[Talk-us] Best practices for outdoor mapping party

[SomeoneElse]

On 09/03/2015 16:09, Harald Kliems wrote:
> Does this sound reasonable? Anything else I should be thinking of?

I'll apologise upfront in case any of this sounds like "the bleeding 
obvious" - I'm sure you'll have thought through lots of this and more 
already...

One thing that immediately comes to mind is not to assume that people 
have much idea about what OpenStreetMap is - I'd definitely include some 
sort of brief, simple introduction (e.g. what's the difference between 
OSM and public domain government sources, and what's the difference 
between OSM and Google etc.).

I'd also try not to be too prescriptive about how people record stuff - 
cameras work for some people, paper and pencil for others, other methods 
for others again.  Try and pick an area where there's a variety of new 
stuff to map.

With regards to the "editing" part, check at the library first what kit 
is available with what web browser (if it's IE only you'll be using 
Potlatch 2 rather than iD as the default in-browser editor, and even 
then only if Flash is supported).  By all means mention JOSM, but I 
wouldn't suggest it to newbies unless they're familar with something 
like AutoCAD (which uses some similar control mechanisms) - and 
downloading and running Java software on the library computers may be 
restricted.

People will have different priorities - some may want to just do the 
"outdoor mapping" part, some the "social" bit and some the "editing" 
afterwards, so try and make sure that the timetable is public upfront 
(with contact details available in case of problems) and try and make 
space for whatever people want to do.  Don't try and rush it - let 
people "discover things that they can map".

Finally - remember to have fun!

Cheers,

Andy