30-day-map-challenge

Contributions to the #30DayMapChallenge hosted each year by Topi Tjukanov.

Used this challenge to learn more about how to make maps (I had no clue whatsoever) and to use different tools to do so.

2021 QGIS

I had never made a map before and wanted to use this challenge to understand the basic concepts. Familiarised myself with QGIS, an amazing open source software to do advanced geospatial analysis and visualisations. And used Datawrapper for some of the other maps. I summarised my learnings in this blog.

2022 Python

For the second time participating in the challenge I wanted to create a minimum of 10 maps and only use python to do so. I use python in all my other data analysis projects and wanted to push myself a bit to also use it for geospatial analysis. I have to say, it's been tough and quite a steep learning curve, but I'm proud of some of the maps I created and I learnt a lot! I discovered new libraries and some great data sources. While you can do a lot with python I sometimes felt it would be so much easier using R which has a lot more inbuilt functions and libraries to pull data and display it nicely. Some of my creations below and the code for each is available in the 2022 folder.

2023 Python

For my third year, I continued to use python for making most of the maps. I wanted to build on some of the things I learned in 2022 but add a few more techniques to my repertoire. I also explored a tiny bit of Blender which is something I woud like to learn a bit more about for making 3D renders. There is still so much that I want to learn and it can be challenging sometimes to not feel overwhelmed. I think that I progressed this year but the learning curve and progress hasn't been as steep.