As Green Map’s Director, I am occasionally invited to project launches and opportunities to present Green Map to different audiences. This spring, there have been many!

Starting in mid April, I traveled to Bucharest Romania, where Goodartofnoon Cultural Association’s dynamic young team published their first Green Map following a year of intensive development. With 100,000 copies and a great distribution plan (thousands will arrive with the national newspaper, which committed to a green column each week for a year; within the Romanian edition of National Geographic along with an 8-page article; and though the city-wide Museum Night), there’s much excitement about expansion and inclusion. I helped develop their schools Green Map project and the team’s outreach effort.

Then, I met with Susanna Iraci of O2 Italia and together, we made headway on the Milan Green Map project. I presented our work at the 20th Anniversary of the O2 Global Network and sparked fresh excitement amongst this group of eco-designers who helped initiate the global Green Map project in 1995.

Next stop – the EcoCity World Summit, a terrific gathering of planners, community developers and practitioner from many corners of the globe. Green Mapmakers San Francisco, Mid-Valley Colorado and Tokyo had some great discussions and our two presentations were well-received.

I took a short break in NYC, where we welcomed our new trainee from Finland, Miikka Lammela, whose presence was made possible by CDS International. He joined the OpenGreenMap development team for the summer. With thanks to departing spring interns, Dru Hara, Akiko Rokube and Ana Isabel Lagos, we also prepared to welcome summer design interns Yoko Ishibashi and Andrew Sass. Special thanks to my dear husband, Ray Sage, for his support during this hectic season.

Shortly, I was heading to Victoria BC with Carlos Martinez, our office manager and Latin America Liaison, To quote May’s Green Map Express:

Ten years ago, I met Maeve Lydon of Victoria BC’s Common Grounds/LifeCycles project and Beth Ferguson, then a Hampshire College student, in Havana at a conference on the ethics and culture of sustainable development. It was there, too, that the seeds of Green Mapmaking were planted in Cuba, soon to be cultivated by Liana Bidart Cisneros and a network of biologists and educators at Centro Felix Varela.

A reunion took place at the Community University Expo hosted by the University of Victoria, Canada. A host of remarkable Green Map outcomes were presented, including 113 diverse Mapa Verde Cuba projects; a dozen Green Maps published in the Victoria region along with a new project base within UVic’s Office of Community Based Research; and Beth’s ongoing youth resources development with Green Map System and her creative lino-cut Austin Texas neighborhood map. Our thanks to everyone at UVic, as well as the Canadian, Swedish and Colombian Mapmakers who took part in five Green Map presentations and helped our Latin American network development planning move forward!

After a brief respite among family and friends and a quick meeting with Seattle’s Mapmakers to discuss the project’s potential re-start, held in parallel with Beth’s workshop with interested folks on Vashon Island, I headed south again. Thomas Turnbull, our head technology developer met me in San Francisco, where we are taking part in the Where 2.0 locative technologies conference and drinking in zillions of open source and pragmatic resources and people that we believe will prove tremendously useful as our work-in-progress on the inclusive interactive mapmaking resource, OpenGreenMap takes shape.

I’m grateful to be learning so much from so many people and initiatives along the way. While I have racked up far too much CO2 (which I will offset), but have shared many important moments with amazing people who care deeply about the future we all share. Thanks to all! Wendy