Dear Members and Fellows,
This is my first monthly bulletin to you as your
new President. Peter Jolly started the monthly report and I certainly valued it
as a way of keeping in touch with what was going on within the Society and so I
intend to continue in this tradition with a few little tweaks of my own.
For those of you who may be relatively new to the
Society, or whom I have yet to meet at one of our many functions, I thought you
might like to know a little more about me. I have worked for the Ministry of
Defence for over 30 years and when I started my career in 1979 I said that when
I became fed up with working with maps I would then know that it was time to
move on. Well, I am still here and not in the least fed up! Maps have always
fascinated me and I can remember at primary school when the class was told they
could choose their favourite book for "quiet time" I always reached
for an atlas. I have been involved with BCS since 1999 and I have spent the
last 4 years as Chair of the Programme Committee. I come to the role of
President with a sound grounding in both the Society and its Activities.
Our schools' initiative, "Restless
Earth", which began in 2011 following on from a discussion of how best to
take mapping out to schools, supports the current geography curriculum and is a
very popular workshop for GCSE students. In November we delivered 2 workshops in
3 days, in Altrincham and Fleet and there are a further 6 planned for the
remainder of the Academic Year.
I am pleased to announce that one of my final
achievements as Programme Chair was to secure sponsorship from the Great
Britain Sasakawa Foundation which was established as a result of a visit to
London in 1983 by the late Ryoichi Sasakawa. The purpose of his visit was to
meet a number of senior British figures to discuss the international situation
and, in particular, UK - Japanese relations.
It was agreed that it would be in
the interest of both countries if more could be done to enhance mutual
appreciation and understanding of each other's culture, society and
achievements. We are delighted to have the Foundation as our prime sponsor for
Restless Earth and look forward to working with them in the future.
A recent
noteworthy item in the press has been the controversy over Sandy Island. Shown
on Google Maps and nautical maps (sic) – I am sure you could hear the
hydrographers shouting at the radio report "They're charts, not
maps!" – it has been discovered, or rather not discovered, that it doesn't
actually exist! Initially it was thought that perhaps it was simply a
digitisation error, but it has since been identified on a 1908 chart in an
Auckland museum. It has been reported that the island was the result of an
error recorded in 1876 by the crew of the Velocity, a whaling ship, who
reported a series of "heavy breakers" and some "sandy
islets". This highlights the fact that you cannot always believe what you
see on a map or a chart!
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| Sandy Island |
This cartographic controversy also emphasises the
point that I have made at several events, that cartography is as important now
as it has ever been, if not more so in this era of Geographic Information
Systems where software packages, designed by IT specialists, freely available
on the internet, "make" your map for you with not a cartographic
consideration or principle in sight, which can result in very poor quality products
that betray the true essence of a good map. The Society needs to ensure that we
reinforce the message that good design and presentation will significantly enhance
a cartographic product and that bad design can often cast doubt on a perfectly
accurate product that simply does not inspire confidence. Of course, the
reverse is equally true, but that is another story!
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity in
my first President's Bulletin to thank Peter Jolly for his Presidency over the
past 2 years. During that time our membership has continued to grow, which is
no mean feat in this current climate. He has handed over a flourishing Society
and I look forward to all the events planned for our 50th Anniversary in 2013. In advance, I encourage you all to attend as many events
as you can as it promises to be a memorable year for The British
Cartographic Society.
Best wishes,
For those of you with children, or if you are just a big kid yourself, then you may be interested in keeping up with Santa’s progress on Christmas Eve by following him on the NORAD Santa Tracker website - http://www.noradsanta.org/. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a joint organization of Canada and the United States that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defence for the two countries and whilst Santa is not seen as a ‘threat’ he does get tracked every year. It’s good fun and is a useful persuasive measure to get children to bed, although given that they are usually so excited there is no guarantee of sleep I’m afraid. So log on and follow his progress across the world map and ensure that you are in bed before he arrives to deliver your presents!
