Notes from Sat. 6/28 meeting

Our next meeting is Wed. 7/2 from 4-6pm in Blegen 105 (note: room change to 105).

At the Saturday meeting, we talked about the maps that we are focusing on, how to make them and the research we need to do.  We also decided to continue the class passed this week, but to start meeting only once per week, on Sundays from 3-5pm, in the Wilson library basement (at the long table in front of Dunn Bros).  So, this Wednesday will be the last Wednesday meeting.

Here are the notes (please add anything I’ve missed or continue the discussions by commenting below):

• Lesley will be gone (in Russia) for the next three weeks – when she comes back she can help us make the maps with GIS – So, we should try to get the data and info for the maps ready over the next three weeks.
• In our upcoming classes, we’d like to focus on the research, but also leave some time for discussions of the politics of mapping and methodological issues.  Also, we’ll try to have people with mapping experience come in and give presentations.
• Discussion of ideas for mapping:
  • Student debt -> financial aid info could be correlated with home locations – we should talk with the “students for tuition reform” group.  With rising tuition, we could map where the money is going in the university – to show why tuition is going up (map changes in what that tuition goes toward – and also could map where it’s not going (e.g.,  teaching, w/ increases in class sizes and in # of classes taught by grads or contingent faculty)).  – Amit found a chart of “degrees held due to debt” (on umnreports.umn.edu) – they rose a lot in Spring 2008.
  • Michael and Shivaun are: a) working on learning GIS – b) finding thesis paper titles (to do a world map that shows the places that senior thesis or masters and dissertation writers write about).  – c) mapping general info about the Twin Cities (war profiteers, potholes, abandoned homes) – d) mapping underground passageways under the U (with Emily) – e) general info about radical organizations and things to do in the TC
  • Mapping differences and similarities across the many higher education institutions in the Twin Cities area (e.g., tuition differences, but also similarity of rising tuition – access – demographics, etc.)
  • Anders had lots of ideas for the conceptual map: a) playing with the visual metaphor of the U floating in space – an outerspace theme – b) funding flows – seeing how money flows in, around, and out of the U – c) mapping all the corporate chains on campus, but with a black space where each store or corporate-sponsored room is located – d) mapping all the instabilities – strikes, GC – e.g., show them falling off the map – e) the history of branding the U – f) to show different levels of funding for the different parts of the U, we could bloat the buildings in proportion with the amount of funding (or how much % increase in a certain period of time) – to show the different priorities behind the “driven to discover” slogan
• Lesley talked about what we’ll need to do to make the campus map: the shape files of the U of M’s official campus map are made by some cartographic company that they subcontract to – we’ll need to contact them and ask them for the shapes (they should be free) – otherwise, we’ll need to trace the outlines of the buildings from one of the existing maps
• Then we tried to sketch out the basics for three of the maps on the whiteboard: (overarching theme of subverting the “driven to discover” slogan)…

1. Labor map    scale? – how much space for text?
–     Color? – printing?

–       What we need to focus on:

o   Shapes of buildings – via google or GIS

o   Tying data to the map

o   Deciding how much text

o   Figure out which data (professors or grad student or staff salaries)

2. Twin Cities map

–       w/ census data?

–       # of abandoned homes?

–       Building a story -> focusing on a small area (e.g., 3 blocks) – a more embodied map – giving details about particular people –

–       How do we choose spots?  – census as a start – throwing a dart?

3. Flows map (more conceptual)

–       Scale?

–       U isolated or global map?

–       Mapping brands globally that are similar to “driven to discover”

o   Check other languages too