1:15pm - 4:00pm PDT: Mapping time and freeform collaboration

• 4:00pm - 5:15pm PDT: Speaker session #3

  • Sapna E. Thottathil, PhD, Associate Director of Sustainability, University of California, Office of the President and Guerrilla Cartography Board Member, Oakland, California:

    • Institutions as Anchors in Communities

  • Iconoclasistas, Mapping Collective, Argentina:

    • Collective mapping and collaborative research from Argentina (this talk will be presented in Spanish)

  • Steven R Holloway, toMake™ Press & Editions, Missoula, Montana:

    • The deLight of Slow Map-making & Responding

  • Amber J. Bosse, PhD Candidate, University of Kentucky, Provo, Utah:

    • Map Anyway

  • Speaker session #3 Q/A begins at 5pm PDT

• 5:15pm - 7:15pm PDT: Mapping time and freeform collaboration

• 7:15pm - 7:45 PDT: Map show-n-tell. Share your map and turn it in by 7:45 pm PDT!

• 7:45 - 9pm PDT: Guerrilla Cartography board members will compile the atlas and publish a pdf on our website.

Zoom process and etiquette

Thank you for joining the virtual Guerrilla Cartography community today for the Atlas in a Day Challenge. Here are some basic processes and etiquette that will help the speaker sessions and freeform collaboration sessions work:

• Enter Zoom by the link sent to your email (send a note to info@guerrillacartograpy.org if you did not receive the Zoom link.)

• All participants will be automatically muted when they enter. Only unmute yourself during the Q/A period.

• Please display your name and city/location in the bottom left corner of your Zoom image (right click to access “rename”).

Speaker sessions

• The speakers will be recorded individually. You may hear “recording on/recording off” between speakers.

• GC Board member, Alicia Cowart, will introduce the speakers.

Q/A period

• After the last speaker in each session, Alicia Cowart will open the Zoom to Q/A. If you have a question, type the speaker’s name and your question in the chat window.

• Alicia, as moderator, will read the chat and call on you in order and invite you to ask the question in your voice.

• After the speaker and Q/A session ends, the Zoom call will end so that we can receive the recordings of the speakers. After about five minutes, the Zoom will resume for the Mapping time and freeform collaboration sessions.

Mapping time and freeform collaboration

During Mapping time and freeform collaboration, you are welcome to pop in and out of Zoom to connect with other guerrillas. You are free to use the Zoom session together or make arrangements to meet on other channels of your choice to collaborate.

During the map show-n-tell (scheduled for 7:15pm - 7:45 PDT), Use the raise hand feature in the participants list to signal you are ready to share you screen and your map. The moderator, Darin, will call on you in the order you appear in their participant list. In order to get through all the maps, this will not be a discussion session, you will simply show your map and say anything you want about it in about one minute. We currently have over 50 collaborators so this session may go a little long…and that is fine.

Thank you for making this a fun day and an exciting atlas! We will share the atlas pdf ASAP!

MAP REQUIREMENTS

Formatting:

• Maps may be computer generated, hand-drawn, sculpted, painted, sewn, crocheted, and by all other mediums. (You will need to digitally capture non-computer maps.)

• Maps should be submitted as high-resolution, rasterized pdfs. (If this is an issue contact us via email.)

• Maps should be formatted in landscape orientation on an 8.5” x 11” PDF. (A4 users should make sure their art is not more than 280mm wide.)

• Filenames cannot have spaces. hyphens or underscores are fine.

• or Maps and any accompanying text may be any size that fits within 8.5” x 11 and may be placed anywhere on the page.

• Maps will be printed in landscape orientation.

• Maps may be in color or black and white. 

• Include on the map: name of creator(s) and location of creator(s), map title, and data source(s).

• We will publish a first iteration of the atlas with the maps in the order the are submitted. Later, like tomorrow, we will organize the maps into a narrative for the final print version.

Submission:

• Maps are due by 7:45pm PDT (submit at: info@guerrillacartography.org)

• Please include the location (city, state, province, country AND latitude and longitude) of where the mapmaking happened to include in our map of AIAD: Community.

• All collaborators will receive an atlas in the mail, please include a mailing address.

WE WILL BE DOCUMENTING THE CHALLENGE. HERE’S SOME WAYS TO HELP:

• Post and share your progress on social using #AtlasInADay and #GuerrillaCartography via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or others!

• Livestream part of your creative process and share with us using #AtlasInADay and #GuerrillaCartography

• Send us photos!

• Participating in Atlas in a Day grants Guerrilla Cartography rights to use your map and image unless you expressly deny the right before submitting your map. Guerrilla Cartography is a registered nonprofit and has no paid employees or members.

• We copyleft by using a Creative Commons license that allows noncommercial reuse and redistribution of our products by attribution, and we allow free pdf downloads of all our atlases.

DAY OF EVENT COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

• Remote communication on the day of the event will be through our email: info@guerrillacartography.org.

• If there are any issues that cannot be resolved through email, we will arrange for phone communication on an as-needed basis.

• We will be on all of our social channels all day so you may communicate with us through those also.

history of atlas in a day

• You can download a free version of our first AIAD Challenge, Atlas in Day: Migration (or purchase a hardcopy) and read about it in an article by GC Board Member Darin Jensen, published in Cartographic Perspectives’ Visual Fields.

Download the Home: An Atlazine template to make your own atlazine. It includes prompts for making your own pocket atlas of home.

On Saturday, October 5, 2019, more than 50 guerrilla cartographers gathered, in person and online, to collaborate in producing an atlas in a single day on the subject of migration. Researching and designing an atlas on a complex theme in the span of 24 hours is indeed a challenge. This volume of maps is a concrete demonstration of the power of crowdsourcing and collaboration.

The subject of the atlas—migration, broadly defined—was only announced to the Guerrilla Cartography Collaborative via live stream at 9 pm PDT, Friday night. The following day, some 35 collaborators met at Oakstop in downtown Oakland, California, and began sharing ideas and working on their maps. Another 28 challenge participants worked on their maps remotely, representing 19 other locations in four countries. Creating on computers, paper, and boards; using crayons, watercolors, embroidery thread, and other media, the challenge collaborators submitted 43 maps on the theme of migration by the 7:30 pm deadline. A single electronic file was compiled and one rough print on a scrappy printer was attempted by 9 pm, fulfilling the challenge.

We took a little time after to reflect on the maps that were created and then arranged them into a sort of narrative, both graphic and philosophical — choosing just one of the myriad it could be. The final document was published within a week of the challenge.

The maps in this atlas interpret the theme of migration in diverse ways, considering the movements of people, animals, climates, physical materials and cultural artifacts over time and space. Some of them represent the culmination of years of research on a critical topic; others are quick sketches inspired by current events and concerns. Collectively, they add substance and content to one of the most critical issues our planet faces today.

Buy your copy today in softcover by clicking here for domestic sales. For international sales, please contact us. Download Atlas in a Day: Migration as a PDF licensed under Creative Commons. Use and reuse the maps to inspire others with cartography. The atlas was published in October, 2019.

Atlas in a Day Challenge: 24 hours to research, design and print an atlas

Migration: The Challenge

The theme of Migration was announced on October 4 at 9pm pacific time. The challenge will end at October 5 at 9pm. pacific time. Submit your Migration map by 7:30 pm pacific time to be sure it is included in the atlas, which will be printed at 9pm.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Atlas in a Day Challenge launch party: Friday, October 4, 8-10pm PST, Federation Brewing, 420 3rd Street, Oakland, CA

• The atlas theme will be announced at 9pm pacific time. No RSVP is necessary—just show up! Remote attendees may watch the announcement and lectures via FB livestream.

Atlas in a Day Challenge main event: Saturday, October 5, 9am – 9pm pacific time, Oakstop, 1721 Broadway, Oakland, CA

• 9:00-10:00am      Welcome: coffee and donuts (provided)

• 10:00-10:30am    Talk: Diana Negrin, “Represent, Visibilize, Dignify” 

• 10:30-11:30am    Work time

• 11:30-12:00pm    Talk: Zach Bleemer, “Data-mining: Accessing geospatial data online” 

• 12:00-1:00pm      Working lunch (provided)

• 2:00-2:30pm        Talk: Molly Roy, “Not just a pretty map: How to be an effective visual storyteller” 

• 2:30-5:30pm   Work time

• 5:30-6:30pm   Communal dinner (provided)

• 6:30-7:30pm   Work time

• 7:30pm        MAP SUBMISSION DEADLINE

• 7:30-8:30pm   Atlas compilation

• 8:30pm        Attempt printing

• 9:00pm        Dive bar celebration! (location TBD)