Nate Wessel to GeoHipster: “I want to get stuck doing something”

Nate Wessel
Nate Wessel

Nate Wessel is an urban planner and cartographer living in Toronto. He spent much of his life so far in Ohio and enjoys cycling, walking, mapping things, and playing with his cat. Check out his website https://natewessel.com/ for more info.

Nate was interviewed for GeoHipster by Natasha Pirani.

Q: Hi Nate! How did you become the planner, cartographer, and transit nerd of your email signature epithets? Who/what have been some of your influences and inspirations?

A: I grew up in the suburbs of northeast Ohio and for some reason that I still don’t fully understand I always had a built-in antagonism toward cars and suburbia. As a teenager, I got really into cycling (carbon racing bike, shaved legs, etc.) and rode absolutely everywhere as fast as I could. I took transit sometimes too, for no real reason except that it was difficult and no one else I knew used it. There was one transit route a mile from my house; you had to wave down the little bus as it came by once an hour and it would take you into what was left of downtown Canton, where I would walk around sometimes. I guess I’ve always liked exploring neglected public spaces – there are few public spaces in the US that aren’t neglected though; everyone just passes through inside their private isolation chamber. As an outsider to that, I got to see a lot of really terrible and even, I’d say, brutal behaviour from ordinary people inside their cars. It’s astonishing how cars can make their drivers feel so disconnected from the world around them. 

I wanted to get out of the suburbs ASAP and I went to college with a major in urban planning. I ended up in a design school – planning departments seem to be lumped in either with architecture or geography and this one had architecture for a roommate. Some of my first classes focused more on color theory and graphic design than transport planning or housing policy. Eventually they exposed us to ArcMap too, though GIS and design didn’t really come together into cartography for me until after I graduated and started using better, open-source software like QGIS.

Q: To get wordy and mildly transit nerdy…I recently learned the English word vecturist – a collector of transportation tokens. It seems like a relevant occupation in this age of automated transit fare payment/collection. Your interest in its Latin root piqued my curiosity: what are your favourite transit-related (or other) cognate words or etymology facts?

A: What a fun question! One of the Latin words I had the most fun learning is the verb “trahere” (meaning: to pull or drag) which is where we get “tractor”, as in Star Trek’s “tractor beam” which is of course always pulling things. I don’t know why I’d never thought to wonder why they called it that. Thus: tract, distract, protract, subtract, abstract, extract, contract… it’s amazing how many words you can make with a few prefixes, all of them having to do with pulling things metaphorically from, away, for, below, with, etc. 

I’ve also been doing a bit of work lately with a company called Conveyal, which shares the ‘ve’ root of vecturist, and also ‘vehicle’ for that matter. It’s fascinating to find similarities in English words and then explain them with Latin. But once you learn enough Latin, you start to see similarities there that take you back to Proto-Indo-European for an explanation and then before you know it you’re an amateur linguist. 

Q: And what do you think about automated transit fare payment and its implications?

A: I really like it! As you know, the Toronto Transit Commission has finally got their smartcard system working now, more or less. I used to always have to carry a couple tokens in my pocket and then I was always finding tokens later scattered all over the apartment. It’s one less pocket I need to pat before walking out the door.

I really like the data collection they make possible as well – I’m hoping some day to work for the agency that collects that tap-on smart card data. To be able to track individual travel behaviour over months and years like that is an absolute gold mine for anyone who wants to study how and why people use transit. I really hope transit agencies are able to leverage some of that data – but I’m afraid they’re mostly not doing much with it at the moment. 

Q: You make exquisite maps that are both beautiful and useful. Especially for cyclists. Tell me about your work on rethinking urban bike maps.

A: Gosh. Thank you. 

I made a bike map for Cincinnati during my last couple of years living there after getting fed up with a couple of crappy bike maps that kept getting circulated year after year. They were very subjective maps, though without really declaring their subjectivity in any way. Maps with a subjective, biased perspective can be really interesting but they need to clearly put a face on that perspective so the reader can know where they’re coming from and how to relate to them critically. You can’t print maps like that out of a big faceless bureaucracy as though they contain some objective truth.

Anyway, I reacted against those maps and made my own bike map that was explicitly objective and based on verifiable facts like posted speed limits, elevations, and the number of lanes in a street. It was really detailed data and I think the map was able to convey a lot of nuance that people hadn’t been able to see before. I got some funding for the project and printed a bit more than my weight in paper maps. For anyone who hasn’t printed a giant quantity of something they created, I highly recommend it. It’s a really great feeling – totally worth cutting down a tree for it. 

Q: What if everyone were a cyclist? (I obviously borrowed this question from your old blog).

A: So I’ve been working on this new bike-map concept, which I’m applying to Toronto because that’s where I live now. The idea is that there is a bias toward cars in the street network itself and that in order to properly map that network from a cyclist’s perspective, we need to do a lot of extra work just to get around that. Look for example at a typical street map of any city and you will see a clear hierarchy of streets, from highways on down to ‘local’ or ‘side’ streets. The bigger, more prominent streets are longer and straighter. The lesser streets are more indirect and fragmentary. This is a world built for cars. 

Those same big straight roads generally aren’t safe for cyclists because of all the cars and we end up following more indirect, twisting, fragmentary paths in order to avoid them. Those twisting paths aren’t totally improvised though – they keep recurring in predictable sequences as cyclists settle in and find the best alternatives for common trips. Those paths themselves are the bicycle “highways”, even if they aren’t marked as such – and they usually aren’t. My idea is to simulate this path choice behaviour at a regional scale, as though everyone were a cyclist, though riding in current car-centric conditions. This can be used to generate a bike-specific street hierarchy which actually looks totally different from a “normal” map.

Q: You seem like a modern renaissance academic; you completed a PhD last year in urban planning (congratulations!) yet have written that specialization is a curse. I think I can relate to your concurrent desires to “keep moving, and learning, and developing” and “to get stuck doing something”. I’m curious to know more about how you feel about these academically and otherwise – do you see these pulls as contradictory? Complementary? Normal? Necessary?

A: I graduated from undergrad into a really abysmal job market for urban planning. I spent a year freelancing in design stuff and burning through my savings before I met the man who would become my academic advisor, Michael Widener. I mentioned that I was looking for work and he followed up with an offer to supervise me with a modest stipend – enough to keep the lights on for a couple years anyway. So I actually started my master’s program for the money, such as it was. I wanted to stay in academia for a PhD because I really liked the people I met during the master’s and the challenge of learning new things – the people in that department were very different from me – lots of geologists and archeologists doing remote sensing and historical GIS. I was the only person talking about transit among a bunch of people studying arctic ice and Mayan ruins and Martian topography. 

But I guess I found out that a PhD is a somewhat different beast – or maybe my new department was? I still really liked the people I got to work with, but the tasks kept getting more repetitive. Problem statements were followed by statistical analyses were followed by literature reviews were followed by conference presentations were followed by long epistolary editorial processes, and then it all starts again. I was also increasingly surrounded by people doing really similar work, all of whom were great by the way – no complaints, but I think I stopped learning or feeling challenged in that context. I wasn’t encountering new ideas, only different applications of the same ideas. 

So that’s the downside of specialism, that kind of intellectual and spiritual isolation that will creep up on you if you’re not careful. By contrast when I say that I want to get stuck doing something, maybe what I’m getting at is that total freedom of association is also a curse. That superficial exposure to novelty doesn’t teach; you have to really cement yourself to it for a while, like learning a language by immersion. 

I think both specialty and focus; and novelty and excitement have addictive properties and are always pulling hard in their own direction. Specialty gives money and merit and stability, novelty gives growth and vitality. I’ve found it difficult to strike the right balance and even harder to maintain it. 

Q: What is Civic Tech Toronto and what have you learned and unlearned as a regular at the meetups? And what else do you like to do in Toronto?

A: Civic Tech TO is a weekly meetup where people with a range of technology interests get together to work on civic problems. Some people are teaching homeless youth how to code, others are using data to advocate for better transit, I’ve mostly been using it as a way to hold myself accountable to my own bike map project. It’s as much a social activity as anything and I’ve met some really interesting people there. 

If I’m being honest though, one of the things I’ve learned is just how weak Toronto’s civic culture is. Canada has much more of a safety net than the US which I think allows people to get a bit complacent and rely on government for a lot of things that people would be organizing around in the US. There’s an obvious upside to that, but it does make civic engagement very different here – more professionalised, less accessible, and so many things seem to circle back to some big institution. Civic Tech is very much becoming its own civic institution though which I think is great. 

I’m still trying to figure out how to enjoy Toronto – everything is so expensive here. I like to ride bikes and hang out on the beach as much as possible. 

Q: Planner, cartographer, transit nerd…what else are you (becoming)? (A geohipster, perhaps?)

A: I design and sew most of my own clothes and consider myself a half-decent seamstress; I’ve been looking for work lately so there’s been a big push to make some more formal, conservative stuff to eventually wear in a government planning office. I’ve also kept aquariums since I was a kid and I spend a lot of time building ever more elaborate aquatic environs to keep the fish and plants and molluscs happily munching on each other’s chemical byproducts.

Geohipster is an interesting term! It seems like a “hipster” is defined in part by an aesthetic eclecticism, and also (and more importantly?) by irony. I’m definitely an eclectic user of GIS, but I think I’m much too earnest about it to be accused of irony. But isn’t that exactly what a real hipster would say?

Q: Do you have any wisdom or advice to share with readers?

A: Don’t forget to stop and pet the cats.

Rosemary Wardley: “Coding is foundational knowledge that can help you in any career”

Rosemary Wardley is a Cartographer at National Geographic where she works on a variety of custom print and digital products. Outside of work, Rosemary stays active in the larger geo community through her position on the Board of NACIS and through the many geospatial meetups that take place in Washington D.C. Whenever possible she likes to combine her love of maps with her other passions, LGBTQ rights, empowering women & girls, sports, and of course, her home state of Rhode Island!

Rosemary was interviewed for GeoHipster by Natasha Pirani.

Working as a senior cartographer at National Geographic sounds like it could be a mapmaker’s dream job. Was it yours, or did you navigate there by chance, or perhaps via a scenic route on the back roads and bike paths of your geo-journey? How is it being surrounded every day by people who live and breathe geography?

Working for National Geographic was, and is, my dream job. Back in college when people learned I was a geography major they would usually ask me if I was going to teach (seemingly the only career people thought geographers could have at the time) but in response I would always say “I’m going to work at National Geographic”. That always seemed to appease people, but it wasn’t something I honestly thought would happen. At the time I wasn’t even sure how many geographers worked at National Geographic and I wasn’t specializing in cartography in my studies.

I arrived at National Geographic the summer after I graduated from college as a Geography Intern in the Education Division. NatGeo has always been at the forefront of supporting Geography Education in the United States, through teacher training, classroom resources, and internships. My summer at NatGeo was also my first exposure to the Maps Division. After working elsewhere for a year (editing Flood Insurance Rate maps for FEMA) I knew I wanted to get back to National Geographic and I was fortunate to be hired as part of the GIS team to work on our Cartographic Databases. In the decade plus that I’ve worked here my position has grown and expanded and I now focus on production cartography rather than GIS database analysis. Working here in the Maps, Graphics, and Art Division is amazing and allows me to learn from masters of their craft day in, day out. And National Geographic as a whole is such an inspiring place full of geographers, explorers, photographers, and driven people trying to change the world!

Since geography is where it’s at, you’re hip by default. But I’ll ask anyway: are you a geohip/sister? Are you post-labels? I’m also intrigued by your mention of participation in “esoteric sports”. I vaguely imagine a composite of meditation, ultimate frisbee, and cycling…please enlighten me.

Labels are an interesting thing. They can be positive and something that bonds people together, or on the flip-side, they can be divisive when applied to groups without their consent. That being said, when I choose my own labels I would most definitely consider myself a geohipster and DEFINITELY a geosister! I only recently heard of that phrase (I believe you coined it!) and I think it’s a great way to unite the women of our field! I have gotten much more involved in supporting my fellow women in geography over the last few years, not because I’ve felt injustice myself in my career, but because I’ve come to recognize how much institutionalized inequality there is. I strongly believe in empowering and supporting minorities in geography and if proclaiming I am a geosister loud and proud can help in some small way, then that is an easy thing to do!

My love of esoteric sports is possibly a bit of an exaggeration! I played rugby for 15 years, which is a rather unknown sport in the US, but fairly popular worldwide! It is another great connector, like geography, and if you find a rugby player anywhere in the world you immediately have a common bond! I have always loved learning about sports that are unique to certain places, such as hurling in Ireland or Aussie Rules Football in Australia. Basically I like to stay fit by playing games, and the crazier the game the better I guess!

The Prejudice and Pride map you worked on for Nat Geo is stunning. Who inspired it and what’s the story behind making it? Are there other projects you’re proud of?

The Prejudice and Pride map was directly inspired by a presentation that the data author, Jeff Ferzoco, did at NACIS 2018. Jeff has created this amazing interactive map, OutgoingNYC, detailing the location of queer nightlife in New York city over the past century. His passion for this topic was infectious and both myself and my colleague, Riley Champine, were inspired after his talk and approached him about presenting this data in the magazine. Jeff was a joy to work with and was extremely supportive in our cartographic interpretation of his data and working with us to make it the best visualization it could be. This project was personally important to me as a lesbian since it helped me to learn more about my community and it was extremely rewarding to share this history with a larger audience. I am proud of many other projects I’ve worked on, but there isn’t one that is quite as personal to me or that I am quite as proud of 🙂

What needs to change for there to be gender and racial equality and equity in the geospatial realm?

I think the first step is recognizing that there are problems in gender and racial equality and having a frank discussion on how these can be addressed. There are great strides being made with the creation of groups such as Women In Geospatial and the way that social media can connect and support people across the globe. I believe that the root of the issue comes down to who has exposure to the geospatial field early on in their education and the support to pursue further studies in it. Locally I try to work with school groups here in D.C. to teach them about geography and the opportunities it can provide, and professionally I work to empower and highlight the amazing work done by my fellow female and minority colleagues.

How’d you get involved with NACIS and Maptime? Tell me some stories — your contributions and the fun, surprising, rewarding, confusing, or unexpected stuff that has happened.

I attended my first NACIS Annual Conference in 2010 and I have been an enthusiastic attendee ever since. The atmosphere of NACIS is pretty unique, I immediately felt welcomed by the more seasoned members and was enamored to be surrounded by so many map and geography lovers who were also so easy to talk to and share their expertise. As I realized how unique NACIS was, I felt the urge to get involved further, which led to my work helping to organize Practical Cartography Day and then my position on the Board. I highly encourage anyone interested to attend a NACIS conference to experience #NACISisNicest for yourself!

Maptime was founded in San Francisco in 2013 out of a desire to teach and learn web mapping technologies in an open and collaborative space. I heard Lyzi Diamond speak about it at a FOSS4G conference the next year and volunteered with a few other folks to start a D.C. chapter. We had a super successful chapter for a couple of years as D.C is a bit of a hot-bed for folks in the geospatial community. But honestly, I was most surprised at the amount of new folks who would attend each month from a variety of backgrounds and the thirst for knowledge there is out there for learning about maps! I had to step back from organizing duties with Maptime as I started Grad School, but the spirit of communal learning and knowledge sharing continues virtually via Slack Channels like the Spatial Community and Women in Geospatial.

I could relate to your blog post about feeling like an intermediate of many and master of none after completing a master’s degree in cartography (aka an intermediate’s degree). There are so many web/digital mapping tools; how do you prioritize and choose what to learn and use? Which do you use most at work and want to learn more of?

One of the biggest reasons that I decided to pursue my Master’s Degree in Cartography was because I was finding it difficult to keep up with and learn the ever-expanding list of web mapping tools on my own. Some people are great self-learners and can take a tutorial online and run with it, but I found out that I am not that person! As I mentioned in my blog post, the program at Wisconsin-Madison worked for me because it did a good job at giving an overview of the many tools available, but more importantly they taught the structure of web mapping and how each coding language and library works together. It’s really up to each person to figure out which tools work best for them and to create their own personal stack, as they say. Due to my cartographic background I tend to focus more on the design oriented languages like CSS, and D3, with a heavy emphasis on Python for data processing and wrangling!

On a related note: do you have advice for students, grads, and any aspiring cartographers and geospatialists?

My number one advice for anyone I meet in the geospatial field is to learn some basic programming (whichever language seems most relevant to your interests). I took the requisite coding course for ArcGIS in undergrad but quickly determined it was not for me and then avoided it like the plague. But now, a decade later, I have come to realize that even just having a rudimentary understanding of a couple of coding languages is like learning how to write a compelling essay, it’s foundational knowledge that can help you in any career.

You’ve done a lot of real-life, armchair, and desk-chair adventuring (do you have a standing desk?). Has mapmaking changed your perspective of otherwise unknown places? Has travel influenced the way you feel about home, and about cartography?

Haha, I do have a standing desk, and you’ve just reminded me that now would be a good time to stand up! Mapmaking has certainly given me a great appreciation for the cartographers of yester-year who mapped the world without ever using digital data or satellite imagery, and oftentimes without ever visiting the place they have mapped. I still can’t quite comprehend how cartographers could draw the coastline of a country as accurately as they did from a few surveying angles (I know there is a lot more to it, but seriously, it is mind-boggling!). I still love to take paper maps with me as I travel, as well as pick up whatever maps are locally available. Like many cartographers, I admit the convenience of digital maps and apps, but I miss the tactile feel of a paper map and the ability to see not only your destination but the things that surround it. Traveling takes me back to my cartographic roots of envisioning the map in my head and connecting it to my real world surroundings and it also exposes me to different mapping styles and conventions from other parts of the world!

What’s your next adventure, cartographic or otherwise?

My family and I (my wife and 1.5 year old son) will be heading up to New York City at the end of June to celebrate New York and World Pride! This is actually cartographically connected because the trip was envisioned while researching the Prejudice and Pride map I referenced earlier. I have visited New York City many times before, but it will be so fun to look at it through a new lens of our LGBTQ history and to take part in some historical events of our own!

Britta Ricker: “Think about who the data is representing, and who is missing”

Britta Ricker, PhD (@bricker) is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University in the Copernicus institute for Sustainable Development. Her research interests focus on accessible spatial technologies, particularly open data and the use of mobile devices. Dr. Ricker co-founded the Masters in Geospatial Technologies at the University Washington Tacoma. She has also provided GIS and cartographic services for the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency, MapQuest, and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation.

Dr. Ricker was interviewed for GeoHipster by Natasha Pirani.

Q: Hey Britta (Dr. Ricker?)! Tell me about your start and your education/career path in GIS, and as an academic. Did you always aspire to be a professor?

A: No, I did not always aspire to be a professor. Not at all. I wanted to have a career in International Development. I grew up in rural western Maryland and I played outside a lot. I liked to follow the water flow downhill, and I would daydream about what was over the next hill. My dad was a preacher and my mother was a high school librarian, they were always helping others and I wanted to do that too. My favorite aunt worked for the United Nations and had/has a glamourous international life in NYC. I always wanted to be her! I thought I would study international politics to get there.

I quickly found that the Geography Department at my university (Frostburg State University) at that time (2002-2005) was particularly strong and the professors were really inspiring. I did not want anything to do with GIS and programming, and I avoided it until one day, Dr. Fritz Kessler, a fantastic cartography professor sat me down, and asked me directly “What are your career goals?” I told him, and he explained to me how cartography and GIS can be used for international development. I changed my major the next day.

There have been so many conferences, events, social media, whatever, where people (men) ask, how can we get more women in the field? Take the Fritz Kessler approach. Don’t tell women or anyone how you think of GIS or how they should think of GIS; bring GIS into their value system, into their frame of reference, their interest. It is a fun challenge.

Q: Have you experienced particular triumphs or challenges as a woman in GIS, academia, and hipsterhood?

A: During my PhD (and I think others would agree) we are told the job market is tough, and it really is. When I got my first tenure track position out of my PhD, after being a single mom for 2 years, I was over the moon thrilled. During my PhD, I taught myself a lot of programming. I learned javascript and made maps with Leaflet, I made an iPad app for my daughter, I had a blast. I was doing these things because they were fun and to advance my cartography chops. This really set me apart on the job market, and in the moment was pretty shocked to get job offers so quickly at the end of my PhD because of all of the discouraging things people say about academia and the academic job market. Their comments made it feel like it is nearly impossible to find a tenure track job. If you are open to living anywhere, there are jobs available.

Q: You relocated last year to the Netherlands! How has the transition been? Do you ride your bike everywhere?

A: I do love it here. I am still getting used to it. The Dutch labor law and academic expectations don’t always match, which is fun to learn and navigate. Work/life balance is so important, and in the Netherlands it is the law. I was an exchange student to the Netherlands in high school which is a big reason I am here now. I do really miss the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, the region I had lived for the past 8 years. I like riding my bike everywhere, although I am still learning the “rules of the road” and the nuanced social etiquette of urban biking in the Netherlands. I joke and say my bike is my car. It is John Deere tractor green with a big basket on the front to carry my groceries and makes me smile everytime I see it. I am proud hearing my daughter learn Dutch so quickly, she regularly corrects my pronunciation. I am struggling with Dutch, especially since everyone speaks English so well. Mappy Dutch Fun Fact, a bell tower in Amersfoort is 0,0 for the Dutch datum. There is an awesome multimedia, projection map exhibit about the exact place. Forget Amsterdam, visit Amersfoort!

Q: Our earlier conversations have meandered into topics related to critical and feminist cartography and data visualization. What do those concepts mean to you, and how do they intersect with your research interests and your current work?

A: Wow, okay, this is a big question. Critical and feminist cartography and data visualization are two different fields that so obviously overlap but are incredibly difficult to publish together in academic peer reviewed journal articles. Feminism is really a lightning rod term, particularly in Europe I am noticing. Those who react especially negatively to it, I ask them to define feminism and they often say something like women before men. That is not feminism, feminism is about equality, that is it.

Theories are hard to apply, and my experience is that theorists don’t like it when you try, so it is sometimes better to decouple the two in academic writing at least. Feminist cartography is deeply rooted in my epistemology, my way of knowing, and I like to think it informs all that I do professionally. The research I pay attention to and further is informed by my understandings of feminist cartography and GIS and how I hope it can be extended. I have been enjoying working with Meghan Kelly in this type of research and thinking. In terms of research, feminist cartography acknowledges that there are multiple ways of knowing, seeing, and understanding space. Traditional cartography is not the only way. (But I also don’t think we should villainize cartography!) My way of knowing is not the only form of feminist cartography, or feminist ways of knowing. This is what makes incorporating feminist practice into cartography so very difficult; well, one of the things.

I am interested in developing research questions, to measure and evaluate learning outcomes based on specific communication goals, testing different map interfaces. I aim to investigate the use of new forms of technology such as 360 cameras and new, exciting interfaces that are becoming more widely accessible, such as virtual reality and comparing them with traditional 2D maps. What are the strengths and weaknesses of different visualization methods, in terms of what is learned from them — are they simply fun, or are they useful to communicating something specific like the spatial distribution of a phenomenon necessary for resource allocation or other decision making? The research questions are endless, really.  Results will change as the technology evolves and the social uptake thereof evolve. I don’t really know how to do this, I could use that wayfinding app that you ask for below…I regularly read and re-read the work of Agnieszka Leszczynski, Nadine Schuurman, Sarah Elwood, Renee Sieber, and each time I read their papers, I get different morsels of inspiration and understand them differently.

Q: You’ve said that you “aim to illuminate techniques to make visualization tools associated with GIS more accessible to diverse audiences.” Tell me more about these techniques and some overlooked or invisible challenges of GIS accessibility.

A: Two come to mind: First, the most obvious invisible challenge is missing data. Missing data is also not sexy because it can’t be mapped, easily. Feminist geography talks a lot about missing data; missing historical records don’t mean that women did not make significant contributions, it just means those contributions were not documented. That holds true today. We make a lot of assumptions, and map things based on social media platforms dominated by specific demographic groups. We have interpolation methods for physical geography — could similar interpolation methods be generated for social geography too?

Second, right now, arguably we all have access to the tools required to make maps in our back pockets. It is just not always obvious how to make them, or why we should make them. Maybe more people would be interested in using another accessible form of technology if it were more clear how they could be useful for communication purposes.  

Q: You’ve also explored the potential of drones to be used in participatory action research and citizen science, which sounds super cool. What did you find?

A: Drones are a great example of how increasingly accessible technologies can be used for good, but in ways that are not immediately obvious. Let’s say you take an aerial image of your property every day for one year. Suddenly, the foundation of your house is being eroded away by a new stream that has formed on your property after a heavy rain. You could use a drone to fly during a non-flood event and a flood event to show the difference. If you did this at regular intervals, patterns may emerge. This could be used for legal purposes, or it could be used to learn about your property, or to communicate to a neighbor that they caused this problem because when you looked upstream, you might find land use changes on their property caused flooding in your yard…and that sparks privacy concerns.

I found that the use of drones raises a lot of red flags from a number of different directions. First, legal constraints. Drones are so new — the laws about flying change all the time, and vary between places. Doing research and writing and teaching take a lot of time and energy and to add to that, navigating the legal system was too much. Additionally, I was trying to show how drones could be used for participatory mapping. I got a lot of pushback saying that drones are evil surveillance war machines, and can’t be used for good. GPS was funded, developed and launched by the military, and now we use it to find the closest restaurant or hospital — is that evil?

I am inspired and encouraged by the success of Laura Grace Chipley’s work with the use of participatory use of drones with the Appalachian Mountaintop Patrol (http://lauragracechipley.com/amp). I hope to prove how drones can be used for counter-mapping and advocacy efforts rather than for hegemonic purposes they are known for.

I once had a great conversation with a communications professor about how a simple camera angle pivot on a drone can completely shift the mood of that image. When the camera angle of nadir is 90 degrees – straight down, the aerial photo looks militaristic and utilitarian, whereas with an aerial camera at an angle of 50-60 degrees, it more likely evoke an emotional response of wonderment, beauty and splendor. This technique is used in cinematography.  An aerial video to convey the landscape of the environment in which a story takes place is called a phantom ride.

Q: Do you identify as a geohipster? A geosister? Why or why not — and should it even be a binary distinction?

A: You know, I had a traditional GIS analyst job out of undergrad which makes me identify with #GISTribe (also I have been using ArcGIS Pro a lot lately) and then taught myself tools that might be considered part of the geohipster toolbelt. I think the binary is not helpful. A tool or solution should be made to answer a specific question or to meet a communication goal — how it is made is important in terms of meeting the goal, not to adhere to a certain tribe’s constraints. Solutions are often based on what is in the toolbelt.

Q: What’s your favourite mom joke?

A: What does a baby computer call her father? Answer: Data

From the movie HER, such a great movie.

Q: Do you have a favourite map?

A: Wow, this is hard, I do love historic maps. I also really love the hand-painted watercolor maps by @turnofthecenturies (on instagram) wooden laser cut maps. I particularly like the 3D bathymetry maps (http://www.3dwoodmaps.com/). Of course, I love NYTimes maps.

Q: Is there, like, an open source GPS tracker and wayfinding app for lost students to position themselves in their research and find an ideal route through school? Or to find a job afterwards? Or do you have any words of wisdom to share with them (me)?

A: Relax and enjoy the process. I continually reflect on feeling this way during my masters degree, particularly when working with masters students I am mentoring. I was really uncomfortable with this feeling of uncertainty about how to navigate through a masters degree, and then the PhD thereafter. There is no one way to make a map, there is no one way to complete a research project. You just have to document the process and justify your decisions. No one can do it for you, you just have to trust your academic advisors, and if you don’t trust them, trust your gut and get a new advisor. During your masters degree, you learn the research process, which is always messy and though the end is not always in sight, you just have to keep moving forward. A masters degree is like a 10k race while a PhD is a marathon in mountainous terrain.

Q: Any other thoughts to share with the rest of the hipster- and sisterhood?

A: More of a note to self: Be careful to not villainize men. Do not mimic them either. Let’s just all try to be confident without being dicks. What do our maps communicate? Think about who the data is representing, and who is missing.