{"id":221192,"date":"2019-04-03T23:55:03","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T06:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&#038;p=221192"},"modified":"2019-10-01T17:19:37","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:19:37","slug":"local-perspectives-at-global-conferences","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/local-perspectives-at-global-conferences","title":{"rendered":"Local Perspectives at Global Conferences"},"author":1432,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15202,282062,11012],"tags":[11072,176712,15232,271,209302],"arcnews_issues":[327822],"class_list":["post-221192","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartography","category-geography","category-the-relevance-of-cartography","tag-ica","tag-international-cartographic-conference","tag-map-design","tag-mapping","tag-presentation","arcnews_issues-spring-2019","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"When a presenter positions a world map locally, how do attendees from other regions experience the map and the information it exhibits?","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"As an academic\u2014and especially now as president of the International Cartographic Association (ICA)\u2014I attend quite a few conferences. The best ones, I have found, provide attendees with a balanced combination of exchanging knowledge and networking. Participants present their ideas and get constructive feedback while also listening to and looking at other people\u2019s presentations to get inspired. They talk to old friends and usually make a few new ones (lest they stay in their comfort zones too much). Conferences with small, in-depth workshops really boost learning, while larger events enhance opportunities to meet new people.\r\n\r\nThe myriad communication aspects of conferences intrigue me. I find it interesting that a lot of attendees go home with notes consisting of keywords that represent whole ideas, a bunch of references to read and URLs to visit, and new acquaintances\u2019 contact information to both record and act on. But in many cases, all this ends up in a postconference pile because day-to-day affairs inevitably get in the way. (Or am I the only one who has these problems?) The mobile apps that are popping up for specific conferences are certainly making it easier to structure all this information and, later, integrate it into postconference workflows. But I digress.\r\n\r\nWhat I am really fascinated with is how the maps we use at conferences communicate different ideas\u2014especially for those of us who routinely use world maps to display our findings on a global scale. For example, think about the maps that are used to illustrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)\u2014the 17 objectives created by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 that aim to eradicate poverty, end hunger, achieve gender equality, clean up the ocean, and do more by 2030. They typically have to cover the entire world, since the SDGs are global initiatives.\r\n\r\nOver the course of my travels to conferences around the world, however, I have observed that even global-minded scientists are influenced by renowned cartographer Waldo Tobler\u2019s first law of geography: \u201cEverything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.\u201d This is partly due to how locally biased geography education is. First, we learn about our own region and country; then we learn about our continent; and finally, we zoom out to the whole world. Recall the atlases you used in school as evidence of this.\r\n\r\nI call this a local-global perspective, and I often wonder how it comes across at conferences and whether these differences in local perspectives are problematic. When a presenter puts North America at the center of a world map, for instance, how do attendees from other parts of the world\u2014say, Europe\u2014experience the map and the information it presents? Are they able to make the mental transformation needed to apply the North America-focused presentation to their own world view?\r\n\r\nTake a look at these maps."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":221202,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"We see three different world maps, all choropleths of the same SDG-related topic made in the equal-area Mollweide projection. This allows viewers to compare individual values among countries. However, the positioning of the world\u2014the location of the central meridian\u2014is done locally. For Europe, I put the meridian over my hometown\u2014Enschede, the Netherlands\u2014at about six degrees west. This results in a typical Euro-centric perspective on the world. For Europeans, New Zealand is always on the edge of the map, and sometimes it isn\u2019t even there at all (which recently led New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and comedian Rhys Darby to start asking why as part of a tourism campaign for the country). On the map from the Asian perspective, which puts the meridian on Xian, China, New Zealand moves toward center stage. But what about other countries that are split, appearing in two locations on the map, like China in the New York-centered map or Canada in the Xian-centered map? Do we value them twice, since we see them in two locations? Or do we more or less ignore them because they are far away and on the edge?\r\n\r\nHow would people from different continents discuss these mapped phenomena among themselves? And would they get enough information about them when the map is only flashed for a minute or two on a screen, before the next slide goes up? We all talk about the same data, but we come at it from different map perspectives. So do we actually talk about the same things, or do we just think we\u2019re talking about the same things?"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"The 2019 International Cartographic Conference (ICC) is being held in Tokyo from July 15\u201320. Find out more at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.icc2019.org\/\">icc2019.org<\/a>.","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Perhaps, in addition to conversing with one another at conferences, we could use interactive maps during our presentations, or give out paper or PDF-based maps before the presentation begins that allow other attendees to take a closer look at specific continents, countries, or regions so they can discuss the issues at hand from their own local perspectives. We might be able to come up with some interesting solutions that way."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/esri-news\/arcnews\/relevance-of-cartography-series\">The Relevance of Cartography<\/a> series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Local Perspectives at Global Conferences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When a presenter positions a world map locally, how do attendees from other regions experience the map and the information it exhibits?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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