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

[Alex Barth]

OpenStreetMap Cleveland!


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

> Great discussion so far and perfect timing for us in Cleveland, we're
> having our first event of 2013 tomorrow.
> http://www.meetup.com/cleveland-civic-hacking/members/23087451/
>
> 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.
>
> (Personally, I think this synergy is really useful: one feature of OSM
> that deserves to be emphasized more is being able to use that data in
> really neat ways - maps, visualization, analysis, etc - that you couldn't
> do with google maps).
>
> Some things that we've run into, could need help on:
>
> We haven't thought of a name yet (related to above): Open Geo ? Open
> geo-spatial ? Open Gis ? OSM/FOSSGIS ? Naturally, I'm also soliciting
> suggestions at tomorrow's meeting. Semi-related: call ourselves a user
> group ? Community ? IMHO, user group, to me, has a negative connotation of
> a bunch of old white guys sitting around (ala GNU, BSD) and not interacting
> with other communities in their area. I guess this (determining a name)
> sort of also relates to what actually we'll be doing... I crafted a very
> crude mission statement a few days ago (on our wiki page), but a mission
> statement is something that should be developed by the group , and refine
> itself organically as activities go on .
>
> How often to hold meetings ? I'm thinking bi-monthly, regularly scheduled
> would be a really good fit. We had 3 events last year although not on a
> regular basis and it was definitely noticeable of a loss of momentum after
> the first 2. Agree with Serge on his point. In other organizations that
> I've led or participated, it is much easier to maintain momentum by having
> regularly scheduled meetings. That said, this is a problem experienced by
> other organizations that I've participated/led in and I've already had 3
> state their interest but unable to attend due to a conflict. So we may
> rotate the day of the week, but keep the same week.
>
> Should we as a group choose something to work on ? 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.
> (As I type this out, I'm thinking to suggest to them tomorrow to map out a
> few restaurants/bars or other POIs in their neighborhood).
>
> Has any other OSMers encountered this in their users group ? Should we
> focus on a particular topic, (after soliciting suggestions from members) ?
>
> I'm likely going to use JOSM to walk them through their first edits. I've
> used JOSM at past meetings in Cleveland (most of our attendees in the past
> have been relatively technically savvy) and while in Senegal for HOT. iD is
> a couple months away (?!) from being able to be used in this context.
> 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.
>
> Lastly, when I first started using OSM a couple years ago, I was really
> frustrated by a few terms that were sometimes unique to OSM, sometimes used
> in other areas of GIS) that appeared convoluted (some of them were just a
> result of British English being used) or went into overwrought, technical
> detail, or were simply outdated.
>
> So, I'm preparing a cheat sheet that very briefly describe these terms, in
> less technical language. Aimed to be a supplement to people who may not
> have a laptop or smart phone with them and just want a brief reminder what
> these terms mean as they make their first edits, hear them used in my
> presentation, discussions, or reading OSM documentation .
>
> https://gist.github.com/4614619
>
> I encourage to fork and improve it, feedback.
>
> Regards,
> Will
>
> PS - I found this great overview of open-source mapping/geospatial tools
> by Nate Kelso - a great supplement that I plan on sharing with attendees.
> https://github.com/nvkelso/geo-how-to
>
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