Author Archives: das-g

Short (and incomplete) Report from SotM 2014

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It’s Sunday morning* and the third day of the State of the Map conference is about to begin here in Buenos Aires, AR—fashionably late, just like the past two days. Today, the breakfast, too, was considerably delayed. Though, I still find it notable, that not only lunch, but also snacks in the coffee breaks and breakfast are included with the conference attendance.

The conference wifi only became available around noon yesterday, as the technical guy the organizers had hired to set it up hadn’t shown up.

Also yesterday, the city deputy of Buenos Aires came by and held a short talk. She told about her dislike of maps back in school, how in her political duty she realized the importance of maps for a democratic society and learned to appreciate and like maps. She also told about her thirteen year old son who is mapping electoral districts after he was disappointed they’re not in the (paper) atlas he got.

*Posting this in the afternoon, as Wifi was overloaded this morning.

SotM 2014 in Buenos Aires: Dinner and (skipping) night life

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I skipped on the pre-event on Thursday night, because I was still too jet-lagged that evening and went to sleep early. So someone else will have to report on that.

Friday night, after the first day of the conference, we met an online acquaintance of mine who by chance is also currently spending time with his family in Buenos Aires and joined the SotM crowd in the Post Street Bar. Three of us left there early, so my acquaintance could take us to La Americana, a fast food restaurant serving empanadas, baked or fried bread-dough dumplings, with a variety of delicious fillings, often with ground beef, but also vegetarian ones. Afterwards we went to a café to have some drinks. While the others chose tea with lemon, I had a ‘submarine’: Hot mild in which one dissolves a dark chocolate bar to get something resembling hot chocolate. We made our way back to the hotels around 0:30, the time the Niceto club would have opened that was announced as the place-to-be for after the Post Street Bar.

Yesterday (Saturday) us German-speaking attendants and speakers decided to get some of the famous Argentinian steaks for dinner. The locals were about to lead some other SotM participants to a bar and we tagged along, as they promised to show us a fine restaurant on the way to there. Arriving there, all that were with us ended up in the same café, and even more arrived as the location had been tweeted as the official SotM dinner meeting place of the evening. The locals ordered us a variety of regional starters, and several rounds of that, so we ended up full without having had steak.

Tonight (Sunday), though, it will be steak, we decided: “Not negotiable.”