[HOT] London HOT Congo Mapathon, reflection

[Nick Allen]

Dan,

You're right, it went extremely well.

I don't know if Harry is able to get contact information for the 
attendees from bookings, but it would be interesting to ask them where 
they heard about the event. We could also do with feedback - did we meet 
their expectations?

I think most, if not all, of the newcomers were working part of the time 
on http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/459 & I'm planning to contact who I can 
through that task, providing further information. Although it went 
extremely well, I felt as if we only scratched the surface in terms of 
information provided - needed a handout at the end, but who has time to 
prepare them! I'll send them links to the main learning pages in my message.

The field papers tasks for 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lubumbashi#Data_table made an 
interesting change from the normal mapping & I'd like to see more of 
this type of thing available, as it provides a little variety. I think 
the system should be refined slightly;

  * If the only thing being added is road names, then less sheets are
    needed in the atlas (on occasion it took a long time for a page to
    load, and there was very little to do when it did).
  * If you zoom out to find the page you have just loaded, you will
    never find it as they are only visible at the lower zoom levels! -
    took me a while to find this out, and it needs adding to the info
    somewhere (LearnOSM & wiki for future jobs)
  * Instead of a written sheet of paper with road names, perhaps a
    simple .txt file with them typed could be provided, which would
    overcome the potential problem with accents & special characters as
    you could just copy & paste.
  * Is somebody checking that there is nothing outstanding?

Thanks are owed to a great many people who made the day such a success. 
I don't know many names, so it's better if I just leave it as a general 
thanks.

Nice picture in the OSM main page - just glad the pizza I dropped down 
my shirt is not visible!

Nick

Volunteer 'Tallguy' for 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Tallguy

Treasurer, website & Bonus Ball admin for 
http://www.6thswanleyscouts.org.uk/ (treasurer at 6thswanleyscouts.org.uk 
<mailto:treasurer at 6thswanleyscouts.org.uk>)

On 06/05/14 09:58, Dan S wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I thought the London HOT Congo session went really well! Aside from
> the actual mapping, the extremely important thing that we did was (a)
> attract (b) inspire (c) teach, plenty of newcomers. Reflecting on
> that:
>
> (a) How did we attract so many newcomers, to a "non-CNN" need, on a
> bank holiday? Did something special happen? I know a couple of people
> mentioned MapAction, and a couple of people mentioned ICT 4
> Development. I guess those kind of *non-osm* networks are the ideal
> places to circulate info about future events like this.
>
> (b) Ivan from MSF was really inspirational in motivating people. I
> myself don't have those kind of contacts, and obviously it's only
> people from agencies who positively want HOT to help them who can fill
> that first-person role, but, well, I guess keep an eye out for more
> Ivans?
>      Also, the physical Field Papers that Jorieke brought over from DRC
> had a motivational presence too. And so would the Skype connection to
> DRC if it had worked!
>
> (c) The format worked well for teaching people - the building-tracing
> job was simple enough to grasp, the Field Papers job was available for
> keen learners (some newcomers did join in on it), and Nick and I were
> useful helping the newcomers one-to-one (as were others of course, ad
> hoc).
>
> Congrats to Harry on the organisation -
>
> Best
> Dan
>
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> HOT at openstreetmap.org
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