Many persons are involved in our organization. They have different roles, different background and different ideas. In order to learn to know each other better, to synchronize our understanding of “our” ICA and to allow for taking on board all those rich ideas, perspectives and thoughts all Executive Committee Members, Commission Chairs and Co-Chairs, Working Group Chairs and further ICA officers met at the Technische Universität Wien in Vienna, Austria from 22.3.2024 to 24.3.2024 for an intense working meeting.
The agenda included several information presentations on issues of mutual concern, several group-works and workshops and simply time to meet, discuss and be part of ICA.
In the unique venue of the “Kuppelsaal” of the Technical University of Vienna we found enough space and inspiration to gather and work together.
At the ICA retreat at TU Wien Kuppelsaal, Vienna, Austria 2024
The meeting started with an introduction from President Georg Gartner on the nature, aims and scope and mission of the International Cartographic Association. It is really the global voice for Cartography and GIScience and the motto “We love maps” is a common nominator for all of us.
In order to learn to know each other better we performed a group work, where we paired in two to be able to introduce always the other person accordingly.
We then collected ideas about the questions:
- What would you like to give to the ICA community?
- What would you like to get from ICA?
which resulted in a long and rich list of relevant items.
Dusan Petrovic, Pyry Kettunen and Francis Harvey working hard and having fun at the retreat at TU Wien Kuppelsaal, Vienna, Austria 2024
Having set the tone for the meeting with this we then dived into several existing structures, instruments and elements of ICA, such as the ICA Webservices (presented by Webmaster Manuela Schmidt), the International Journal of Cartography (presented online from the Editors Anne Ruas and William Cartwright), the ICA Publication Regime (presented online from Publication Committee Chair Menno-Jan Kraak), the ICA Executive Committee (presented by President Georg Gartner and Secretary-General Thomas Schulz), the ICA Commissions and their Administration (presented by Secretary-General Thomas Schulz), the ICA Conferences (presented by Vice-President Serena Coetzee), the ICA memberships, MoUs and relations to other organisations (presented by Past-President Tim Trainor), the ICA Research Agenda (presented by Vice-President Haosheng Huang), the ICA Body of Knowledge (presented by Working Group Chair Terje Mitbo).
Inbetween further group interventions took place, refering to the idea of synchronizing our understanding of the core concept of our organization (What is a map?), identifying and presenting commission and working group plans and synergies (led by Vice-President Dusan Petrovic), a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threads) – Analysis of ICA (led by Vice-President Alex Kent), a open mic session on ideas and visions (led by Vice-Presidents Amy Griffin, Jiping Liu and Dariusz Dukaczewski).
The ICA “people” in front of the Karlskirche during the ICA retreat, Vienna 2024
Socializing opportunities despite the amical, fruitful and constructive working atmosphere have been taken on a joined short “CartoWalk” around Karlsplatz and joined meals.
Participants of the ICA retreat in front of the Technische Universität Wien, Vienna 2024
The event proofs my feeling right again, that ICA is really more like a family – it is such a privilege to be able to cooperate with so many bright, motivated, enthusiastic, fantastic scholars and persons!
List of Participants
Executive Committee
- President: Georg Gartner
- Past President: Timothy Trainor
- Secretary-General and Treasurer: Thomas Schulz
- Vice President: Serena Coetzee
- Vice President: Dariusz Dukaczewski
- Vice President: Amy Griffin
- Vice President: Dusan Petrovic
- Vice President: Haosheng Huang
- Vice President: Alexander Kent
- Vice President: Jiping Liu
Commission Chairs and Co-Chairs
- Art and Cartography: Taien Ng-Chan
- Atlases: Vitek Vozenilek, Eric Losang
- Cartographic Heritage into the Digital: Matyas Gede
- Cartography and Children: Silvia Marinova
- Cartography and Sustainable Development: Britta Ricker
- Cartography in Early Warning and Crisis Mgmt: Christophe Lienert, Jie Shen
- Cognitive Issues: Tumasch Reichenbacher, Pyry Kettunen, Petr Kubicek
- Digital Transformation of Mapping Agencies: Bin Jiang
- Education and Training: Tao Wang
- Ethics in Cartography: Aileen Buckley
- GeoAI: Samantha Arundel
- Geospatial Analysis and Modelling: Xintao Liu
- Geospatial Semantics and Ontology: Francis Harvey
- Geovisualization: Florian Ledermann, Arzu Cöltekin
- High-Definition Maps: Qingyun Du
- Integrated Geospatial Information: Anja Hopfstock, Kathryn Arnold
- Location Based Services: Jukka Krisp
- Map Design: Ian Muehlenhaus
- Map Projections: Krisztian Kerkovits
- Maps and the Internet: Otakar Cerba
- Marine Cartography: Ron Furness, Lysandros Tsoulos
- Mountain Cartography: Patrick Kennelly
- Multi-scale Cartography: Guillaume Touya, Izabela Karsznia
- Topographic Mapping: David Forrest, Lukas Halik
- Toponomy: Matjaz Gersic
- Ubiquitious Mapping: Toru Ishikawa, Angela Schwering, Armand Kapaj
- User Experiences: Robert Roth
Working Group Chairs and Co-Chairs
- Next Generation Cartographers: Katarzyna Slomska-Przech, Chelsea Nestel
- Inclusive Cartography: Jakub Wabinski, Vincent van Altena
- Body of Knowledge: Terje Mitbo
