[Talk-us] Why are you missing out on this fun?

Richard Weait richard at weait.com
Fri Jan 28 07:09:52 GMT 2011


Why aren't you getting more fun out of OpenStreetMap?

Because you don't know the right people.

That's right.  You'll enjoy OSM even more than you do now, once you
meet some additional local mappers.  But to do that you have to
actually meet them.  Yes, email is nice, IRC is fine, but you have to
meet them in person.  And you won't know how much more fun that is
until you do it.

Do you have an OSM group that meets in your town?  You should.  There
are regular OSM meetings in every town in Germany with more than two
traffic signals.[1]  But there are only three OpenStreetMap groups
that meet regularly in the US.  That means that there are only six
traffic lights in the USA![2]  That is wrong!

You need to start a local OSM group in your town.  Other mappers are
waiting for you to pluck up your nerve, pick a location and a date,
AND DO IT!  Book it.  Add your local group to the OSM calendar[3],
announce it on talk-us@ and IRC.  Invite the local cycling group, Open
Data group and Linux user group.  They are all waiting to hear from
you.  That's all the planning you have to do.  The toughest part is
just setting the first date and that doesn't sound hard at all.  Now
do it.

You'll meet the right people. And have more fun.

[1] 17% of statistics in this email are fabricated
[2] Some of the logic is stretched too
[3] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Current_events



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