Over the last week or so I was honored to participate in events at three institutions, which in some ways couldn’t have been more different: the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, metalab at Harvard, and the Bolinas Museum. MoMA Full Disclosure: The Edge of Information Design, MoMA’s first show devoted entirely to...
The State of the Map US (SOTMUS) 2026 conference in Madison, WI was yet another fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts, of new friends and familiar faces. I had the chance to give two talks on behalf of Stamen — one about a community research project, and one that was a lot more...
I’m thrilled to announce that Harvard’s Graduate School of Design has invited me to teach a second semester long workshop! It’s called Re-imagining the Archive, and we’ll be engaging with the holdings of prominent institutions like MoMA and Harvard Art Museums to investigate the intersection of culture, technology and society. We recently published a “studio”...
This summer I had the honor of speaking at DATA | ART, an event at MIT and sponsored by MetaLab at Harvard and Northeastern University, that gathers practitioners who live in the liminal space between “what is data” and “what becomes art.” The conversation often revolves around the tension between precision and poetry, between representation...
Last month, I led an interactive workshop at The Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center’s Summer Symposium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Urbana, Illinois. MW CASC is a consortium of research-focused academic, Tribal, and non-profit partners working collaboratively with the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The workshop focused on data visualization and mapping for...
The State of the Map US (SOTMUS) 2025 conference in Boston, MA was yet another fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts. Stamen was well-represented this year by Kelsey Taylor, Eric Brelsford, and Eric Rodenbeck. We presented two talks on Stamen projects related to open source tooling with maps. Now that we’re back in...
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...
We’ve just passed the most prolific time of the year for cartographers: the 30 Day Map Challenge! Every November, cartographers across the globe answer the call to create a map each day with a theme outlined by the organizer Topi Tjukanov. These themes cover everything from continents to data sources to concepts. People often added...
The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2023 conference in Pittsburgh was a fantastic gathering of cartographers, mappers, and map enthusiasts. Stamen was well-represented this year by Kelsey Taylor, Eric Rodenbeck, and Ross Thorn. I’m developing a history with NACIS, having given my first talk there last year on cartography and the golden ratio, and...
Next week, cartographers from across the globe will gather in Pittsburgh for NACIS 2023 to share their latest and greatest work in map design, development, and storytelling. This year Ross Thorn and Kelsey Taylor will have the pleasure of presenting on a range of topics touching several of the projects we’ve been working on this...