During ICC 2007 were organized two oral sessions and one poster session to present contributions related to Cartography and Children, including a total of 10 oral presentations and 6 posters made by representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia and Spain. All the sessions were very well attended by delegates; photos made during the sessions have been placed to our website.

August 7 in the afternoon the Commission had its meeting, with the participation of colleagues from Argentina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Ukraine. During the meeting were summed up the activities developed by the Commission between 2003 and 2007 and were presented the main ideas for the next period.

At the General Assembly, Temenoujka Bandrova and Jesús Reyes were elected as Co-Chairs of the Commission for the next four years.

Our email adresses are:

Jesús: jesus@ludens.elte.hu
Temenoujka: bandrova_fgs@uacg.bg

Milan Konecny was named Commission's liaison with the ICA Executive during this period (2007-2011).

2. Past Chairman Patrick Wiegand

On the Commission's behalf we would like to acknowledge and to thank the role played by Patrick in the Commission not only during the last four years, but from its foundation. All the Commission members appreciate his leadership and all his efforts to diversify the Commission activities: emphasizing the importance of a dialog between researchers, producers and users, the importance of the teaching of new technologies (GIS) in schools, enhancing the Commission international relations, specifically to make closer connections to the IGU Commission on Geographical Education. Commission members are also proud of the achievements reached during this period, especially the publication together with ESRI of a book ("Children Map the World") containing a selection of 100 maps made by children for the Barbara Petchenik Competition between 1995 and 2003. We hope to count with his very useful contribution and personal help in the Commission's activities also for the next years.

3. Updated Website

The Commission website has been updated from this month, including the new terms of reference, information about incoming conferences, topics presented during the Commission meeting in Moscow and the results of Barbara Petchenik Competition. We invite all the interested colleagues to send their comments and proposals to enhance it.

4. Barbara Petchenik Competition

According to our decision in Moscow, a copy of the PowerPoint presentation containing a proposal to judge the entries sent to the competition was placed to the website. The main ideas included in the proposal are from Temenoujka Bandrova, based on her own experiences organizing the Bulgarian Competition. Jesus Reyes added also some questions and comments drawn after reading her proposal.

We would like to ask all Commission members and interested colleagues to send any comment, opinion, question, etc to have taken a decision about this topic for the next competition. We plan to have a personal exchange of opinions during the Commission meeting at the Conference in Borovets, Bulgaria next January, 21-24 (http://www.datamap-bg.com/conference2008/index.html). The best way to send our opinions for all the members is using the long address list that you can find in the head of this email. At the same time, all the emails sent on this theme are going to be placed to the website too, facilitating the permanent access to them.

5. Proposal for a Competition on Educational Cartography

Patrick Wiegand wrote a proposal (annexed also to this email) about the possible organization of a competition on Educational Cartography, within the International Map Exhibition organized in ICC conferences. If any colleague has any opinion that can enrich this proposal, please send it for us (using the same address list).

During the Conference in Borovets, Bulgaria, the private Bulgarian cartographic firm DataMap-Europe Ltd. will make an exhibition of Bulgarian school atlases and wall maps. If any other company would like to participate in this exhibition would be welcome, please contact Temenoujka Bandrova, President of Local Organizing Committee (http://www.datamap-bg.com/conference2008/index.html).

6. New members

Colleagues that expressed their interest to become full or corresponding members of the Commission will be contacted personally during the next weeks for the ratification of their interest and to ask them to send some data.

7. Experiences organizing national map competitions

We plan to add to the website a "chapter" to present national experiences organizing the Barbara Petchenik Competition. We would like to ask the colleagues that had any responsibility or participation in the national organization and they have written articles or papers, made PowerPoint presentations, CDs or websites, etc on this topic, please to contact us and to send their work to publish it in the website.

8. GIS Day

This year GIS Day is going to be organized all over the world on November 14, Wednesday. We would like to encourage colleagues to participate and organize activities related to this day, because this is a good opportunity to have a direct contact with children and young people interested on this field. You can make registration of your activity and find more information (including materials to be presented during this day) at www.gisday.com.

9. Conference in Borovets, Bulgaria

Meeting of CCC will be organized in the time of the 2^nd ICC&GIS, 21-24. 01. 2008.

10. Other conferences…

After the Borovets conference will be organized the IGU 31^st Conference in Tunisia. At present general information can be found in French and English at this address: http://www.igu-net.org/uk/news_and_events/tunisia2008.html We intend to contact organizers to obtain more detailed information about the organization of this event, which will be sent to the Commission in the next newsletter.

Temenoujka Lubenova BANDROVA Associate Professor Department of Photogrammetry and Cartography University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy 1, Chr. Smirnenski Blvd. 1046 Sofia Tel: +359 887 83 27 02 Fax: +359 2 866 22 01 bandrova_fgs@uacg.bg BULGARIA

José Jesús REYES NUÑEZ Professor Assistant Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics Eötvös Loránd University Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest H-1117 Tel: +36 1 372 2975 Fax: +36 1 372 2951 jesus@ludens.elte.hu HUNGARY