The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2024 conference in Tacoma, WA was yet another fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts. Stamen was well-represented this year by Kelsey Taylor, Eric Brelsford, and Alan McConchie. This was a busy year for us – we presented five talks between the three of us! Now that the dust has settled, we wanted to share some of the highlights from our time in Tacoma.
Eric and Kelsey’s talks about Mapping Historical New York and Health Atlas
Eric and I collaborated on presentations about two projects Stamen has been working on for several years: Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas (with Columbia University) and Health Atlas (with UCSF). Both tools underwent a redesign this year and relaunched in the fall.
In our talk about MHNY, Eric focused on the work Stamen has done with Columbia over the past few years to get the first version of the tool released in 2021 (more on that in this blog post), as well as some of the technical updates we implemented for the relaunch to upgrade from raster to vector map rendering, enabling dot density styling with a “beeswarm” effect that wasn’t possible before. I dug into some of the design updates we made, including cartographic and interface improvements. We wrote a blog post that lays out a lot of this work as well – check it out!
In our talk about Health Atlas, Eric similarly focused on the history of the tool, some of the details about how we render and style so much data quickly, and some experiments we tried along the way. I discussed many of the new features we’ve included in the new version of the tool and some of the user testing that went into this redesign. We’ll be talking about this project on the blog in coming weeks – keep an eye out for more soon!
Kelsey’s talk about VACS Explorer
I gave a presentation about VACS Explorer, a tool we worked on last year for the COP28 climate conference in the UAE. I talked about the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils program (abbreviated “VACS”), the insights we hope users can glean from our maps and visualizations, and the features we built into the tool.
My colleague Caroline Carter wrote about VACS Explorer on our blog earlier this year – definitely worth checking out!
Alan’s talks about the future of Stamen maps and working with historical data
While Eric and I presented about various client projects, Alan presented about how we have and are continuing to support Stamen’s basemaps and insights from projects we’ve done that concern historical data.
In The Past, Present, and Future of Stamen Maps, Alan talked about how Stamen developed the styles in question (Toner, Terrain, and Watercolor) many years ago. He also covered how we support these maps today with our partners at Stadia Maps and how we approached modernizing Terrain and Toner. If you’re curious to read more, we’ve talked a lot about how we updated these maps last year on the blog:
- The future
- What happened to our legacy tiles
- Data in updated maps
- Using modern vector cartography
- Recreating Terrain
- Helvetica is a state of mind
In his second presentation, Alan covered similarities between several historical data projects that Stamen has worked on in the last ten years or so. The projects Alan discussed include American Panorama, Mapping Historical New York, Sites of Shame/Manzanar CloseUp, and 12 Sunsets, all of which incorporate historical data and maps into interactive interfaces for users to explore.
Presentations we enjoyed
As usual, there were many fascinating talks at this year’s conference. Thankfully, most of them are recorded so we can share them after the fact (or catch ones we missed the first time).
Our friends at the David Rumsey Map Center gave a fascinating demo of an app they’ve been working on that allows you to project historic maps onto a digital globe in virtual reality with an Apple Vision Pro. All three of us were in the audience and hung on every word as they showed us how to pan and zoom on these stunning historic maps. Using new technologies in a map library – we love to see it!
Lee France from onX maps gave a wonderful talk about how they have built out a cartography team to diversify and improve their map offerings across all onX apps. It’s always exciting to see cartography come to the forefront of a tool when it is so often overlooked. onX uses our open source stylesheet build system to maintain the different styles for each of their products – we’re thrilled to see our tools being used!
Riley Champine from the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond gave a great talk about how they are using HOLC (also known as redlining) maps to garner new insights with their Mapping Inequality project. This tool is fantastic for exploring redlining patterns and thinking how its underlying racism has manifested in today’s society. Stamen and the DSL collaborated on a similar project called American Panorama several years ago, which Alan touched on in his historical maps presentation at this NACIS.
Until next time
We thoroughly enjoyed the variety of practical and technical presentations at this year’s NACIS. It’s always wonderful to spend time with folks in the field who have a mutual appreciation for beautiful, interesting maps. We’re looking forward to the 2025 meeting in Louisville — hope to see you there!