The World as You Can Make It

I am obsessed with mapping.  Mostly this is a work-related obsession, because as I work to keep track of our impact on the world and the “ripple effect” of the work that we do, I have visions of visual representations of progressives and their good deeds spread out across the country like so many amber waves of grain. 

Google lets you do custom maps now, but there other applications have features like a bulk upload of multiple data points and open source editing.  I’m working on a map over at platial.com that features all the candidates we’ve trained that have been elected to public office.  It’s still a work in progress but check it out by clicking here.

I know this isn’t revolutionary or MAJOR BREAKING NEWS or anything like that, but I find it interesting for reasons beyond the standard “I can make a map of all my favorite places and show it to my friends!”  I think in terms of progressive momentum building, the more we can actually see a critical mass of people, campaigns, or organizations, the more likely we are to get involved in those things.  Also, if you collect data and map it, you can see where the holes are – where is there excess progressive capacity and where do we need to build more. 

 Sorry if this is totally dorky in several ways, but that’s me!