[Talk-us] Introducing CloudMade mapping ambassadors

[Dale Puch]

A huge boon, as well as bane of US mapping seems to be Tiger data and other
free government map data.  As I understand it, the huge abundance of free
GIS data in the US is fairly unique.

Why do map parties if most of the data is already there, or could be
automatically fixed with future tiger updates?
BUT!
There is also lots of bad tiger data the needs fixing now, as well as lots
of details that tiger data is missing.  Like bridges/overpasses, lanes,
divided highways, parks, buildings, waterways(not imported yet), POI, speed
limits, routing, ect.

There is also improved data that needs to be imported, either newer tiger
data, or state, county or city data.

Where should the US mappers energies be focused?  Finding better data?  On
importing better data as it becomes available?  Correcting bad data either
via yahoo imagery, or by GPS surveying?  Better methods for merging user
edited content with new imports?  How should the imported vs. surveyed vs.
yahoo data be merged and updated?

A few obvious answers come to mind, but a clear path or guideline for
handling these issues, as well as where the map parties might focus I think
would help with getting people involved.  There were a few discussions about
script user guidelines, and how to handle data imports but I did not see any
resolutions posted.


And in case this sound like a complaint, criticism or something other than a
suggestion to everyone.
THANK YOU for the interest and work that is being put into the US community.


Dale


On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:29 AM, SteveC <steve at asklater.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> CloudMade feels that helping the US community grow would be a good
> thing and to that end we've been hiring, for want of a better term,
> mapping ambassadors. These full-time employees will be doing things
> like running mapping parties, speaking at events, doing webinars and
> anything else we, they or you come up with to help get the US
> community as strong as the European one.
>
> So far we've found three great people. Richard Weait (
> richard at cloudmade.com
> ) is kicking things off in the North East of the US. Sarah Manley (
> sarah at cloudmade.com
> ) is working on the Bay Area (the 50 miles or so around San
> Francisco)  and Brandon Aguirre (brandon at cloudmade.com) is focusing on
> the West of the US - Washington down to California essentially.
>
> We'll be looking at helping groups like linux user groups and cyclists
> run mapping parties, answering questions and generally trying to take
> all the lessons learned in the EU and apply them in the US. We're very
> open to ideas and think that some things work differently both between
> EU nations and the US - for example there seem to be more cars and
> driving in the US. The mapping ambassadors are focused on helping
> people find and use openstreetmap and they will be travelling a fair
> amount running these events. Feel free to mail them about anything
> OSM, like maybe if you want help running a mapping party or want to
> borrow some GPS units.
>
> We're also looking to hire more ambassadors too, so get in touch if
> you're interested.
>
> Best
>
> Steve
>
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>



-- 
Dale Puch
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