For those of you who may not have heard of the ICC, it is the meeting of the International Cartographic Association (ICA). The ICC happens every two years, moving from continent to continent -- for example the 2009 meeting will be in Santiago, Chile. Representatives from national mapping organizations, university cartography programs, and of course venders and solutions providers from around the world come to the ICC to share the latest research in many areas of cartography. The conference sessions are based on and organized by commissions which are groups of people who work on specific areas of cartography, like generalization, mountain cartography, or Internet maps. Each commission has a research agenda and its members present papers and have commission meetings at the ICC. Many commissions also opt to have meetings in the years between the ICC meetings. The ICA website has a complete listing of all the commissions; if you’re interested in participating, please email the commission chairperson.

While the work of the ICA commissions is certainly the primary effort of the ICA, we had another reason to attend, which is that we meet people from around the world who are working on related projects, who have similar concerns, and who we would typically not meet at conferences in our own country (even the ESRI International Users Conference).

In all, Moscow proved to be an interesting venue for a productive meeting where we had the opportunity to share information and experiences with our colleagues in the cartographic community.

We will be posting our papers and those given by ESRI staff (from Redlands and around the world) on the Other Resources tab of Mapping Center within the week.

CF

AB