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Abstract

Greetings to all NACIS Members and Cartographic Perspectives Readers, These are exciting times for NACIS. We had a successful and well-attended Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh in October 2014, board committees and members continue to push forward new initiatives, and Cartographic Perspectives continues to be a respected, widely-read, and informative platform for publishing cartographic content.As organizer for the Pittsburgh meeting, I know there were great talks and presentations for Practical Cartography Day, Geographic Data Collections Day, and for the main NACIS conference. I only wish I could have been present at more of them! I would like to offer a big thank you to all who attended and participated. It was a lively gathering for talking about maps, making new friends, and renewing contacts in the mapping community.Our opening and keynote presentations at the Pittsburgh meeting gave added insight to the city and of the theme of the conference. In his talk, "Taking the Measure of the Topographical City," Martin Aurand, of Carnegie Mellon University, discussed the unique physical position of the city of Pittsburgh at the forks of the Ohio River. Anne Kelley Knowles and two of her students from Middlebury College presented a thought-provoking talk titled, "Do Maps Really Tell Stories? The Problem of Narrative Time in Cartography." The conference theme of Time and Cartography was further explored in several sessions during the conference with presentations on "Treating Time in Atlases," "Why are Timelines Maps?," "Spatial-Temporal Displays of Daily Climate Data," and "1 Minute to 100,000 Years: Mapping The Out of Eden Walk Project."Well-established features such as the Map Gallery, the Student Map and Poster Contest, and Geo-Dweeb Geopardy were all successful parts of the conference. We were also happy to welcome a new event: the NACIS Fun Run.The current Vice President, Amy Griffin, and VP-Elect, Anthony Robinson, are busy preparing for the next meeting, in Minneapolis, and welcome any and all ideas for participation. The theme is Mapping Interactions.