BCS Symposium 2011 - The Power of the Image DAY 2

Day 2 talks now available on the BCS website at Presentations

The first session - Speciality Mapping helped to highlight the research being carried out by not only universities but our very own Ordnance Survey as well, into non-visual or vision deficiency in location based products.

The imaginative ways highlighted really gave us something to think about how our maps are perceived by these users, and how we can integrate our mapping with these researched methods to assist users, and open up location navigation to a wider audience.

Workshop sessions then followed including Cartographic Surgery with Global Mapping, Understanding INSPIRE with AGI and RSW Geomatics, Making Sense of Statistics on Maps with Giles Darkes,  Create your own 3D city model without sticky-back plastic with Autodesk, and a Visit to Macclesfield Silk Museum.
A great lunch was sponsored by some of our supporting corporate members including Autodesk, Bentley, Cadcorp, ESRI, Europa Technologies, Ordnance Survey, Victoria Litho, GISPro, Imray Laurie Norie & Wilson, STAR-APIC, Global Mapping, Newgrove Consultants and Steer Davies Gleave.

At 2pm the second talks session of the day started endeavouring to answer Where are we now?.
Both Europa Technologies and Steer Davies Gleave presented slides to provoke us in thinking about the new open data available and how we can use it to create cartographic products for our users. Encouraging more integration with media files and new technology was a key theme. Dr David Fairbairn, from ICA, then summarised how the ICA have developed commissions and workshops to carry out research work and indicated concrete results from the efforts of cartographers around the world in advancing the discipline.

A busy day of lectures and workshops was then concluded with The Helen Wallis lecture, this year given by Peter Barber (Head of British Library Map Collections, and curator of the British Library's fascinating exhibition Magnificent Maps) on The Map as Symbol.
From depictions on coins and medals right through to grand world maps in royal palaces, a map has appeared on objects from very early beginnings to act a status symbol - just take a look at the size of  Charles II's The Klencke Atlas opposite. Pictured here with Peter.

Curator of Magnificent Maps - Power, Propaganda and Art