With a view to enriching the regional process with experiences arising from other places and contexts, we organised the 1st International Citizen Cartography Meeting, which was held at Parainfo at the Ciudad de la Cultura and at LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón, from July 30 to August 1, 2009.

The meeting brought together a wide range of researchers and activists from various fields: architecture, journalism, anthropology, urban planning, art practices, geography, biology, psychology, social work and software development.

The methodology consisted on theoretical and practical working sessions that sought to create a network and combine efforts and resources towards the development of converging projects, with a special focus on developing free software for mapping. Meanwhile, the encounter also helped to conceptualise and draft an article on “citizen cartography” for the spanish version of Wikipedia.

The meeting put the spotlight on a series of outstanding community mapping projects and tools such as Open Street Map – a free global geographical data project –, or Solidarity Maps, a Lebanese-Palestinian based initiative that produces maps on the occupation of Palestine and the asymmetric use of violence in recent Israel military operations in Lebanon and Gaza.

An extensive video archive about the meeting is available for download at Cartografiaciudadana.net.