Event organized within the activities before the 26^th International Cartographic Conference and counting with the participation of the ICA Commissions on:

• Cartography and Children,
• Education and Training,
• Maps and Graphics for Blind and Partially Sighted People and
• Planetary Cartography

 This one-day symposium will be held at the Dresden University of Technology on 23 August, 2013. The main aim of the event – as expressed by the title – is to give an opportunity to the members of the four Commissions (and participants in general) to share and learn about the results of latest and most representative research developed in the topics covered by our Commissions during the last years.

Organizers will arrange a one-day programme divided into four sessions, each of them dedicated to one of the participating Commissions. All submitted papers will be published in the CD Proceedings of this event. Due to the shortage of time, only a maximum of four papers can be presented in each session. The selection of papers for oral presentation will be made by the corresponding Chairperson of the participant Commission. The authors (presenters) will be notified separately before the final programme is sent for all the participants and published in the website of the symposium.

Please note that only those papers will be accepted which will not be orally presented or will only be presented as posters in the 26^th International Cartographic Conference in Dresden.

 The deadlines are as follows:

• Submission of full papers with registration form: 26 April 2013
• Notification of the authors: 15 May 2013
• Submission of the registration form (without full paper, only participant): 1 June 2013

 The participation in the symposium is free, but subject to registration. The documents needed for the registration and the submission of papers can be found on the website of the symposium: http://lazarus.elte.hu/jointsymposium2013/.

             If you have any question related to the papers, registration or about the event, please contact José Jesús Reyes Nunez (jesusreyes@caesar.elte.hu or jesus@map.elte.hu).

The first stage of the Barbara Petchenik Competition 2013 is approaching its end, because the deadline to send the national winner entries for the international coordinators of the competition (Peter van der Krogt and Ferjan Ormeling, The Netherlands) is very close. During the last weeks was received some information about the national competitions and the selection of the best entries. Some of them are included in this newsletter (see News and images).

German organizers of the ICC 2013 have contacted Commission Chair to coordinate details related to the Barbara Petchenik Exhibition during the conference. This year the ICA celebrates the 20^th Anniversary of the first Barbara Petchenik Competition, which was organized in Cologne, Germany (3-9 May 1993). In 2011, Temenoujka Bandrova (Bulgaria) designed and distributed the poster, which illustrates this report. This year the Commission will honour the anniversary dedicating a stand to present the winner entries of the first competition in 1993.

In March, Commission Chair contacted personally colleagues by e-mail, asking them about their disposition to be the Chairperson of the Judging Commission in the ICC 2013. The selection of the one from them was very difficult, because undoubtedly all these colleagues can perform this responsibility with professionalism and success. After considering all the aspects, the final decision proposed Prof. Dr. Necla Ulugtekin, from the Cartography Division of Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry at the Istanbul Technical University (Turkey) to fill this position. She accepted the nomination, and the proposal was forwarded to ICA President and Secretary General to be approved by the Executive Committee.

Consulting the data automatically collected by Facebook during these months I found some interesting facts that I share with all of you. The Commission profile was made public on 21 July 2012, after our meeting in the 4^th Conference on Cartography and GIS in Albena, Bulgaria. Below I list some of the “statistical records” of the last six months (from 16 September 2012 to 16 March 2013):

• Highest “total reach in a day” (total of people who read any story published in the profile): 524 users (19 January 2013)
  
• Highest “total reach” in a period of 28 days (January-February 2013): 1948 users
  
• Highest number of page stories created in a week: 57 (number of stories related to our profile that were created by other users)
  
• Highest number of “page engaged users” in a day: 35 users (31 January 2013, engagement includes any click or story created by a user that is related to a story published in our profile)
  
• The number of people who are friends with people who liked our page (estimated number of possible visitors): 92 126

 The most visited story (which presented Columbus E-Learning as the Map of the Month on the ICA website) was published on the 9 of March 2013, counting with 271 visitors. The second most popular had 206 visitors and it was published on the 8 of August 2012, presenting some pages of an American book with maps for children (“As the Crow flies”).

The chart above presents the distribution by age and gender of users who liked our page. According to the distribution by age, 36-40% of people are between 18 and 44 years old and the majority of them is between 25 and 34 years, indicating that our stories are interesting not only for Commission members J.

A remarkable and unexpected data is related to the percent of “likes” by countries. Hungary and Brazil occupy the first two places, but in 3^rd and 4^th can be found two countries that are not national members of ICA: Tunisia with 9.4% and Egypt with 7.9% of people who liked the profile. According to their cities of origin the order of the first 10 cities is as follows: Budapest, Cairo, Tunis, Sofia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Bogor, Alexandria and Vilnius.

The commission will have its next meeting in Dresden (Germany) during the 26^th International Cartographic Conference. The meeting is planned to be held in the afternoon on the 26^th of August, on the second day of the conference.

• EUROGEO Conference 2013 – Geography: linking tradition and future. The 2013 European Association of Geographers conference will be held in Bruges, Belgium from 9 to 11 May 2013 at Sint-Lodewijks College, in collaboration with the Ghent University. See: http://www.eurogeography.eu/conference/2013-bruges/bruges2013.html
• 2013 GI-Forum: Salzburg, Austria (July 2-5, 2013). See: http://www.gi-forum.org/
• VIII Colóquio de Cartografia para Crianças: “Para quem e para que a Cartografia Escolar: experiências e campos de saberes”. São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, Brazil (14-17 October, 2013). See: http://www.ufsj.edu.br/coloquiodecartografia/index.php
•  IGU 2013 Kyoto Regional Conference: Traditional Wisdom and Knowledge for the Earth’s Future (Japan, August  4-9, 2013). See: http://www.igu-kyoto2013.org

                 For more information on other upcoming events please check the ICA website: http://icaci.org/calendar/

            A non-official website entitled “Cartography – Calendar of meetings and events” can be found here: http://home.earthlink.net/~docktor/index.htm, containing information and links to events to be held in the next months. This site is maintained by John W. Docktor (Past President of the Washington Map Society, USA), who is expecting to enrich the site with information about other international events to be organized in the near future.