Myself, no I'm not a cartographer. When I think cartographer I think more on the lines of atlas style maps or hand-drawn maps like the works of HandsomeRob or Ramah; a lot of my maps I would consider more to be amateur art rather than cartography. As for cartography skills there are some skills that people can have such as being able to draw things accurately to scale but you don't really need skill to make a map, you would need some skill to do an accurate map or a map in very particular style or format but not for map-making in general. I suppose you can get degrees in cartography but they would be more like degrees in Philosophy, useful to have but poeple can still be philosophers or cartographers without them, the degree gives more of a sense professionalism or implied acedemic knowledge, no offense to any academic philosophers/cartographers in the guild. That's just my opinion though.

-D-