Virtual Event: Avenza User Conference 2022 by Avenza Systems

About This Webinar

The Avenza User Conference is a free, day-long virtual conference for map makers, GIS enthusiasts, and geospatial professionals worldwide who share a common interest in Avenza mapping technology. The Avenza User Conference will be held on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Save the date in your calendars!

The day will offer a mix of virtual sessions from presenters who will share their experience of using Avenza mapping products in their projects, mapping tips and tricks, product development updates from the Avenza team, and remarks from Ted Florence, Avenza President.

This is an exciting opportunity to get inspired by mapping and industry professionals, connect with peers to learn what others are doing, learn about the latest Avenza solutions straight from our expert staff, and discover new mapping techniques and workflows to help with challenging problems.

Ted Florence

President, Avenza Systems

Ted Florence is the President of Avenza Systems and directs the company in coming up with innovative solutions to the problems that plague the map-makers and map users of the 21st century. He is a professional engineer, who spent seven years as an international executive for a major pharmaceutical company followed by two years in the toy industry before joining Avenza in 1997 as an investor and vice-president. Ted took over the ownership and presidency of Avenza in 2000 and since has seen the company grow annually under his watch with a number of exciting and innovative products.

Opening remarks

Nick Burchell

Director of QA & Customer Services, Avenza Systems

Nick has a BSc Hon. degree in Cartography and Geography from Oxford Brookes University. Formerly a cartographer, Nick has subsequently gained significant experience in leading Quality Assurance and Services teams in geoscientific and cartographic software. Nick is currently Product Manager for Avenza’s desktop solutions, as well as having overall responsibility for QA on both desktop and mobile.

MAPublisher and Geographic Imager: Maps in Adobe Update!

This presentation will provide an overview of the latest amazing features and enhancements we’ve developed for MAPublisher and Geographic Imager. I’ll also provide an insight into a selection of wonderful stories on how we continue to bridge the gap between GIS and high-quality graphics, directly within the Adobe environment.

Hans van der Maarel

Owner & Cartographer, Red Geographics

Hans van der Maarel is the owner of Red Geographics, a long-time partner of Avenza and user of MAPublisher and Geographic Imager. He uses the products for a wide range of cartographic projects for international clients, offers training courses and consultancy projects aimed at developing workflows for clients. In addition to that he is currently a board member of NACIS.

Supercharge Your Map Production with FME Auto and MAPublisher

When faced with the task of producing a large number of maps with a minimum amount of effort we often turn to the combination of FME and MAPublisher with the help of the FME Auto plug-in for MAPublisher. This allows us to automate, and supercharge, a large portion of the map production work. By careful preparation of the source data, a template with Map Themes and Label Pro rules we can even produce simple maps completely hands-off in a matter of seconds. We’ll share some past projects where we’ve employed this workflow.

Tom Patterson

Cartographer, U.S. National Park Service (retired)

Tom Patterson worked as a cartographer at the U.S. National Park Service, Harpers Ferry Center, until retiring in 2018. He has an M.A. in Geography from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Presenting terrain on maps is Tom’s passion. He publishes the ShadedRelief.com website, and is the co-developer of the Natural Earth dataset and the Equal Earth projection. Tom has served as President and Executive Director of the NACIS. He is now Vice Chair of the International Cartographic Association, Commission on Mountain Cartography.

Extreme Map Rectification with Geographic Imager

The beautiful Soviet World Atlas, published in 1967, is one of many sources of river information that I am using to update the Natural Earth dataset. I will demonstrate how to rectify an atlas plate, which is in an unknown projection, by placing control points on the graticule with Geographic Imager. While normally this process would sufficiently reproject the map, an additional step must be taken with this atlas because the Soviets deliberately distorted the position of geographic features and they do not align with modern data. I will show how to correct these distortions using Photoshop’s Liquify filter—effectively thawing a cartographic relic from the cold war.

Nat Case

Owner & Cartographer, INCase, LLC

Nat Case is a freelance cartographer who with his wife Ingrid runs INCase, LLC in Minneapolis. He was head of production for Hedberg Maps from 1994 to 2013, and makes maps for a variety of clients including National Geographic, university presses, colleges, and random people who stop him in the street asking for directions.

MAPublisher, MyMaps, QGIS: Building an Efficient Workflow for Guidebook Maps

I’ll talk about how integrating Google MyMaps as an input source, QGIS as quick way of generating area of coverage sketches, and finally MAPublisher for layout and map production lets me efficiently process and client-check at each stage a maps I do for the Society of Architectural Historians’ Buildings of the United States series.

Roger Smith

Owner & Mapmaker, Geographx

Roger has had several careers, including stints as a pastoral farmer and as a commercial pilot. He was working in tourism when he first heard about GIS in 1998. Excited about its potential to drive innovation in mapping, and despite never having never made a map, he established Geographx, a start-up cartographic design studio. Over the next 20 years Geographx did a lot of custom mapping, and developed some notable new datasets. In 2013 it managed cartographic production for the EARTH Platinum World Atlas, the largest print atlas ever published and winner of the IMIA Global Award for Best Map Product. Roger is now semi-retired and Geographx serves to brand and publish his growing back-catalogue of New Zealand maps.

My Take On Making Maps

My maps tend to be large format, designed primarily for print and for hanging on the wall. They could be described as ART maps as opposed to smART maps. This presentation will share with you some of the design considerations, principles, workflows and techniques that I have developed, discovered or adopted over the past 20+ years working in a commercial cartographic environment.

Rebecca Bennett

Publisher Success Coordinator, Avenza Systems

Rebecca has an Hon BA from Wilfrid Laurier University in Classics, and a postgraduate certificate from Fleming College in GIS with cartographic specialization. Passionate about cartography and communication, she helps elevate the Map Store publisher experience by working extensively with publishers around the world to promote content, grow an audience, and grow sales. Rebecca loves to travel (and collect tourist maps) and recently spent two years teaching abroad in Okinawa, Japan.

Behind the Curtain of the New Avenza Map Store

With the rebrand of Avenza Maps, we've also completely redone the Map Store from the inside out. New tools, new features, and all new search functionalities to get your maps into the hands of users. In this presentation, we'll explore the new features of the Map Store and how they will benefit not only users but also Map Store publishers.

Sid Sharma

Product Marketing Specialist, Avenza Systems

Sid has an Hon BA from Cardiff Met. University in Business, and a postgraduate certificate from Fanshawe College in Management with a specialization in Marketing. With a passion for exploring international cultures, his education and experience span across various countries as well as industries. Sid helps us deliver an enhanced and consistent experience with our product and communications to our diverse user base.

Climbing Towards a New Horizon of Avenza Maps

We’re approaching the next generation of Avenza Maps! As one of the most popular and easy-to-use mobile mapping apps used by industries ranging from forestry, wildland fire, and emergency response, including a huge recreational audience, we’re constantly looking to evolve. In this presentation, we’ll dive into the results of a massive effort by the Avenza team to share what we’ve built, what we learned, and some of what’s coming next.

Larry Garland

Cartographer, Appalachian Mountain Club

Larry was hired by the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1996 to transform their then-120-year legacy of hand-scribed backcountry trail maps into digital production format. Over the last 26 years, he has created hundreds of maps for AMC guidebooks, as well as conducting trail assessments and providing GIS support for the Club’s conservation policy initiatives. Larry has hiked thousands of miles in more than 20 countries and summited four continental high points. He has personally inventoried several hundred miles of trails in the AMC region to provide reliable information for trail users. As a former programmer and systems analyst, he has a degree in Computer Information Systems from Bentley College.

Transforming a 120-year Legacy of Map Making

The Appalachian Mountain Club is the oldest conservation and recreation organization in the United States. Founded in 1876 by academics and explorers to “carry on a systematic exploration of the mountains of New England and adjacent regions, publishing its results from time to time….”, the Club today produces numerous guidebooks to the mountains and trails of the northeast as an integral part of their work in protecting the landscapes and climate of our natural environment, and recognizing the importance of the outdoors in every person’s life. In this presentation, Larry Garland, AMC Cartographer, will talk about the AMC mission and look back at the evolution of map making within the Club over the last century-an-a-half. On-the-ground inventory, incorporation of Lidar, and digital platforms such as Avenza are strategies we can use to continue AMC’s legacy into the future.

Julie Witmer

Owner & Cartographer, Julie Witmer Custom Map Design

Julie has been creating maps since 2013 for books, tourism, cycling, education, and more, as the owner of Julie Witmer Custom Map Design. Clients include municipalities, authors and publishers, tourism marketing and non-profit organizations, and businesses – from all around the world. Her maps are designed in MAPublisher with some processing done in qGIS and FME. Julie has recently started adding maps to Avenza Maps.

Local Maps for Active Transportation and Tourism

Long before I set up my own vendor page I used Avenza Maps while travelling. Then I decided to create city park maps because I couldn’t find park facilities like ball diamonds, so I shared those maps on my vendor page. And the past few months I’ve added some client cycling and tourism maps. We’ll look at some of those examples, including how I used MAPublisher to create different layouts for print and the app.

Bob Raynolds

Research Associate, Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Bob is a geologist based in Denver. He has taught at Peshawar University in Pakistan, Dartmouth College, and the Colorado School of Mines. Bob previously worked for the USGS, Exxon, and Amoco. Bob is a Research Associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science studying sediments in the Denver Basin that record the uplift of the Rocky Mountains. He is Past-president of the Friends of Dinosaur Ridge and the Colorado Scientific Society. His recent lectures focus on the geological record and its role in helping understand the impact of environmental changes on Colorado’s ecology and water resources.

Evolution of Geological Mapping in the Turkana Basin, Kenya: From Ink to Digits

Northwestern Kenya’s Turkana Basin hosts one of the richest troves of our ancestors’ bones and harbors their earliest known stone tools. I started geological mapping there in 1972 using paper maps, but realized I would never accomplish my task as the region was too vast. With funding from the Turkana Basin Institute, we embarked on a digital mapping campaign spearheaded by Geologic Data Systems in Littleton, CO. Both paper copies and digital tiles on Avenza Maps were used in the field. Hundreds of kilometers of remote terrain were covered and Avenza Maps geolocation tools gave us the confidence that we leave unborn generations a robust and accessible digital geologic framework to guide further research efforts.

Tristan Lyttle

Senior Product Manager, Avenza Systems

Tristan has been with Avenza since 2011 and now works as Senior Product Manager for Avenza Maps. In this role, he works directly with users to help shape features and programs to meet their diverse needs.

Garrett Kasper

Marketing and Communications Sr. Principal Rugged Apps™

Garrett D. Kasper is a Marketing and Communications Senior Principal at SAIC and serves as the customer relations manager for the Rugged Apps program. Throughout his career, Kasper has worked in various roles in corporate communications for companies such as Monsanto, Boeing, Arnold Defense and UnitedHealthcare. He is an expert in strategic communications planning, crisis management and multimedia production, and has experience with program management and business development. Kasper is also a captain the United States Navy, with nearly 26 years of service as a Public Affairs Officer (PAO). He has performed media relations in Operations Allied Force, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He has also served as a PAO for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and was hand-selected for duty with the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron.

SAIC RUGGED APPS: Secure Mission Critical Apps

Rugged Apps™ provides government users with ruggedized, high-security versions of commercial mobile applications. As government cybersecurity compliance requirements tighten, Rugged Apps is the solution for agencies and personnel that desire secure mobile applications to carry out their daily missions. Rugged Apps offers a continuously growing catalog of apps that are compliant with the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) standards and serve a variety of mission areas, including aviation, maritime, situational awareness, traveler safety, land/field support, disaster response and secure messaging. We also provide proprietary scanning and testing services to bring any government off-the-shelf or agency-specific app up to NIAP compliance.

Neil Morris

Seismic Mountain Safety Advisor and GIS Operator, Masss Ltd & Terracat Systems

Hailing from a background in mountaineering, guiding and industrial rope access, Neil works as a mountain safety advisor in the seismic exploration industry providing training, support and guidance for companies and staff working in difficult and mountainous terrain in a variety of locations around the globe. Currently based in the French alps Neil enjoys a variety of mountain sports including skiing and snowboarding, rock and alpine climbing, and mountain trekking.

How Avenza is Changing the Seismic Exploration Industry

Learn why Avenza is becoming the go to app for people working in the seismic exploration industry and how it has helped change the way data is recorded by mountaineers for planning and support purposes. Neil, using Avenza and his knowledge of the mountain environment, his GIS skills and his extensive guiding experience, has developed and implemented new techniques and systems for the industry, increasing safety for work crews, improving accuracy of data collection and map layer representation and providing planning tools for safety and support allocation.

Avenza Systems

The Avenza Team is proud to put together an amazing lineup of speakers to share their mapping experiences in a diverse range of industries and businesses.