Dear members of the Participatory Mapping Working Group at the International Cartographic Association, 

I hope you are all doing well. After some time of no communcations (which I appologise for) I am happy to send you another newsletter of our working group.  Again, I am sorry for rather longer email, but there has been quite a lot happening lately! If you have any updates you would like to share with the group – conference invitations, project proposals, etc. – please let me know and I can include it in the next newsletter. 

• The Department of Geoinformatics at Palacky University Olomouc (CZ) is organising ONLINE International Spring School on Visualization Emotions and Map: The Affective Dimension of Visualisation, 1st and 2nd of April 2026. The programme is fully English with several guest speakers incl. Georg Gartner, Merve Keskin, Amy Griffin, or Ian Muehlenhaus. If you are interested, check out their webpage – https://www.geoinformatics.upol.cz/iss/
• The EuroCarto 2026 will be hosted in Brno (CZ) this September (9-11) and the registration is opened. You can submit an abstract and register for participation now! The deadline for abstract submission is April 1, 2026; early-bird registration closes on May 15, 2026. More info is available here: https://eurocarto2026.org/ and I am sure, there will be a participatory mapping panel (or two) there as well! 
• IGU Commission on Geography of Governance invites to their 2026 Annual Conference with title: “Reinventing participatory Governance for more sustainable cities and regions” that will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, 15-16 August 2026. More info can be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/igucogg

Regarding the communication channels:

• For more “professional” visibility/networking we have newly established a LinkedIn profile – please join us, if you are on LinkedIn and tag us, while posting about participatory mapping.
• If you have colleagues who would like to join the mailing list and hence the working group – send them link to our “registration” form – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSey_OVb6GAVMt52nZiSHCc1aCeM2i1MYFDIc3fA8cl4_lgTFA/viewform

In case you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact me. 

Jirka Pánek

chair of the PMWG