Click here Tom Paper's organizing slides for the CMS Spring Conference, held June 30, 2024 at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford.

1-Ron Gibbs - speaker bio

He is smart, funny, kind, inspiring, determined, gracious and wise. Ron Gibbs was born in Philadelphia, he received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and served in the U.S. Army at Walter Reed Medical Center. He was Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado for over 20 years and is now Clinical Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. Ron and his wife Jane have been collectors of early American maps for over 35 years. And we are so grateful for their gift to Stanford. He has lectured about history and cartography across the country and his most recent publication is the alternative history novel, The Rogue's Plot: The Untold Story of 1777 (before that, he published The Long Shot: The Secret History of 1776).

Ron Gibbs - talk summary

With the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution beginning next year, this presentation will explore the political and military aspects of the war, using ten period maps from Ron and Jane’s collection. At the outset, the Americans were given little chance to gain independence against the mighty British forces. Yet, underlying the British power, there were telling weaknesses. Ron will report the key actions of the eight-years-long war are and then analyze why the British lost and the Americans won. 

Ron and Jane Gibbs began collecting maps over 40 years ago. It was a natural extension of their love of American history, both having grown up in Philadelphia. They even spent part of their 1966 honeymoon in New England visiting historic sites. Jane bought their first map as a gift for Ron in 1983.  At first their focus was on The American Revolution, but as travel expanded, they also became fascinated by the great era of discovery in the 18th Century. Collecting became a passion for them. Ron recalls visiting New York City one month after September 11, 2001 and seeing a copy of the 1767 Ratzer map of New York City at favorite map shop. He was torn about acquiring it because of its slightly worn condition and had the map sent to their home, then in Denver, on approval. For advice, he took it to his map-collecting friend, Wes Brown, who, by the way, is a speaker today. Wes advised, “If you don’t get it, you’ll never forgive yourself!” Jane concurred, and the Ratzer map is a prized part of their collection. Their maps have always been handsomely displayed in their home, sharing space only with photos of the family. Ron has given numerous lectures around the country on cartography and has written cartographic articles in Calafia, Journal of the American Revolution, and International Map Collectors Journal. His two historical novels, published in 2020 and 2024, contain period maps from their collection. In March 2023, they donated to the Rumsey the first part of their collection consisting of 161 historic maps and map related books. In their home in San Francisco, they currently have other maps which will make their way to the Rumsey later.  Ron and Jane are delighted to have found a perfect home where scholars and the public can access their maps in perpetuity.

Jane and Ronald Gibbs Collection at Searchworks here

[ 2024-06-28 04:40:16 ]

Wes Brown - speaker bio
Wesley Brown has been a collector, student, and author of old maps for thirty years.  He confines his map collecting to two areas:  (1) the earliest world maps up to the year 1540 and (2) the exploration and settlement of Colorado from the 16th through 20th centuries.  A Denver resident, he co-founded the Rocky Mountain Map Society in 1990 and served as its President for its first seven years. He has served as the Co-Chairman of the Philip Lee Phillips Society (the national map and geography society of the Library of Congress).  He has served on the Council of the Society for the History of Discoveries. Wes has long been associated with the Denver Public Library, as one of its mayoral-appointed Commissioners where he served as President and where he is still active in acquisitions for the institution’s important western collections.  He has published many papers on maps. He has climbed about 400 different named peaks in Colorado.  Wes has been employed as an investment banker for 30 years specializing in arranging financing and mergers for banks. 
Source: https://lcsherry.org/cartography/bios/Brown_bio.pdf 

Wes Brown - talk summary

Title:     John Arrowsmith’s Maps of 1832: A Little-Known Revolution in Western Cartography
Abstract: Before printing his maps of North America in 1832, what we refer to today as the Great Basin, land from the Great Salt Lake west to California, was essentially unknown. Mythical rivers crossed hundreds of miles from the Rocky Mountains west to the Pacific. John Arrowsmith, from the important family of British cartographic publishers, obtained early geographic information from American fur trader Jedediah Smith and his British rival Peter Ogden from which he published a map of the area that dispelled myths and illustrated major features for the first time.
 

[ 2024-06-28 04:45:34 ]

3-David Rumsey
I’m delighted to introduce David Rumsey. The arc of his life and his career inspires me so often. You might not know that David was an artist, lived on a commune, combined his love of art with his technological capability to create a light show and art installation in the Boston Common. Or that David was a very successful real estate investor. But you probably know that for almost two decades David has been a prolific map collector and the driving force behind the David Rumsey Map Center, which is one my favorite spots on the planet. I admire many things about David. One is that he has had and appreciated the mentors in his life. Another is that he is a tinkerer and an experimenter. 
And on what he is now tinkering is the subject, I hope, of his talk.
 

[ 2024-06-28 04:48:35 ]

4-Andrew Gu - speaker bio
Bio: Andrew studies history and computer science at Williams College and is Pixeum's curatorial intern this summer. His interests in maps arose from a longstanding love of fantasy, monsters, and medieval understandings of space, time, and prophecy. Andrew loves learning about anything that can tell a story, but his most recent projects include a history of 14th-century Mediterranean slave trading and crusading and an investigation into the roles traditional stories about outlaw brotherhoods played in the decisions of early 20th-century Chinese gangsters. 
 

Andrew Gu - talk summary
Title: Making Race in Early American Maps and Art
Talk summary: What is race? How does a person come to see intelligence, virtue, or faith written on another person's skin? The answers lie in the fact that human beings need to learn how to think in terms of race. The maps of early American colonization let us glimpse ideas formed during a collision of continents, when human beings from opposite sides of the Atlantic first attempted to understand—and exploit—one another. Their caricatures and convenient omissions paint a picture not of clear racial categories but of a world in which Europeans and Americans alike constructed ”race” using gender, lifestyle, and other categories of difference. 
 

[ 2024-06-28 04:50:42 ]

5-Dhafer Muhammad - speaker bio
Short Paragraph with Bio: Muhammad Dhafer is a junior from Singapore, studying Computer Science and Economics. His academic interests lie in development economics and digital government to improve access to public services. He has explored these fields through past internships in Singapore's Smart Nation and Digital Government Office and the World Bank. Dhafer is the 2023-2024 California Map Society Student Exhibition Competition winner. In his free time, he enjoys exploring public transit systems, looking for historical maps and visiting art galleries.
 

Dhafer Muhammad - talk summary
Title of Talk: Charting the Rubble: Devastation and Rebuilding from Disasters
Short Description: The story is familiar; as human settlements continue expanding, disaster strikes, upending years of construction and investment. The ‘Great Fires’, natural disasters, and bombardments in war led to the destruction of buildings, and communities. This talk will explore how maps can depict these calamities, assess the destruction, and motivate rebuilding afterward. As weather events become more severe, geopolitical tensions increase and internal divisions deepen, our settlements are still left vulnerable to catastrophic events. Yet, these historical sources can act as guides, as to how seemingly insurmountable levels of destruction can be alleviated by concerted rebuilding efforts. In doing so, they may help us to better communicate damage when disaster strikes, or relay risks before they need to be realized.

[ 2024-06-29 04:09:23 ]

6-Dan Scollon - speaker bio
Dan Scollon has taught in Geography, Geographic Information Systems, Natural Resources and Global Education programs at Shasta College in Redding since 1996. His academic background includes degrees in Computer Science (B.S., Cal Poly, '86) and Geography (M.A., San Francisco State University, '94), where his Master's thesis involved GIS mapping and analysis of tidal marsh habitat in San Francisco Bay. He is also a registered Geographic Information Systems Professional or GISP. Dan’s work with students and the community includes co-founding the web platform NorthStateGIS and the Redding Area GIS User group. Other affiliations include Shasta Living Streets, Local Indians for Education, Shasta Land Trust, the California Geographical Society, the California Map Society and the California Geographic Information Association, of which he is a board member. Dan has been an active member of the Borneo Project since 1994, where he initiated a participatory mapping and GIS program which remains active to this day. He is also an alumni of the East West Center in Honolulu, the city where he was born. Dan has written articles for Calafia, the California Geographer and other publications.
On the personal side, Dan is married with two college-aged children. He enjoys time with family and friends hiking, cycling, playing and listening to music, being engaged in the issues of the day, and reading about peoples and places. He is also the host of a weekly radio show Jazz Influences, Thursdays from 8 to 10, on community radio KFOI in Redding. Life motto: Always carry a passion for life-long learning.
 

Dan Scollon - talk summary
Talk: Historic maps are an invaluable source of information about places, routes, events and other features that are relevant to contemporary issues and topics of concern. Most maps today are viewed and consumed on digital devices, but the veracity and details of these maps varies considerably. This is particularly true when it comes to historic information which plays a pivotal role in informing our understanding of contemporary landscapes and the processes that formed them. Effective geographic representation, analysis, and planning should be informed by historic maps. This talk aims to illustrate how historic maps can be used to inform and elucidate the contemporary landscapes of northern California, using a variety of geospatial methods and platforms.

[ 2024-06-29 04:10:31 ]

7-Paul Saffo - speaker bio
Paul is a Silicon Valley-based forecaster who studies the dynamics of large-scale, long-term technological change, and advises corporate, NGO and governmental clients worldwide.  Paul has taught foresight in Stanford's Engineering School for the last two decades, and recently served as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian War College. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. Paul was the founding Chair of the Samsung Science Board and has served on the technology advisory boards of AT&T and Motorola, as well as the boards of a range of public and private companies. Paul holds degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University.
 

Paul Saffo - Talk Summary
Title: How the map of a place that never existed changed your neighborhood (and the world) forever
Maps change the world - and sometimes the most wildly mistaken maps can change the world in the most profound ways. The innovation landscape known as Silicon Valley exists because of not just one, but an entire portfolio of mistaken maps (one of which hangs on the wall in my office) and the persistent myths that guided the pens of their makers. Maps - and myths - inspire. What followed the mapmakers was a trail of deluded explorers, outrageous privateers, ink-stained literati and careless cartographers so powerful that today it even inspires innovators who haven't a clue how Silicon Valley came to be.

[ 2024-06-29 04:11:11 ]

8-Jake Coolidge - Speaker bio
Jake Coolidge is a research associate with Colorado State University who has served as the web cartographer for the National Park Service since 2015. [He studied Printmaking at the University of Washington, Geography at San Jose State and Digital Mapping at the University of Kentucky.] Prior to his work with the NPS, he was the geospatial historian at the Spatial History Project at Stanford University and also made maps for a variety of clients as a freelancer. He now works remotely from Redwood City and is frequently doing something music-related when not making maps.
 

Jake Coolidge - talk title & summary
Making web maps to inform and inspire visitor experiences at the National Park Service
The US National Park Service has a rich cartographic tradition exemplified by its famous printed unigrid brochure maps. Over the past decade, my team has worked to bring that tradition and graphic identity into the interactive maps we build for NPS.gov and the NPS mobile app. Creating a cohesive map for the entire agency and its 428 official park units, distributed across all states and outlying territories, poses special challenges in terms of server infrastructure, data compilation, and accessible design. In my talk I’ll provide an overview of how we address those challenges to help visitors connect with their parks, and what’s next for web map design at the National Park Service.
 

[ 2024-06-29 04:11:57 ]