Week Four of the 30-Day Map Challenge Progress
The #30DayMapChallenge is an annual event that takes place each November within the Geographic Information System (GIS) and spatial analytics community. This challenge, initiated by Kenneth Field in 2019, aims to inspire both novices and experts to explore different aspects of mapping through a structured, daily thematic prompt.
The history of the challenge can be traced back to its inception, where it was launched to foster creativity, skill development, and community engagement among cartographers and GIS professionals. Since then, it has grown significantly in popularity worldwide, fostering a vibrant community that shares maps on social media under the hashtag #30DayMapChallenge.
The thematic schedule for the challenge is diverse, designed to push participants to experiment with different styles, spatial data types, and storytelling approaches. Themes might include lines, surfaces, change, urban, nature, demographics, mental maps, historical data, connectivity, story maps, and more. Each day’s prompt encourages the use of various data visualization methods, GIS tools, and cartographic techniques, promoting both technical and creative growth.
During the 2022 challenge, participants created a variety of maps. On Day 22, a map of Earth's magnetic field with its Main Field Declination lines was created. On Day 26, a minimalistic map of Budapest was created, showing the city's elevation contour lines. Day 30 saw the creation of a map of the top 12 favorite cities, visualizing their road networks. Day 23 brought about a 3D map of downtown Budapest, while Day 27 saw the creation of a dot map of Budapest, with the size of each dot proportional to the number of inhabitants in the corresponding grid cell.
On Day 25, a map of Antarctica was created using a 125m resolution SAR image, and Day 24 saw the creation of a black and white ridge map. Day 29 saw the publication of an article exploring two global population data sets available in raster format, and Day 28 saw the creation of a map derivative visualization showing the total length of road segments in various cities.
The challenge encourages sharing created maps on platforms like Twitter and Instagram to foster a sense of community, knowledge exchange, and inspiration. It reflects contemporary interests in geographic storytelling and the increasing accessibility of GIS technology, making mapping more inclusive and engaging for a broad audience.
While the exact detailed current theme list or updates for 2025 were not found in the search results, the structure remains centered on daily thematic prompts for 30 consecutive days, as consistently seen since its inception. For the official theme schedule, the challenge is often announced yearly by Kenneth Field on social media or GIS community platforms.
The #30DayMapChallenge continues to underpin a larger movement in GIS toward democratizing spatial data use and enhancing cartographic storytelling worldwide, aligned with trends documented in GIS history and innovation such as those highlighted by Esri’s focus on empowering storytellers with maps and the evolving educational efforts in cartography and geospatial analytics.
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