[Talk-us] OSM-edit-a-thon, Growing US User Groups/Communities

[Serge Wroclawski]

I'm giving my .02 here based on my experience. Obviously everyone's
experience will differ, and I'd love to hear from folks with long
established communities in North America.

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 5:16 PM, william skora <skorasaurus at gmail.com> wrote:

> Given Cleveland's population relative to other cities, our mutual interests
> and the sheer overlap between OSM and open source GIS tools (QGIS, postGIS,
> Tilemill, cartodb, etc), other co-organizers and I thought it would be a
> great fit for our user group to focus on both OSM and FOSSGIS/Open
> Geospatial tools.

In the places I've lived (DC and NYC) there was already an established
GIS group, with more or less emphasis on FLOSS, so we had a more or
less OSM centric group.

Ultimately you find what works for you and go with it, but in my
experience, there's a different mindset between GIS and OSM. A lot of
heavy OSMers are not GIS folks by trade, or they've gotten into GIS
through OSM, and while there are some awesome folks with a foot in
both camps, I think that while cross pollination is awesome and
encourages, OSM has grown to a point where its identity is distinct

> How often to hold meetings ?

The issue of meetings is an interesting one. We've run three meetings
so far in OSM NYC and even though I ran the first one, I don't think I
like them.

People are used to meetings. They're used to talking about meetings
and sitting down for meetings, where really successful local OSM
groups I've seen really don't do meetings. When MappingDC held
"meetings" they were not very productive, but when it switched to
Mappy Hours and Mapping Parties, the group worked a lot better- we had
better turnout, more community and a lot more fun (and it was easier!)

My suggestion is to have a regularly scheduled social event- be it a
Mappy Hour or some event where people just come and hang out and talk
OSM, and then, when you can, have mapping parties.

The most important thing is to be consistent. The time/place won't
ever be ideal for everyone, but if it's consistent, people will come.

When MappingDC had its monthly Mappy Hours, we had >20 people come to
these events, sometimes 30. Compare that to when we held meetings, we
had 6-8 people attending. It was awesome.

> Should we as a group choopse something to work on ?

You may find this works for you- when MappingDC tried this, it fell
flat and created frustration.

Mapping Parties, on the other hand, worked great, as did people
talking about what they were doing..

> One thing that I've
> noticed from last year's meetings and HOT: there were a few users who saw
> OSM to help them reach a particular goal or scratch their itch of a
> particular interest (verifying roads to facilitate routing, mapping all of
> the places of worship in an area, etc) and began mapping that but there were
> others who were interested but, for lack of a better word, were overwhelmed
> of what to begin mapping and where.

Mapping Parties help a lot, but so do social events. If you want to
more, there's talk about building more introductory documents.

> However, Potlatch's emphasis (on documentation, maintenance) is likely to
> decrease (maybe not, I'm just basing this on my impressions) soon as well.
> Interested to hear what others have done or planning to do.

I think that Josm is amazing, it's the editor I use. But Potlatch is
so much easier that I'd use that with new folks until iD is more
mature.

YMMV but I'd love to hear how it turns out.

- Serge