The Fifth Elephant
The Fifth Elephant

The Fifth Elephant 2026 Winter Edition

Call for Data Problems and Proposals

All submissions

VENU

From Spreadsheet to Spatial Story: Making Data Mappable, Understandable and Shareable

Submitted Oct 11, 2026

🎤 I am submitting: To speak I have a submission for: Showcase - a cool idea I have built/working on - 20 mins

Submission type - choose one:

  • Showcase - new ideas - 20 mins

talk/session
Data often becomes more useful when we can see where things happen. A spreadsheet can tell us how many schools, hospitals, public facilities or other resources exist, but a map can help us understand where they are located, which areas they serve, and where gaps might exist. Yet turning a dataset into a useful map can require knowledge of GIS software, coordinate systems, data formats and cartographic styling. In this showcase, I will demonstrate how MapZ.in simplifies this process by connecting to data sources, displaying geographic features, configuring labels and symbology, and publishing an interactive map that can be shared through a link.

Rather than presenting a conventional software walkthrough, I will use a real-world dataset to demonstrate the journey from raw data to a map that communicates something meaningful. The audience will see how data can be connected, explored, labelled, styled and shared without building a mapping application from scratch. The demonstration will explore how this workflow could help public policy practitioners, researchers, journalists, NGOs and analysts communicate geographically distributed information, while also discussing the importance of data quality, appropriate visualisation choices and the limitations of interpreting patterns from maps alone.
talkeawys
How to turn a spreadsheet/ any source like teable, nocodb etc or spatial dataset into a labelled, styled and shareable interactive map with minimal GIS overhead.

How spatial visualisation can help communicate data patterns, ask better questions and make datasets more accessible to people beyond specialist GIS teams.

who will benefit
Public policy researchers and analysts, data scientists, journalists, NGO and social-sector professionals, civic-tech practitioners, academics, and anyone who works with geographically referenced data and wants to communicate findings visually.

BIO
Venugopal T. V. is the Founder and CEO of Bharatha Bhoomi (https://bharathabhoomi.com/skill /)and BHUVAN INFRATECH a geospatial technology and skill-development company. With around a decade of experience in geospatial technologies, he has worked across GIS, surveying, real estate mapping and Web GIS. He is also a guest faculty member teaching GIS at Bangalore University,BMS etc. Through MapZ. he is exploring ways to make interactive mapping and spatial data visualisation more accessible to people who have useful data but may not have specialist GIS skills.

MapZ.:https://mapz.online/

Optional: What don’t you know yet, or what do you want help with?

I would like to explore which workflows would make lightweight Web GIS most useful to people working with public-interest data. In particular, I am interested in learning how researchers, policy practitioners and civic-tech teams currently move from spreadsheets and spatial datasets to maps, what prevents them from sharing these maps more widely, and which open datasets or real-world problems would make useful collaborative demonstrations.

Matchmaking tags

I can help with: technique, experience, ideas

I need help with: ideas, critique, collaborator

I’d like to meet: researchers, practitioners, domain experts, dataset owners, tool builders

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