Maps can be a powerful tool for sharing information.
A well built map can make data and ideas accessible to people in a way that is not always easy to do in words. Most of us use maps on our phones and in our cars to help us get around. What you don’t see everyday are maps being used to share dense amounts of information in easily accessible and highly informative ways. Maps can tell a story, or help influence the way we think, even motivate us to help with a cause.
The maps I linked to above were first shown to me in an excellent presentation at Drupalcon Denver by Alex Barth and Eric Gunderson from Development Seed. Their presentation (which if you missed, please go watch now) hooked me on the possibilities of using maps as a focal point of sharing information. The team at Development Seed are constantly working on tools to make beautiful, accessible, powerful maps that can be easily built and distributed.
In my next post, we are going to take a look at using their tools (Tile Mill and Mapbox), along with Drupal 7 and its mapping contrib modules, to help you rapidly develop highly informative maps that can be easily published on any Drupal 7 website.
Additional Resources:
Webinar: Drush Site Aliases
What is Drupal? | Mediacurrent Video