[Talk-GB] Suggestion for a series of summer mapping events aimed at attracting the public

[Rich]

I'm wondering if we have the .... to create a series of mapping events
in cities, towns and villages across the UK in the summer of 2007.
My passion in mapping is to have a information source about areas
that's accessible geographically not just textually. I've made this as
a prototype of a place to link together the information about
Manchester, to allow the public to enter the location and information
about resources (shops, bars, clubs, theatres, cinema's, parks,
transport) but the thought of the public entering all this information
into GoogleMaps and it being inaccessible to OSM makes me hesitate
(I'm going to put it in Mapstraction, but the data's still
inaccessible).
Basically I'd love to have a map of the UK in OSM soon so this can get
started (Greedy I know!).
I'm sure I'm not the first person to consider this, but I think we
might have the capacity (hard though it might be!) to organise mapping
events across the UK, I'd think in the summer of 2007, so its good
weather, and people will have fun doing it.
In each area we'd want a group of dedicated local people to champion
the cause. If we can't find individuals, we could approach
organisations that have an interest in the development of their area.
Using knowledge of this area and Google, some organisations that might
be interested in supporting an event here would be :

*http://www.highwycombesociety.org.uk/ -  A society aiming to improve
the growth of High Wycombe
*Friends of high wycombe library (http://www.fohwl.plus.com/) (they
have a history of High Wycombe page which would look great if they
allowed navigation geographically)
*http://remappinghighwycombe.blogspot.com/ - A brother and sister team
who are interested in the past, present and future development of High
Wycombe (Remapping is here used in a philosophical not geographical
context, but they are interested in presenting their studies with a
geographical aid
*The chamber of commerce, http://www.thamesvalleychamber.co.uk/ which
would probably love to provide better access to information about it's
member businesses available (Though I'm not sure if we want to have
this kind of partner)

Grass roots involvement would be better than organisations I feel, but
its a thought.

I've put some more thoughts at
Dan Karran wrote:
    Thu Jul 13 13:44:06 BST 2006
On 7/12/06, Etienne <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
> During yesterday's IRC meeting I volunteered to put up a wiki page where
> fund raising ideas could be collected.
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Fund_Raising_Ideas
>
> If anyone here has any ideas or suggestions please speak up and/or add them
> to the list on the wiki page.

Not directly related to fund-raising (more growing the dataset) but
how would others feel about donating their weekends to go somewhere
and map a place? In a similar way to the Mapchester and IOW events I
guess, but on a smaller scale.

If an events management organisation, hotel chain, co-op of holiday
home providers or something wanted to have maps of their area that
they could use without the licence fees for Ordnance Survey data,
perhaps they would be interested. This way they could customise them
as well, adding their own cartographic style if they desire, and
adding locations as a layer on top of their maps.

I guess if a group clubbed together to pay for someone to visit their
area then this would probably work out quite a lot less than buying
Ordnance Survey data they could do the same with.


Dan