A couple of months ago, I printed off a couple of the Walking Paper maps of the village of Empress, Alberta. Empress lies across the Alberta & Saskatchewan borders, and is mostly driven by local agriculture and in no way can be considered a "Tech" community. Throughout the day, people trickle into what is now known as "empressive" for a cup of coffee and a chance to chat.

My parents own the building, and one day as I visited them I took the liberty to shanghai their customers into drawing on the walking paper maps I had sitting on the tables. The community is populated with a substantial number of folks in retirement mode, and getting even a couple of them interested in drawing lines on a computer would be nigh on impossible. However, everyone had a great time "inspecting" the paper map to make sure that their neighbors hadn't left them out.

That night I scanned the paper, drew in all the little boxes (reminds me of a theme song....), and poof, the world now has a pretty good map of the village of Empress, Alberta.

I invite you to visit the village, it's a nice place, and people would love to hear how you got there.

Coffee is at 7:00 AM, at "That's Empressive".