THE SNOW HASN’T STARTED YET THIS
October evening in Boulder, Colorado, but the sharp
wind and low clouds around Backcountry Pizza &
Tap House foretell an early winter storm. Just be-
fore 6 p.m., Diane Fritz comes in from the cold,
passing pinball machines and pool tables on her
way to the back room. Setting down her bag, she
takes off her down jacket and quickly orders an IPA
before happy hour ends. “Lots of people probably
won’t make it,” she says, guessing they’ll be reluc-
tant to brave frozen roads. She shrugs and pulls out
her Mac bearing a sticker that reads: “Map Porn.”
Fritz works for Auraria Library in Denver, assisting
people who want to incorporate spatial information
into their research. If a student were doing a proj-
ect about energy, for example, she’d show them how
to include the location of every oil well in the state.
Outside of her job, Fritz also helps lead a MeetUp
group—gathering here tonight—that’s merging data
about buildings into a crowdsourced map of the area.
The project could eventually help emergency services
reach people more rapidly, make small businesses
more visible, and show residents how their city (one ofBy Sarah Scoles
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PopSci.com | Spring 2020 | Pg. 63OWN