Maps and Yellow Pages

Day 3 - Software You Can Love (Fri) • 15:00 • Duration: 45m

If you look back 10-15 years, we used “free maps” only as a last-resort way to find a tourism information office or shop that sells real maps. It also used to be funny and, in a way, interesting, to navigate “map-flavored yellow pages”. We knew we are looking at an ad brochure and acted accordingly.

These days map-flavored Yellow Pages are embedded into every smartphone, which we use daily to navigate. I find it quite sad, because constantly projecting the world through such “maps” results in a very peculiar world understanding. For those who haven’t tried, it is an interesting exercise to use Yellow Pages to find playgrounds (when traveling with kids) or water fountains during hot days.

Even in this era, not all is lost! Technology of real maps is moving and improving. I will remind you what a real map looks like and show how usable it is today. During the talk a licensed cartographer will give practical day-to-day tips for navigation and exploration. In the second half of the talk we will switch out our consumer hat to a creator hat and behold, create! No background in cartography required, only a smartphone.

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