This week is National Geography Awareness Week. Hopefully you're celebrating it your own way by enjoying a map, thanking a cartographer, or even doing some mapping yourself! It's clear that mapping and geo have entered the mainstream - everyone is engaging with maps through navigation systems, friend location finders, and virtual globes. The next step is to make people aware of the potential for them to personally engage with place and location for personal interests, business uses, and community building.

This Wednesday, I will be giving the GISDay plenary talk at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. My talk, "Neogeography: from Tower to Town Hall" will discuss how the movement to broad, public engagement and collaboration, particularly around geographic contexts through web maps, mobile devices, and open data can build stronger communities, improved research, representative government and better livelihoods of people. (link to the UVA Calendar)

Around Washington, DC you can join the OpenStreetMapping party in Bethesda, MD on Saturday, or you can check out the large list other activities at GISVirginia. Whatever you do, spread the word and encourage people to go out and map something.

GEOPRESS_LOCATION(Charlottesville, VA)