Joining and taking part in Green Map network action, confirmed in my mind that maps should be about addressing the needs of landscape and not just the needs of people. But it also taught me, that to achieve this, I needed to work with people to create maps from the very beginning of development. The work of Cuba particularly brought this to my attention. Here various processes of song, video, drawing, poem and story making have all contributed to the development of various kinds of maps. Not only that, different generations have been working together to develop maps.

Before I encountered Cuba’s work (at an international mapmaking conference) I had run my first mapmaking end-user workshop.

The end-users averaged the age of 70 and were encouraged to look at the idea of a map that held different landscapes - natural, cultural, energy, built and economic landscapes, and party to these landscapes, to think of these themes: getting educated, getting involved and getting around. I demonstrated these landscapes and themes by way of a diagram that I made. I reproduced the diagram in a 2D, 3D and 5D space to see how they engaged with different materials, and to help break down any barriers that might exist about being able to view or make a difference to such a diagram. The 3D model was made out of knitting needles and polystyrene balls. The 5D model moved in virtual space.

I then directed them to the ‘getting around’ theme and encouraged them to make mindmaps concerning what this subject meant to them.

Out of these mindmaps sub-subjects of ‘getting around’ were developed.

I then sought to highlight the strongest thoughts that came out of the mind maps through animation.

The process of animating the thoughts started to make me think of how you could map peoples’ record of ideas and perhaps start to map thought patterns. Hence, to use Dodge and Kitchen’s explanation, this workshop experimentation became ‘concerned with what might be termed as “people centred” information visualisation.’ (2002: 154).

The experiment started to show how peoples’ ideas flocked to one, two or more subjects that linked. To build the animation the actual process of ‘flocking’ was appropriated. The core source of reference used was a site that holds project work and code by Craig Reynolds. Utilising Craig Reynolds terms, Alignment, Cohesion and Separation, a storyboard was developed.

- Subjects and sub-subjects were represented as columns.
- Thoughts were Boids and could be manipulated about in terms of ‘what constellations were there and what were like city lights receding’ (Gibson 1984: 67). Boids would be the ideas being posted, shared and developed into knowledge.
- Identity tags were assigned to each Boid so they could move around the columns.
- Different mind maps could be colour coded.

Due to time and technical constraints, the Boids could not be steered to avoid or stick to the columns of information. However, what was successful was how three categories were shown to be the core thoughts that came out of the subject ‘getting around’ and if you rolled over them you could see what they were.

Although this project could have been taken much further, and Craig Reynolds programming appropriated much better, one can imagine what a spectacular stage of events this would have been if a ten further workshop mindmaps had been added. These new thoughts could have been directed to follow the others or to split off and make their own columns/swarms, if that is what a community had chosen.

This experiment, as in the last experiment discussed, was developing an interface that was becoming too heavy - too technically driven. I needed to sit back and look at how I was going to develop a tool with end-users that was easy for them to take part in from the beginning, so they in fact became beginner-users right through to end-users - Something where they could input stories, preferences, ideas, searches and data. It also needed to be somewhere I could listen and provide existing data. Vitally, I realised it also needed to be somewhere a programmer could sit down and listen.

Heartened and motivated by the Cuban workshops, I recognised my experiment with the workshop should continue. Pursuing ideas, I ended up driving into the field of qualitative research and ethnographic fieldwork. But once I found this, and started experimenting with it, I was struggling with how to utilise and code such research. My tutor and Emmet, whilst in a great coffee shop on Bricklane, encouraged me to investigate wikis. From here on in I saw the wiki philosophy was one I needed to adopt. And now Emmet is helping to adopt and steer this philosophical and practical approach.

Dodge, M & Kitchen, R (2002) Atlas of Cyberspace, Italy: Addison Wesley
Gibson, W. (1984) Neuromancer, London: Grafton.

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