2013 has been a very interesting year for me:

I rebuilt my website, started to self-host this blog and successfully applied for it to be included in the Planet Geospatial aggregator. I also revamped the Ernst Basler + Partner GIS blog.

From March to May I had an unpaid leave from Ernst Basler + Partner (EBP) and worked in the UK for the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) on a research project around user-generated content or VGI. Also, after that period I continued working part-time for the OII and even had the opportunity to physically return to Oxford and visit my colleagues there.

Also in 2013, my interest in data-driven journalism grew and I deepened my connections with the Open (Government) Data movement here in Switzerland and globally.

Three visualizations of mine (a Switzerland population cartogram, a temporal aggregation of webcam pictures and a visualization of OII data on Wikipedia in Africa) have made several appearances in the media and found some audience (e.g.).

Work at EBP has yielded various interesting projects, the most recent one being a strongly research-focused project regarding road traffic accidents and the relationships with infrastructure and weather conditions.

Stephan Heuel and I organised various instalments of the GeoBeer series throughout different regions of Switzerland. The event proved to be a large (and very rewarding) success: it attracted (in total) several hundred people from very different GIS/cartography backgrounds and trajectories. Both Stephan and I are delighted how well the idea took off after the first event at our employer’s offices (and with their support).

Throughout the year I have met nice people and also communicated and discussed with interesting people over on Twitter as well as in the geo blogosphere.

All in all: 2013 was a great year!

 

As a last touch of nostalgia I give you 2013’s 10 most popular posts by yours truly:

• Chinese names of European countries
• Conceptualisation of a D3 linked view with hexagonal cartogram
• Creating a hexagonal cartogram
• Zurich Sky
• Hexagons, quasi-maps and cartograms
• On the Beyoncé tweet map
• Topography in typography
• GIS blogs from the cartography country
• Reworked versions of my hexagonal population cartogram
• Etymologic cartography

 

And now:

Happy 2014!

I’m looking forward to stimulating discussions and interesting developments in our field!

See you around here, on Twitter or in Palm Springs at the Esri DevConf.