Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a privilege to serve the ICA as your president for the next four years in our dynamic world where maps play an important role as interface to geo-related information to support decision making in many different situations.

It is obvious I do this not alone. I can and will built on the shoulders of my predecessors. And I do realize it is quite a responsibility because Georg Gartner, the now past-president has left us a healthy association. During his term ICA has been enriched in many ways. Think of our new journal, our embedding in ICSU and relation with UN-GGIM, the GeoforAll initiative and the beautiful website.

Secondly, I will act with an enthusiastic team. The newly elected members of the Executive Committee and the new Commission Chairs will allow me to put new accents.

Especially the newly established Working group Cartography for Global Geographic Information Management can put such accent. With this working group the plan is to provide the UN-GGIM an ‘atlas’ of good cartographic practice for the new sustainable development goals.

Dear all, over the next four year let’s make the world a better place with maps!

Menno-Jan Kraak...

The 16th ICA General Assembly was closed on the last day of ICC2015.
Slides of the agenda can be found here.

The Executive Committee for the term 2015-2019 is:

• President: Menno-Jan Kraak (The Netherlands)
• Secretary-General and Treasurer: László Zentai (Hungary)
• Vice-Presidents:

Sara Fabrikant (Switzerland) David Forrest (United Kingdom) Yaolin Liu (China) Pilar Sanchez-Ortiz (Spain) Monika Sester (Germany) Lynn Usery (USA) Vít Voženílek (Czech Republic)

• Past President: Georg Gartner (Austria)

The 17th General Assembly and the 29th International Cartographic Conference in 2019 will be held in Tokyo, Japan.

All corresponding website subpages (EC, conferences, commissions, working groups) will be updated within the course of next week. Please stay tuned....

Dear collegues and friends of ICA,

ICC2015 brings a change of persons in charge. After four years of being president of ICA this function is passed to Prof Menno-Jan Kraak from the Netherlands according to the General Assembly of ICA.

In this context I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the support and collaboration I was happy to receive from so many of you; for many of the projects, ideas and efforts we have taken. It is because of this, why I consider those four years as most rewarding and successful on a personal level.

I would like to share with you my final report, describing some of the efforts and achievements which have been taken from so many in the term 2011–2015 and I would be happy to receive any comments on that.

It was a privilege to serve the International Cartographic Association as President from 2011 to 2015. I’m looking forward to the future of ICA under the presidency of Menno-Jan Kraak!

...

At ICC2015 in Rio de Janeiro the International Journal of Cartography was officially launched!

In its sixth decade of existence, ICA has now its own outlet for scientific work. Together with Taylor & Francis, the two Editors-in-Chief Anne Ruas and William Cartwright presented the first issue in Rio.

Please check out the first issue, which is available online at tandfonline.com

And: Send us your results, papers and submissions!...

In the ICA Awards Ceremony this morning at ICC2015, the following six awards were presented in recognition of contributions to the ICA. Congratulations to all awardees!

ICA Honorary Fellowship

The ICA Honorary Fellowship is for cartographers of international reputation who have made special contribution to the ICA. It includes a bronze medal.

• David Fairbairn, United Kingdom

Vice-President (2003–2007) Secretary-General (2007–2011) Chairman of the Commission on Education and Training (2012–) Editor of the ICA GIM column

Diplomas for outstanding services to ICA

The Diplomas for outstanding services to ICA are for colleagues who have made special contribution to the ICA as commission officers or conference organizers.

• Vladimir Tikunov, Russia

Chairman of the Commission on Education and Training (1999–2003) Vice-President (2003–2007) Chairman of the Working Group on GI for Sustainability (2007–2011) Chairman of the Commission on GI for Sustainability (2011–2015)

• Elri Liebenberg, South Africa

Vice-President (1999–2003) Chair of the Working Group on the History of Colonial Cartography in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (2003–2007) Chair of the Commission on the History of Cartography (2007–2015)

• José Jesús Reyes Nuñez, Hungary

Chairman of the Commission on Cartography and Children (2007–2015) Key organizer of the Barbara Petchenik Children’s World Map Drawing Competition from 2007 Chairman of the International Jury (2005, 2007) Co-editor of three of the four books showing selections of map drawings made by children for the Barbara Petchenik Competitions from 2007

• David Fraser, Australia (not present)

Chairman of the Commission on Education and Training (2007–2012) Editor of the eCARTO News (2012–present)

• Corné van Elzakker, The Netherlands

Chairman of the Commission on Use and User Issues (2007–2015) Chairman of the Jury: ICA International Cartographic Exhibition (2007–2013)

Overview of ICA Awards presented at ICC2015

More pictures of the award ceremony and the 2nd day of ICC2015 can be found on the ICA Facebook page....

Today, the 27th International Cartographic Conference is opened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!

After busy days with nine well-attended pre-conference workshops, the main conference will be opened today. The opening ceremony will also officially open the International Map Year 2015–2016. Dr. Gregory Scott from UN-GGIM will give a plenary keynote on the topic of “Positioning Geospatial Information to Address Global Challenges”.

Later today, also the Technical Exhibition, the International Cartographic Exhibition and the exhibition of the Barbara Petchenik Competition will open. More than 70 oral and poster sessions will follow in the next five days. All abstracts and papers are available on icc2015.org.

ICC2015 also hosts the 16th General Assembly of the ICA. All material and reports for the General Assembly can be found at icaci.org/general-assembly-2015. The first part took place yesterday, the second part – including the voting of the new ICA executive committee, the ICA commissions for the term 2015–2019 and the selection of the place for ICC2019 – will take place on Friday. All results will be published on the ICA website soon after the event.

To share your experiences and to stay up-to-date with everything happening at the conference, please use hashtag #icc2015rio.

Enjoy the conference!...

I am happy to announce two new members of ICA.

Trinidad & Tobago has decided to join ICA as national member. The Ministry of Land and Marine Resources Division on Survey and Mapping based in El Soccoro, Trinidad and Tobago has the mission on “contributing to the development and economic success of Trinidad and Tobago by adopting new technologies and by providing up-to-date and authoritative maps, charts, land and sea information, in conventional paper and progressively in digital form to meet the needs of the government, the general public and the private sector” and felt that a full national membership with ICA will be a benefit for being able to follow this mission up.

My specific thank goes to Mrs. Paula Drakes from the Land Settlement Agency of the Ministry of Land and Marine Resources of Trinidad and Tobago. She has participated in the successful ICA Workshop on OpenSource Technologies and WebMapping early in the year 2014 at Sint-Maarten and has since then followed the idea of full cooperation up.

A heartly welcome to Trindidad & Tobago!

HERE Europe B.V. has decided to join ICA as affiliate member! HERE belonged to Nokia and was recently sold to a consortium of Audi, BMW, and Daimler. HERE considers itself a global leader in the mapping and location intelligence business. Rooted in almost three decades of experience in cartography, their vision is to offer the world’s best maps and location experiences across multiple screens and operating systems. HERE is working on the idea, that giving people a better and deeper sense of location will be essential to live a modern urbanized life. Map products of HERE can be found in the majority of current navigation systems as well as in mobile, web and enterprise solutions of companies like BMW, Garmin, Toyota, Yahoo and many more.

It is for sure a win-win situation, if such a big and strong mapping company, aiming for producing the “world’s best maps”, and the international network of the International Cartographic Association meet and work together.

My specific thanks goes to Mrs. Astrid Dawson from HERE. She has participated at the ICC 2009 in Santiago de Chile and since then stayed in close contact with ICA, although she was promoted with Nokia and later HERE to responsible positions....

We made a deposit to Panda GM to start production on Friday. It's long over due and I'm really sorry about that but I'm very excited to tell you that Cartography is now in production!

This most recent delay is due in part because we never received adequate tile samples. From what I can tell there was a mix-up with the tile proof specifications because of the switch away from the tile nubs. In light of that and to expedite production we decided to move forward with assurances form Panda that the tiles will be produced according to specifications and match the quality of Carcassonne.

I'm really very excited to finally get back on track.
Thanks,
Jon Adams

We received the box and and tile Proofs for review. The box and insert look great. They are sturdy and feel high quality.

The tiles aren't what we hoped for. We requested the same materials as Carcassonne but that was defiantly not what we received. There are two main issues with the tiles. The materials and the puzzle nubs.

When trying to join pieces together some don't fit well, and the nubs tend to get damaged when separated.

Early on we heard from some industry experts that we should not expect the die cut to be satisfactory for our needs. We hoped we could get away with the tolerances but unfortunately the pieces don't fit well. We've decided to remove the nubs. This is disappointing but this change will make the tiles more durable.

The tiles are also much too flimsy. The cardboard delaminates with a little force. We are requesting a new set of proofs with a higher quality material and hope that will resolve the issue.

This round of revisions pushes production out but we are getting very close.

Thanks again,
Jon