Kindergarten Kartography

Over the years I’ve seen many changes in learning in the realm of cartography. I’m going to use this blog post to reflect on those changes and offer some thoughts on the current state of education in cartography as I see it or, more specifically, how it's become monopolized by people with very little cartographic education of their own to speak of.

Many of us in the geo or cartography business, whatever we do, can point to a love of maps in our school-age years. Struggling for motivation to do something else, I took my own love of maps to what I saw as a more serious step by taking a formal qualification when I studied it for a Bachelor’s degree. I had in mind that I wanted to be involved with maps as a career of some sort and getting an education in them was a key component to becoming proficient and, well, qualified!

My degree course was a very vocationally designed course because it had served as an entry point to the UK cartographic industry for decades. A lot of it was practical but the practical techniques were nothing without the theoretical and conceptual understanding we were taught alongside. Of course, history now shows that many of the techniques I learnt (scribing, photo-mechanical production etc) are long gone and if truth were told, the course was probably lagging behind the technology at the time as computers were replacing many functions of the cartographic process. This is a fairly typical scenario as University courses still struggle to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology.

As I graduated, the UK cartographic industry was rapidly shrinking as GIS exploded onto the landscape. But while the technology has changed profoundly, many of those key ideas, concepts, theories and abilities to critically evaluate have changed very little. The technical and practical aspects were quite honestly the most trivial aspect of my degree. It was the thinking and the development of a cartographic mind that was the most important aspect. Of course, at the time we though just making a decent looking map would get us a good grade. Often that was the case but rarely did we really appreciate that our tutors were actually grading what was going on behind the map…not what the end product looked like. I used to use a pen and scribing tool. I have coded maps before and now I work with servers and portals and other ‘stuff’….increasing animations and 3D. Anyway, the point is, we can easily pick up new ways of doing but picking up the thinking behind the doing isn’t a trivial learning task.

So I loved maps and wanted to better understand them and how they were made. But more than that – I wanted to prepare myself for entering the workforce doing something I loved. And in deciding upon that, the logical step is to do your research and find out where and who is going to give you the best education. I was going to go to Swansea University to do their Topographic Science degree but I ended up going to Oxford Polytechnic. Like most people looking for higher education, University was a logical step. I wanted to learn from the best; people who had been there and done it and who had their own qualifications as badges of authority and experience in cartography. My tutors were internationally known and contributed to cartography in academic and industrial settings. I went to arguably the top place for budding cartographers because I wanted a high quality education and to join the pantheon of cartographers who could point to their alma mater as a badge of quality. The best I could get from masters in the area to set my career up in the best way I could.

As I entered an academic career I soon began learning how to teach and how to be a researcher. Pedagogy became a very important component of my professional life. I had learnt domain knowledge during my degree studies and the mindset of lifelong learning means that I still learn every day. I had practical ability yet the practice of cartography was already rapidly changing and I never used photomechanical production techniques in a real workplace. As an academic I probably wasn’t as practiced as I could have been (a common accusation of teachers generally) but the skills and techniques of being able to teach and lecture were vitally important. I took courses in pedagogic theory and various diplomas. Over the next 20 or so years the process of lifelong learning you acquire as a professional academic meant I kept abreast of current thinking to inform my domain knowledge, my practical abilities and changes in pedagogy. You never become a finished article either in domain knowledge or the ability to teach but knowing how to question and, importantly, to find out the bits you don’t know is important. You also learn an awful lot about people and how to help, encourage or push people to achieve their own goals. Teaching has its very own set of vitally important skills over and above the content.

So where’s this going?

Ultimately, I left academia because I was tired of the admin and bureaucracy. I really enjoyed teaching my students and helping them realize their own passion in mapping. Sometimes I’d lose some along the way because they actually weren’t that interested. Some now have very successful careers in geo and that makes me proud. Some teach…some teach cartography. I stay in touch with many of them. During my academic life I went to many conferences and I could be absolutely certain each would have a panel or a discussion on pedagogic approaches to teaching geography/cartography/GIS/whatever. The format was largely the same. Often it was the same people. The outcomes were normally the same…largely boring summaries of the need for more…better…free…blah blah blah yackity schmackity. Alongside this in the literature, debates raged about the fashion for degrees that were focused on theory to become more vocational and vice versa. The training vs teaching argument was well worn. With heavily practical disciplines like GIS (whether it was ever a discipline at all was another debate entirely) should we be teaching concepts? Should people always have to learn using ArcGIS? Was a broad spectrum of software important to know? Were courses simply driving schools for buttonology? The debates were endless but one thing that characterized them was that rarely did people start from the last end point or argument. They just started again rather than consider the wider context. Their own narrow empire was their only concern. They did one thing very well and that became their very own ivory tower – the pinnacle of knowledge and learning for others to find and believe in.

Towards the end of my time at Kingston University myself and colleagues were well travelled, often leading sessions for other lecturers and academics in the UK on how to teach GIS, or cartography, or mobile mapping fieldwork. We were seen as leading in both discipline, practice and pedagogy. We received numerous research grants for developing technical innovations. We were researching and mapping social media feeds and taking advantage of them in teaching and learning nearly 10 years ago and helping others devise their own approaches for instance.

So have things changed?

The mapping landscape has changed profoundly. New software. New companies or organisations. Free and open data and software. Everything is quicker with social media feeding an endless daily appetite for something, anything, that people consume as ‘new’ (which often isn’t but that’s also a different tale). One person does x, the next responds with y. One person colours their OpenStreetmap in one fashionable way, another makes a hand-drawn version and yet another still does some crazy psychedelic trippy animated thing. All fun in the kiddie’s sandpit but what about outside the sandpit where the real world of mapping exists; where making a version of a basemap in an arty style actually doesn’t cut it for any practical purpose?

Things haven’t really changed and so the disconnect between theory, practice and praxis widens. I’ve seen panel discussions at recent conferences that have opened up the same tired debates, just with different people ignoring what’s gone before. We’ve largely solved the pedagogic debates about training vs teaching. It’s out there (in the literature) if one cares to find it but of course it totally destroys people who want to be seen as innovators to not be seen to be carefully considering this stuff. The discussions are repetitive and say more about the naivety of the panelists rather than their depth of understanding of either their chosen domain or pedagogy. They love playing in the sandpit but the tantrums start as soon as someone wants to play more seriously.

What I have observed is that the players involved are very different to those of 10, 20, 30 and more years ago in terms of the cartographic domain. Cartography seems to have become a past-time rather than either an academic subject or a professional vocation. Many involved in making maps are doing so from a background of education in anything but cartography yet they’re found a passion for making maps. They want to be seen as makers and doers and that is sufficient. Most of this is due to the burgeoning availability of data and the internet as a powerful democratizing tool. Cartographic technology has shifted so rapidly that it’s hard to conceive of someone now wanting to take a Bachelors degree in it. It doesn’t conjure up the image of a real subject any more. It’s been demoted to what a hacker might do with a couple of spare hours and a Mac Book in Starbucks.

So what courses do people want to study to gain qualifications in? It’s pretty much anything but cartography because you can now get your cartography from the internet or from meet-ups or from anywhere but an institution which is set up to deliver education. But the craziness of this situation is that many people who now purport to be fine purveyors of map education sought expert tuition for their own non-cartographic qualifications at some point. Yet now, they’re shouting loudly about how they are now best-placed to offer cartographic training. Let’s be clear – I’m happy for anyone to offer advice and training and help in areas they have some level of knowledge or expertise in but there’s no substitute to learning from experts – people who are experienced, have deep domain knowledge and have played beyond the sand pit. The mantra of beginners for beginners doesn’t cut it. Students in a Bachelors class being taught by an intern or teaching assistant is no substitute for the Professor. They have the merit and background to support and lead learning. They can assess the quality of work against expected norms and relative work. Not everything is super cool or awesome. Some work is, frankly, awful and you’re doing people an injustice by telling them simply by taking part you are becoming proficient or an expert in either domain knowledge or practical ability. As a lecturer I was happy giving fail grades. I was also happy giving grades well into the 90% and higher range. The variation was huge. Not everyone excelled. Some had natural talent, some worked hard to achieve. Grades reflected ability and outcome. I was only able to understand how to assess and comment on quality because I knew my subject and knew how to support teaching and learning through an understanding of pedagogy. By all means go and enjoy the colouring in with computers at a local meet-up and figure out a little trick that makes a task easier – but do not be fooled into thinking this equates to expertise.

And how did this dumbing down of cartographic education and the rise of kindergarten kartography come about? Because of the admin and bureaucracy I so hated. The documents, forms and paperwork that we had to complete to get a new or revised course up and running were horrific. We had to get industrial reviews. We had to pass the work across many other academic and practitioner’s desks. We had term reviews, semester reviews, annual reviews, quinquennial reviews and validation and re-validation events at which external people would pour over ever small item of our plans to check it and assure themselves of the standards it sets. That’s how proper education works. Checking and cross-checking and review after review after review. That was how, ultimately, we could stand in front of students and know we were delivering top class content in a modern, stimulating, caring and professional environment. All of that developmental work gave assurances to the student too. When we could claim most graduates got jobs in the field on graduation we were not making vacuous statements. We knew what we were delivering was what industry and society wanted and needed. We had their buy-in. We were meeting government-set targets for qualified and able graduates. We also kept pace with developments to ensure students were at least on the curve if not as much ahead of it as we could make it. Proper education leading to proper qualifications that were the student’s license to demonstrate they had a proper qualification in the subject they studied. A subject that had an avowed intent to marry domain knowledge with practical skills; to develop knowledge and understanding; a critical and evaluative approach; and a desire for lifelong learning. But too many people have become fed up with this requirement as they search for a quick fix. Taking time to learn something is not seen as a requirement for becoming an expert. Playing the long game is no longer regarded by many as a wholesome approach to learning and by many of the current crop of people who claim to offer educational or training services they do so based on a complete lack of quality assurance that anyone can rely on.

This is why I find today’s trend for short-form online learning and meet-ups as being heralded as THE place to learn cartography so dispiriting. Many of these people seem unaware of so much both in domain knowledge and pedagogy. They’ve rarely gone through any education or training in cartography so their badges are from other disciplines yet they now claim to be the carto-educators of choice. Frankly it’s a tough job to counter that culture precisely because so many formal courses are no longer offered but it doesn’t make it right. It simply doesn’t stack up. You can’t want a qualification from one set of experts then profess to others you’re one in some other subject. MOOCs, I feel, are a special case and most people seem to avoid the reality that many are done as loss-leaders to whet people’s appetite and get them sufficiently interested to take a fee-paying version of the course. Universities do it. Corporations do it. You hardly see any reading lists any more either – the ability to use Google seems to be the only requirement for an inquisitive mind. If content isn’t already online then it’s all too often seen as irrelevant.

Of course, much of this has to do with the death of cartography in the classroom. It’s inevitable people seek education from people offering it and if the traditional arena has dried up then of course motivated individuals and groups will see a gap in the market they feel they can fill. And I am part of that problem because I’d had enough of University life and the crap that got in the way. But I also hope that reaching an audience through various blogs and by continuing to go to conferences and meetings helps others. I’m also writing a book…yes, a real, live book to support much more than the return to button-pushing that current quasi-carto-educators seem to have returned to (side-note…you know, coding is also just button pushing by a different form. I don’t care whether you change the colour of a highway using CSS, javascript or a GUI). And, of course, people love ‘free’ and so free meetups with free content led by people who don’t charge for their time and where free pizza or beer is offered as enticement are bound to be a win win. Except what many don’t seem to realize is it’s a false economy. My suggestion is do some research and ask around. If you want to know something about cartography and really want to get an education in it, seek out a professional who has a background domain and pedagogic knowledge. In the UK I’d look at UCL, City University, Leicester or Nottingham University. In the US, just go check out Penn State, University of Madison-Wisconsin or Oregon State University. Of course, others exist but I’m just picking out a few places to start. Get your qualifications from relevant experts and not from the market stall purveyors who are offering knock-off merchandise. It might look like a good deal but it’ll probably break after a week or two. Get your background in cartography and don’t see Kindergarten Kartography as a sufficient substitute.

As a final thought I do want to be absolutely clear that I'm happy for everyone to have a go at making maps as I have said numerous times before. I'm also more than happy for people to pass on tips, tricks and nuggets of advice via many different forms. I use this sort of advice and self-learning ever day to supplement what I know and to learn from others. Don't mistake this discussion as some sort of claim that no-one is allowed to utter anything about cartography unless they've put in 40 years and have multiple badges of honour. That would be absurd. There is a place for everyone to contribute to the wider realm of cartographic understanding. It's just that the balance has gone. I feel we've tipped into a dangerous area where people are getting hooked on relatively appealing and accessible fayre masquerading as quality assured content. Get hooked on the good stuff and you'll find it sustains you much further than the local sand pit.

And by the way, next time you're at a conference watching a panel discussion on the topic of Cartographic education just step back and think about whether the panelists really have the chops.

Cartographic Identity Disorder

I have CID. There you go...I've admitted it. I can stand up in a circle of fellow sufferers and be open about it. I have Cartographic Identity Disorder. It's characterised by multiple identities; dissociated personalities that control what I do and how I do it. The problem is I don't know what to call what I do...but then again, I don't know that I ever did know and that might be the first step to understanding the problem. I don't mind this disorder. I'm quite happy.

My good friend Georg Gartner just published a blog titled How do we name what we do? as ICA President (that's International Cartographic Association for those that don't know...yes, there is such a thing). In it, he ponders the use of the term cartography its relevance in today's mapping landscape. Georg's blog got me pondering life over my corn flakes this morning and I think I had a moment of clarity. They don't happen often so here it is...

I have never been a cartographer but much of what I have done and do might bear resemblance to the work of a cartographer because I am involved in cartography. Clear as mud...

I grew up with a love of Geography and maps. My favorite classes were always Geography and my favorite teachers were the Geographers. Trouble is, when it comes to making a life out of a subject you enjoyed or were good at, the choices are somewhat limited. Unless you moved into teaching there was no such thing a 'geographer'. I was good at Physics as well...and Biology and both those sciences seem, with hindsight, to have more substance. As a kid I wanted to be a footballer, astronaut, surgeon and even a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer (too much time spent watching CHiPs). I was never fast enough or skilled enough to be a footballer...I didn't particularly enjoy Physics (maybe the occasion of our teacher spilling a beaker of liquid Mercury across the classroom affected my disposition) and though I loved Biology I was rubbish at Chemistry so no hope of going to medical school. I also lived nowhere near anywhere where I could be an astronaut or California Highway Patrolman. The school careers advisor's computer told me I should be a photographer or dental assistant. Hmm...no, I found a degree course at Oxford Polytechnic all about maps instead. It was called Cartography....and I found I was actually quite good at it. I could extend my love of geography and maps into a degree...perfect; that'll delay the inevitable even further!

I spent 3 fantastic years in Oxford studying (if that's what you can call it) cartography. The lecturers were great, mostly because they weren't really your archetypal lecturers. I met and made some great friends and it turned out I was on a course that seemed to feed the UK cartographic industry. So I went to the British Geological Survey in between my first and second years to spend 3 months being a cartographer in their drawing office.  This was 1990. 10 people in a room huddled over their prized personal light tables wielding Rotrings and getting excited over the nuances of a line drawn with consistent width. The morning coffee break at 10.30 (radio on, magazine out) lasted 20 minutes. Then lunch (always midday, always the same) and then home. For a couple of days I got to play on an Intergraph workstation with a digital table and a clicky thing that allowed me to turn movements of my right forefinger into bright dots and lines on a computer screen...this seemed quite interesting but it was serious equipment for serious people...not the work experience kid, so it was back to the drawing room for me. I had some of my work published in BGS materials but overall I hated it and vowed NEVER to be a cartographer. So back to University to finish my studies and then what...

When I graduated in 1991 I'd just taken a new course in something called GIS and I applied to be a researcher at Nene College Northampton to work on GIS related 'stuff' (it was poorly conceived as I later found out, because they didn't really know what it was). I was given the best computer on campus...a magnificent IBM floor standing unit with a massive 4Mb hard drive...enough to install PC ArcInfo and do some GISing. What I slowly began to appreciate at the time is this thing called GIS was rapidly killing professional cartography. Great! It was boring anyway...so what about this new thing. Hmm...two years into the research it became clear I was on my own. No-one else knew anything about GIS. I learnt a lot, self-taught, started a PhD, met some people I later found out were quite big in this GIS thing and then landed a lectureship.  Without even planning it I had gone from my love of geography and maps into...teaching. Dammit.

So I spent the next 10 years or so developing courses in GIS and digital cartography at Northampton. We did well. We expanded the course and students loved it. We got fancier clicky things and did more and more. I was the first person in the UK to teach using ArcView 3 and was delighted that I could finally get away from trying to get people to make maps using commands like "display999" and "polygonshades". Trouble was...it was impossible to make maps anywhere near as good as that boring lot in the BGS drawing office with their slide rules and pens. We were constrained by technology. I completed my PhD; proudly squeezing in 121 maps into my thesis which, by the way, contained a data fudge as several years into processing the data I realized I'd got one tiny thing wrong...I think it's time I admitted it and I apologise to the residents of Towcester to whom I incorrectly ascribed 'poor relative access to healthcare'. It seems Mark Monmonier was right after all...my maps lied.

My move into academia was complete. I was a lecturer, course director for Geography degree programmes, I had PhD after my name so I had the academic badge that meant I must be clever and I taught cartography and GIS classes using the currently in vogue tools so I was at the cutting edge of technology. I then had an opportunity to move to Kingston University...excitement unbound because Kingston was the first University in the UK to embrace GIS in 1989 as they delivered the world's first ever Bachelors course in GIS. I couldn't believe I had been appointed as a Senior Lecturer and soon after became Course Director for GIS, developed new Masters programmes and brought back a large proportion of cartography into the courses. I renamed them from names like 'cartographic techniques', 'topographic science' and 'introduction to GIS' to 'digital mapping', 'geovisualization' and 'digital Earth' and they became more popular! The first half of my time at Kingston was fun but we were always far more respected outside the University than within. We weren't a 'proper' subject apparently. During this time, the course at Oxford closed, others went the same way. We began struggling to recruit students at Kingston but with one or two careful appointments we rode a wave of innovation, won some prizes for our work and pedagogy, did some pretty cool stuff and, importantly, many of our students went on to become involved in the UK geoindustry. I began getting involved with the British Cartographic Society, Society of Cartographers, International Cartographic Association etc...all the things my Oxford lecturers had done I was now doing. I became Editor of The Cartographic Journal. I gave conference papers, wrote up research and...maps. Hmm...I'd become one of those people who happily talked about maps and cartography but when someone asked where my work was I had a fairly empty portfolio. Sure, I'd done a few bits and pieces but nothing particularly spectacular. So I'd become a cartography and GIS lecturer but without any maps to show for it. What's that about teachers only becoming teachers because they can't actually do the job?

I committed to undertaking at least one large map project a year. Not easy because as I found out, there wasn't much appetite for supporting academic work whose main output was a map. Along with a colleague I formed a new Journal...The Journal of Maps as a publication dedicated to publishing...maps and that went well for a time. I got involved in seminars and workshops encouraging better mapping and my maps started winning awards. Hmm...turned out I was actually able to turn what I said week in week out into decent products. I became Principal Lecturer and had risen to quite a high position...and students could see I actually knew what I was on about because I could do it as well. Kudos!

The clock was ticking at Kingston. Without getting into the details it became clear that internally there were agendas that were going to be impossible to turn around. Five GIS staff but the work was done by two of us. Pretty inept management (mostly geologists of the old school variety) and people in key positions that just sneered at what was openly called 'colouring in with computers' (Dean of Faculty!). I recall trying to get a teaching set of iPads to do some mobile GIS work but was told they were a passing fad, just a toy and a waste of money...and that was the decision of a committee of people...genius eh! You cannot work in that environment with people like that forever. I left, quite bitterly, because we were still hugely respected outside the walls of KT1 2EE and with proper support the future was incredibly bright. Internally everything was imploding becasue too many key people just didn't 'get it'. I feel that the two of us who passionately worked our backsides off did a good job ensuring students were kept shielded from much of this. We kept innovating; we kept the students well tooled and it is a constant source of pride that everywhere I go, ex-students turn up and say hi and thank me (and Dr James O'Brien) for giving them a path into something they love doing. All that I said about Kingston and GIS to senior management subsequently came true. GIS is now gone as a separate subject at Kingston after 23 years. They killed it. I am proud to have been a part of the Kingston story and to have followed some key people through that University...all of whom eventually left academia to join various mapping/geo industries. Time to leave and do the same.

I got a call from Esri and figured it was time to do something different. 20 years of marking and dealing with the increasingly bureaucratically driven consumer focused University system was enough. I packed my bags and headed to sunny California and began working on the Mapping Center team. New life. Fresh start at something new. The brief was simple...make maps, develop workflows for cartographic techniques using Esri software, support users in their own work and help solve their cartographic problems, deliver workshops and write about maps and mapping. Technically, I was called a "Senior Cartographic Product Engineer". For the first time in my life I had a business card with the word 'cartographer' on it....despite vowing never to become a cartographer. But let's not get too bogged down in that...the job title also has the word 'Engineer' in it. This was no drawing office though. My job was just like being a lecturer except there was no marking, no pressure to submit spurious research proposals for unlikely funding, no need to publish papers just to meet the requirements of a research assessment exercise; and most people I came into contact with really wanted to learn (unlike most students) and I loved it.

After two years in that role I recently moved into a new role on the Mapping Systems team where in addition to the above I get involved in the development of software. Now before anyone gets too concerned, no...I'm no programmer. I help with ideas, designs, testing and suchlike. My programming history has taken me through Turbo Pascal, Commodore Basic, GIMMS, AML, Avenue, ArcObjects and now a smidgen of javascript and suchlike. I dabble. I help the development guys figure things out and make daft suggestions about what map-makers might want to be able to do but they do the hard work. It's great...I love my job and I work with some really cool people. Serendipitously I made it to California but not as a motorcycle patrol guy.

So..am I a cartographer? Nope. I know about cartography; I teach it; I write about it; I blog; I make maps; I tweet; I edit journals; I sit on various national and international committees; I advise; I evangelize...but I have never actually called myself a cartographer. To me, that term died out in terms of popular use when the BGS drawing office closed and the Oxford polytechnic degree course folded. Cartography as a term did die a long time ago and yes, it is viewed as old-fashioned. It gives rise to the view of an industry from yesteryear; of people bemoaning technological progress; and of a person whose skillset is narrow. But...cartography DOES exist in what I do. I am a cartographic expert, a man of maps, a carto-nerd. I have knowledge and experience in a wide range of cartographic concepts, techniques and practices. What I do is certainly grounded in some of what cartography is about but the definition is no longer adequate to define what it is that people who work with maps do. GIS brought along a much wider array of requirements to add to the cartographer's toolbox. Democratised mapping and cloud computing has taken things further. We are certainly in a new golden age of cartography...but it seems we need to call it something else in order to remain relevant. If the term cartography and cartographer is to retain any modern relevance then it needs to be re-imagined and quickly. People used to call themselves cartographers when it commanded respect. As the value of the label has declined so we find other ways to describe what we do to avoid the sneering.

Calling yourself a cartographer does you no justice...it brings with it such baggage that makes it hard to persuade people you have something to offer in the modern mapping landscape. I see this myself. Calling yourself a designer or a coder is currently good currency. It's seen as progressive and there is far less baggage associated with those terms. I design, I also dabble with some code. I recently made a map that I called an InfoMap that, ironically, didn't have much of a map component to it at all but people loved it. What I did do though, was recognise what it was that was going to capture attention and how to create something map-based that would work for the audience it was targeted towards. I used my cartographic knowledge and experience along with a few other skills you wouldn't necessarily associate with the job of a cartographer. I used cognitive science...something we learnt in Oxford many years ago and a branch of cartography that is rarely uttered today. This is where the work of the modern cartographer can set us apart from mere map-makers. We 'know' how to make maps work...and make them work well. Assuming a consistent knowledge of the technology, giving me one hour of work with the same data as someone without my type of background will yield a better map. I don't advocate map-smithing the map to within an inch of its life and taking forever to perfect things (though I have done this on occasions when I'm not satisfied with the product) but there's a wealth of 'stuff' that I can draw upon to make what I do work and work well. I also come at my work from a tangent. I rarely accept defaults. I always stretch the tools at my disposal to the point of breaking to get what I want done...and I use the right tools for the right job.

So I have Cartographic Identity Disorder. Yes, my life with maps and my work with maps clearly means I engage with cartography. But to talk about them, write about them, do research, publish, present, design, code and so on requires so much more than what people might think I am capable of if I call myself a cartographer. I have been a student of cartography, I have taught it formally, I have developed courses in it, published about it and been asked to deliver keynotes and advise on it. I've held a number of academic posts and I now work in the geo-industry as a cartographic expert. If I could persuade my employer to put the term "Map Man" or "Cartonerd" on my business card I probably would. Cartography just doesn't cut it...or if it does we somehow need to overcome the stigma associated with the term. Cartography continues to see profound changes as a result of massively disruptive technological shifts but the term is still languishing behind. It never developed sufficiently to describe what it is we do. It got lost. Can we reclaim it and persuade people it is a good, solid term to describe what I, and others, do? It's a great word of that there's no doubt but that's the challenge. If not, I don't mind particularly. I'll continue to morph, chameleon-like through my career calling myself whatever might work from time to time. I do what I do. You can call it what you like. My daughter calls me a 'handyman when it comes to maps' which probably isn't far off the truth. I'm content with it that way.

I'm Ken and I have Cartographic Identity Disorder.

GIS and cartography in UK academia

The International Benchmarking Review of UK Human Geography provides some interesting reading for those of us in the geo-industry. Having spent most of my career in UK academia (Northampton University and Kingston University) I find very little of the report surprising and, particularly the way in which they review GIS and cartographic provision with alarm.  Some of us have been saying it for years. I urge anyone interested in the role of Universities in developing the next generation of geospatial professionals to read the document. It makes some pertinent observations. I have a view, based on my experience, that I can add to the document to put some flesh on the bones of why GIS and cartography is in such a parlous state in UK Universities.  These are by no means universal and there are a few really excellent Universities and courses that buck the general trend but here goes...

Poor academic salaries, particularly for junior staff starting out is a real disincentive. Universities want to pay peanuts for novice staff on non-permanent contracts. They get high teaching loads and poor support for their research and are often let go after only a year or two. There are very few young academics in this area. Kingston upon Thames  is an expensive place to live. Senior management routinely offered starting salaries at the lowest possible level that were unable to meet even the basic costs of rental accommodation. Appointing experienced staff on higher salaries was rarely an option because staff turnover was normally seen as a way of trimming the salary budget. Inexperienced staff, of course, add to the burden of senior colleagues due to the constant rotation of mentoring of new staff...it takes time!

The culture of academia has become so bureaucratically driven that incessant form filling, reviewing, approval and validation became the daily norm. This was largely to feed internal processes and acted as a means to feed some form of quality control....usually merely a paper exercise.  Young academics do not want to enter this sort of profession, driven by pointless  administration where they are treated poorly.  High turnover of young staff is inevitable. Low turnover of older staff in comfy slippers is rare.

Low student numbers applying to geospatial courses are a fact. Despite the clear demand for geospatial professionals it’s a battle to persuade school pupils that there is a career in geospatial. Geography is still a marginal subject at school level if truth be told; school teachers rarely have GIS/cartography (web, server etc) skills themselves, or resources. Couple this with the perceived simplicity of commercial products (maps on phones), it’s often hard for young people and parents to see it as a career. The map is complete right? Therefore a very small number actively seek a geospatial degree. They tend to play it safe and go for the traditional geography degree...or something with the word ‘environmental’ in the title.

Geospatial focussed degree programmes are rare (and dwindling). GIS is usually done as part of geography degrees and squeezed. There isn’t enough space to fit everything and skills/methods type courses are often the first to be marginalised. Kingston have gone down this route but are simply the latest in a line of respected degree courses to have closed or cut back this provision.

It’s expensive to resource a geospatial degree programme with dedicated hardware, software and ancillary equipment. For only a few students, the cost is often deemed too much. Yes there are ways around many of the costs but not enough to avoid the inevitable. There was an art to fund equipment purchases for our GIS programmes at Kingston...we did well; but to the annoyance of many.

The number of academic staff who have left geo-academia and sought a career outside is proof positive of the state of the problem. Salaries are much better outside academia and the huge bureaucratic and administrative burden that you shed is reason enough to make the switch. The report doesn’t make enough of the quality of life aspect. It needs to understand why people want to be academics and why, after experiencing its demands for a number of years, many leave if they can. People leave for simple reasons - they get fed up of the daily battles and the inability to do their job properly.

There are simply too many geography degree programmes. It dilutes provision and there are not enough students to go round. Students tend to actively avoid the technical aspects of geography; they always have and it’s doubtful this will change any time soon.

Pace of progress in the geospatial industry is not commensurate with academic timescales. From proposal to first intake is often several years for new courses to be approved. By then, change has already made validated proposals outdated. Changing course content once approved can also take a couple of years due to internal University validation procedures. Additionally, by the time a student graduates, their first year is probably already outdated.  We worked around the system at Kingston and managed most of our changes under the radar. It was a necessary approach if we were to remain relevant and at the cutting edge.

It is now impossible for academics to keep up with the pace of change. Notwithstanding structural barriers, there simply is not enough time to update practicals and lectures every year to reflect the state of play in the industry. There’s plenty of free materials available to use such as courseware, online lecture notes and practicals etc but use of this is all too often seen as a short cut and frowned upon...particularly as students are charged for their course. There needs to be much greater openness to the idea that it’s simply not necessary for every course and every lecturer to develop materials from scratch and update them year on year.

Students get disenfranchised when they perceive their lecturers are more interested in their research career and are largely anonymous. They rapidly lose respect and it becomes clear to them that they are being fed dated material by people who seem disinterested. Of course this is a perennial problem since academics live or die by the quality of their publication record. It’s an unreasonable expectation. It’s inevitable that those who concentrate on that aspect of their job do not have the time to meet competing demands elsewhere.

Employers of geospatial graduates often do not appreciate what they are seeking themselves and GIS degrees are often seen as inferior.  Entry salaries are low and promotional opportunities are scarce. Graduate geospatial jobs are often filled by those who have gone on to gain an MSc qualification. The job market is extremely competitive. In short, it is often not someone with an idea of what a geospatial graduate is or what they can offer that is actively recruiting...they throw around terms without really understanding.

Geography as a discipline tends to ignore the very real demand for graduates who have a skill set that combines an understanding of geography with that of a computer scientist. Pushing buttons is not adequate. Being able to code and understand computer science is a vital cog in the armoury of the skilled geospatial graduate. Attracting students to this sort of mix brings with it its own challenges of course. And there are also precious few courses that truly mix the disciplines because geography and computer science are normally delivered from different Faculty silos meaning resource models struggle to support inter-Faculty course provision.

I have long said that the US is 10 years ahead of the UK in believing in and investing in geospatial education. The simple test is this...ask someone on the street in the UK what GIS is and they will likely not have a clue. Ask someone in the US and they likely will.  GIS permeates education and awareness is strong in the US. This is reflected in the fact that nearly a quarter of all geographically related job adverts in the US are GIS related compared to 2% in the UK. Quite simply, the mindset in UK academia has been to marginalise GIS and that approach is now strikingly apparent.

It’s quite possible that the thematic splicing of geography into sub disciplines is no longer relevant. Certainly, infusing GIS across the curriculum and genuinely using it as a coordinating framework would better integrate it. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t receive detailed treatment in its own right but there needs to be a better approach than simply offering a single methods option. My experience of this is that it doesn’t work. It needs embedding across the curriculum.

Even when you demonstrate innovation and world-leading research and teaching it’s sometimes impossible to convince people of the value. At Kingston we did both but while we had considerable external respect (high research profiles, good graduate employment figures, awards, invited keynotes, strong links with the geocommunity etc) the GIS courses internally were regarded as intellectually subservient to all other geo-provision; and a financial sump. We worked magic to navigate the internal barriers and maintain our international position but ultimately you can only do that for so long.

For me, page 26 is very telling reading. Look at which Universities responded to the review and which didn’t.  My old stomping ground is strikingly absent..as are most of the so-called newer universities.  If you cannot encourage an institution that purports to have valued GIS for the best part of 25 years and act as a focal point then you probably have all you need to know about the battle that lies ahead to get institutions to value GIS and cartography which the report is screaming for.