[Talk-is] Mapping Party

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason avarab at gmail.com
Tue Jul 14 16:38:22 BST 2009


On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Brian Suda<brian.suda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been in contact with Björgvin and we've been hammering out some
> ideas and now it's time to bring it to the list to get your thoughts
> and help.
>
> I have been experimenting with walking-papers.org for Reykjavik to see
> how easy it is. I think we could get a lot more people involved in
> mapping Iceland if they knew they could just do a small part and
> didn't need a GPS.
>
> So here's our thoughts about a small mapping party. We can find a
> venue, most easily http://www.hugmyndahus.com/ and at the meeting do a
> series of short demos and presentations, inviting new comers. The
> agenda might be something like:

Firstly it's just great that you guys are working on getting people
involved like this, kudos to you.

> 1) OSM introduction: Let people know what OSM is, why it is better
> than other maps, etc. Lots of people don't even know it exists

I think if you/we can harvest some points from this talk that would
give people a good idea of what we're trying to do:

http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=541

That answers nicely questions like "why not just use ja.is" which are
bound to come up. Also pointing out that people can us our map more
freely *today* like putting it on their GPS (if they have one) which
they can't do with Google Maps / ja.is.

This is also a goldmine for showing alternative uses for data:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_images

There's neat stuff covered there like maps for walking or for the
blind which nobody else is doing.

> 2) State of the Icelandic map: describe where we were, were we are now
> and the goals for the future.

This section on the wikiproject describes our current status pretty well:

* http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Iceland#Goals

As well as this for the highway system:

* http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listi_yfir_%C3%BEj%C3%B3%C3%B0vegi_%C3%A1_%C3%8Dslandi

I also collated a list of towns/areas that have any significant data
for osm-diff reports recently:

http://osm.nix.is/diff/latest/

That's basically what we have now, for where we'd like to be it's nice
to point people here:

http://bestofosm.org/

> 3) Explain Walking Papers: We can get wifi and a printer at the venue,
> then let people print off their neighbourhood at the meeting, then we
> can all chat and maybe go for a drink.

Sounds good.

> Then, a week or so later, have a second meeting. People can bring
> their walking-papers back and we can scan them in (and/or print more).
> This give people an opportunity to ask questions and for us to get
> feedback about how well they did. At this point, we can also get more
> indepth with the map editors, what is a 1st, 2nd, 3rd level road, how
> do you annotate a wooded area in iceland, etc.

Yeah, I like the model of giving people homework & then answering
their questions:)

> Who's interested in helping? I can organize some of the stuff and help
> spread the word, but I'd need the help from people on this list to
> work on #1 and #2 (and other meeting points they want). I'm happy to
> talk about #3 or if someone else has more experience, they can
> volunteer.

I'll help in any way I can, but unless one of the meetings happens to
be held at >15:00 at the 4th of august or before I fly from Reykjavík
on the evening of the 5th that help will have to be limited to what I
can do over the network.

I'm also somewhat busy with work and this:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%C3%86var%20Arnfj%C3%B6r%C3%B0%20Bjarmason/diary/7019

I can also spam the dormant OpenStreetMap á Íslandi facebook group to
try to gather interest there.




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