[Talk-us] OSM Edit-a-thon January 26th

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Kathleen Danielson
<kathleen.danielson at gmail.com> wrote:
> No problem.
>
> What would folks think of making this a semi-organized quarterly thing?
> Monthly is probably too frequent, but quarterly might be the right pace.

I have a few thoughts on this.

First, I think it's great to see OSM US step up and take a role in the
community that involves organizing these large events. We in the US
have a particular difficulty in comparison to our European friends in
that our country is so large and our population so evenly distributed
that we have trouble organizing. So I want to say how happy I am that
OSM US, and you in particular Kathleen, are stepping up and helping.

Secondly, outside it's currently 16F, and with the wind chill it's 3F,
so I won't be doing any walking and mapping, but as the weather
improves, I'd really like to see more organized mapping events, or
coordinated mapping events, where we're encouraged to go out and do
surveying.

This is really key for the long term sustainability of both the
project and the local communities, as we've seen in studies that those
people who are our most consistent and active contributors have stated
that local connectedness is at the heart of their involvement with the
project. So it behooves local community organizers to do more to reach
out and find those people, teach them mapping, and give them a place
where they can really apply that passion.

And the value that will bring to do the data will also be evident, as
we compare the contributions made by mappers of their local area in
Europe to the US, we see a clear correlation between localism and
highly accurate, up to date surveyed data.

Thirdly, I've been an OSM community organizer for two OSM communities,
MappingDC and OSM NYC and I think that one of the problems that local
organizers have is consistency. A community will spring up, have a few
events, then hibernate. I think by having quarterly events, that
encourages folks to organize mapping parties regularly, while still
leaving time for local communities to have their own events if they
want to.

Fourthly, I think this is great. I think this could be even more
awesome if there could be some feedback mechanism both before (and
maybe more importantly) after the event. If the local communities
could write up a paragraph (two max) and have it posted somewhere that
summarizes the events, so we can really see what happened. And a map
of all the local events happening would be awesome too.

- Serge