NACIS 2019

Mapping the Silicon Prairie
Presenter: Marc Marean, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Silicon Prairie, in the last five years, has become a normalized and associated place-name with startup culture in the Great Plains and the Midwest. However, ambiguity remains as to where this region predominantly is located from its early conception in the 1970's to the present. This presentation will give focus on the early history of the region, with the main emphasis detailing the mapping techniques using GIS as it relates to the Silicon Prairie's ties with the biological prairie, the changes in extents over time and associated place-based names as a means to understanding the study region.

Tough Cartography
Presenter: Heather Smith, Esri
A lot of artistic maps seek to imitate historic ones – usually the yellow-edged, copper-plate-engraved variety. But my eye is more often drawn to maps made in the pre-digital 20th century. And many of these maps were designed with the knowledge that they'd be printed on cheap paper with cheap ink. They had to be tough if they were going to be legible. Follow along as I imitate this style to map the mining history of the Mojave Desert.

The Dichotomy of Museum Map Design: Walk-by Maps versus Stop-and-Study Maps
Presenter: Daniel Cole, Smithsonian Institution
This discussion will present maps and GIS on display that provide the opportunity to educate about public study areas on a variety of themes (oceanography, biogeography, paleobiology, physical geography and geology, environment, history, human origins, and ancient cultures). These exhibits provide maps in several different formats: generalized maps from which visitors can glean spatial information from as they walk by; detailed maps that require visitors to stop and study so that more can be learned; along with interactive maps, story maps, and GIS. Maps help us navigate, but they can also serve as mediums of relationships between artifacts on display.

Designing a Surfing Map that Looks Deeper than the Waves
Presenter: Margot Carpenter, Hartdale Maps
Saco Bay's coastline is a hopscotch of headlands and sandy embayments that arc through 90º of the compass and offer numerous surf breaks that take advantage of the varying swell directions. Every surf location in the world is part of a larger geography and Maine's Saco Bay is no exception. When I decided to map "Surfing Saco Bay", I wanted to engage the viewer in this larger picture of underwater topography and wave dynamics. My presentation will highlight the initial sketches, the elements that frame the map, and the (bumpy) process for bridging terrestrial and bathymetric data and cartographic styles.

Reimagining College Campus Maps
Presenter: Tracy Tien, Smith College
Co-presenter: Jon Caris, Smith College
College campus maps are rendered stylistically (whether illustrated, planimetric, or whimsical), yet consistent in their intention – conveying idealized landscapes. Each iteration alters the accumulative spatial narrative of the institution, which explicitly and implicitly influences the collective purpose. Our work is motivated by unlearning the dominant narrative and rearticulating an alternative spatial understanding of our campus. We're using digitized landmarks to illuminate the intersections of physical persistence and temperamental institutional memory. By overlaying georeferenced historical maps from the college archives, we are draining the pleasant nonsense and digitally transforming a novel campus map that accounts for elasticity in time.