[Talk-us] How to get more publicity?

[Steve Coast]

I now own mappingday.org

Anyone with some server capacity want to host a mediawiki install for 
it? Then we can get started on the content.

Steve

On 7/11/2011 2:23 PM, Steve Coast wrote:
> So here's my solution.
>
> We take aim at a date like GIS day in November (I think) or a nice 
> Saturday near to it. We run a national day of mapping parties trying 
> to get one per state on the same day. Each party organizer is 
> responsible for picking a venue with wifi and contacting local press.
>
> We have a central website like "mappingpartyday.com/Seattle" would be 
> a simple page for the Seattle party. Different pages for each city/state.
>
> The front page has media and pictures etc posted throughout the day.
>
> We do this together and help each other out with ideas, get our local 
> media involved. Together, we can get the national media involved if we 
> have enough states participating.
>
> And it's not much more work than any other mapping party.
>
> I figure we could get WA, CA, CO, OR (thats you dave), Washington DC, 
> NY, TX and now TN with Chattanooga.
>
> If these 7-8 or so core communities across the US would be up for it, 
> just scheduling a mapping party on the same day, then without a doubt 
> we could get more states involved like AZ or IL where there are people 
> who just need a little bit of encouragement to get going.
>
> So, how about it?
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> On 7/6/2011 6:50 PM, Kai Krueger wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Over the past, there have be a number of discussions about why the US 
>> OSM
>> community is not as successful as those in the UK and Germany, 
>> blaming to
>> various degrees e.g. data imports, usability or other aspects. 
>> However, for
>> these factors to influence OSM uptake, people need to have heard of 
>> OSM to
>> begin with.
>>
>> To see how much of a problem this is, I went out and asked random people
>> working in hiking, biking and other outdoor shops here in Boulder, CO if
>> they knew about OSM. Out of the couple of dozen people I have asked, 
>> not a
>> single person had ever heard of OSM. Once I explained to them what 
>> OSM was,
>> most of them thought it was an interesting idea and would have a look 
>> at it.
>>
>> Given that those were perhaps some of the most favorable conditions to
>> stumble upon people who have heard about OSM, it is clear that OSM has a
>> publicity problem in the US.
>>
>> The question thus is how can we increase awareness of OSM?
>>
>> One obvious way is to try and get more press coverage about OSM. 
>> Looking at
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_in_the_media 
>> however, there
>> doesn't seem to have been much coverage this year yet in the US and a 
>> bunch
>> of it was HOT related.
>>
>> Can we as a community encourage more press coverage?
>>
>> Although, national mainstream press would have the highest reach, it is
>> probably much harder to convince them that a story about OSM would be 
>> in the
>> interest of their readers. It might also be harder to then convince the
>> readers that OSM is in their best interest.
>>
>> Contacting local and specialist magazins might thus make it easier to
>> construct a compelling story for their readers and thus increase the
>> willingness of the media to report about it.
>>
>> So perhaps we could start by identifying the various special interest 
>> groups
>> to which OSM has more to offer than the established map providers like
>> Google Maps. Then collect concrete examples of what OSM has to offer 
>> them
>> beyond the existing providers in these specialist domains, and finally
>> coordinate contacting these specialist magazines to explain to them 
>> why it
>> would be in the best interest of their readers to bring a story on OSM.
>>
>> Have people done things like this? How was the reaction of the media to
>> these kind of contacts?
>>
>> Do people have other ideas of how to increase awareness of OSM? E.g. 
>> booths
>> on relevant trade shows? Are there things that OSM-US as an 
>> organisation can
>> provide?
>>
>> Kai
>>
>> P.S. perhaps interestingly, non of the people I talked to, after 
>> explaining
>> OSM, asked if this is similar to Google Map Maker. So perhaps Google Map
>> Maker also has a publicity problem. But that isn't really our 
>> concern... ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> View this message in context: 
>> http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/How-to-get-more-publicity-tp6556624p6556624.html
>> Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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