If you've ever read an issue of the Spatial Awareness newsletter, then you'll know that I keep track of a lot of people in the spatial industry. I get to see a huge amount of content from the spatial community, at least if it's shared on Twitter. As a result of this I have a huge backlog of content to share with you, which is partly the reason for creating this site; so I can share it more regularly.

What occurred to me is that perhaps not everyone is aware of the amazing selection of people in the spatial community on Twitter. There's pretty much something for everyone, and the quality of conversation and spatial visualisation is a constant source of inspiration.

With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to pull together a list of people that I either follow directly or regularly spot posting interesting stuff related to the spatial community.

The only rule here is that I'm only featuring individual people, so no company or product accounts. If there's interest I can follow up with another post on spatial companies to follow on Twitter, so leave comment below or DM me on Twitter if you'd like that.

I've also included a short one-liner about each person with my reasons for following them. I'm probably doing an incredible disservice to each of them! I've included a shameless example below.

If you want to see everyone's tweets all in one place then make sure to check out the actual Twitter list that I've put together for you to follow. I'll keep it updated as I feature more people in the future.

Robin Hawkes

Some random guy who stalks a lot of spatial people on Twitter. Also creates crappy visualisations now and then.

There are so many amazing people in the spatial community, but you may notice some of them aren't on this list. That's partly because I needed to draw a line somewhere, but also because I can only cover the people I actually know about and follow on Twitter. I wanted to be able to personally vouch for each and every recommendation here — which I can.

I also want to address the fact that this list is predominantly white people from the US or Europe. This is a symptom of my lack of exposure to the full diversity and representation within the spatial community. This is a problem that I am actively trying to resolve.

If you want to help me with this then please recommended people and organisations I should follow, either in the comments or messaging me on Twitter. It would be much appreciated.

TL;DR; Please forgive me if you aren't on here; I still love you! 🙏

— Robin

Alasdair Rae

A great source of maps and data visualisation predominantly focused on the UK.

Andrew Tyrrell

New Zealand focused, recently tinkering with Blender-based spatial visualisation.

Anita Graser

Python and QGIS, working a lot with movement data.

Carl Churchill

Featured Carl back when he had 30 followers on Twitter. Great to see him at well over 1,000 now and still cranking out fantastic maps.

Charley Glynn

Great source for keeping up with all things Ordnance Survey.

Craig Taylor

Taking spatial data and turning it into art. Always an inspiration.

Cristina Poiata

Featured Cristina late last year after seeing her lovely 30DayMapChallenge entries.

Daniel Coe

Another great follow if you're into the artistic slant on spatial visualisation.

Daniel P. Huffman

Single-handedly responsible for the recent influx of Blender-based visualisations.

David Garcia

Beautiful maps and raising awareness of colonial biases in cartography.

Dylan Babbs

Animated 3D maps in Web browsers.

Eleanor Lutz

Constant stream of fantastic visualisations and detailed tutorials.

Elliot Hartley

The source of truth for all things CityEngine.

Greg Fiske

Great visualisations and spatial content.

Gretchen Peterson

QGIS and lots of good spatial conversation.

Helen Atkinson

Primarily focused around data journalism.

Helen McKenzie

Lovely maps, predominantly UK oriented.

John Murray

Artificial intelligence and machine learning within spatial data.

John Nelson

Do not follow him 😉 (but really, do.)

Jonni Walker

A literal wizard with making beautiful things using Mapbox Studio.

Joshua Stevens

Creates stunning spatial visualisations related to Earth observation.

Laura Gerrish

Featured Laura's fantastic Arctic map in the newsletter last year.

Lauren Tierney

Great maps and data journalism.

Liam Mason

Scotland and everything marine-related, including maps.

Madison Draper

Cartography and design. Responsible for a selection of lovely Mapbox styles.

Mike Hall

Constantly creating beautiful illustrated maps.

Nadieh Bremer

Truly inspirational data visualisation, and not just spatial.

Oskar Stålberg

Fascinating behind-the-scenes of his spatial-ish procedural building game.

Owen Powell

Stunning spatial visualisations, often produced in Blender. The visualisation at the top of the page is one of Owen's! 👌

Paul Naylor

More insight into the world of Ordnance Survey, plus maps.

Raluca Nicola

Loads of amazing interactive maps and data visualisation.

Ramiro Aznar

Constantly sharing top-quality spatial content.

Sarah Bell

Lovely maps, including many that are hand drawn.

Scott Reinhard

Stunning spatial visualisation in Blender.

Sean Conway

More stunning spatial visualisation in Blender.

Shan He

Creator of Kepler.gl, need I say more!

Stephen R Smith

Quality maps and spatial content.

Steve Bennett

Mapbox guru on Stack Overflow, as well as maps and trees.

Taylor Baldwin

Lovely maps, often related to urban areas.

Tom Armitage

Quality tutorials on map-making with QGIS.

Tom Chadwin

Creator of qgis2web plugin for QGIS.

Topi Tjukanov

Where to start. QGIS artist. Map-maker and creator of the 30DayMapChallenge.

Tyler Morgan-Wall

Data visualisation and maps using R.

Vladimir Agafonkin

Creator of Leaflet and countless other high-performance spatial tools.

Will Geary

Spatial visualisation and data related to transportation.