[OSM-talk] Summary of Växjö mapping weekend

[Lars Aronsson]

So, this past weekend we gathered to cover Växjö, a city in Sweden 
just south of me.  Only me (LA2) and one more person (Eriso) had 
signed up.  A shortage of vehicles made us drive to Växjö in one 
car, but we were promised that bikes could be hired on site.  We 
left Linköping at 3 pm on Friday and the drive took near 3 hours, 
including a coffee break.  It turned out there were indeed bikes, 
but somebody had lost the keys, so we were left with one vehicle.
We started to drive around on major roads and stopped for Lebanese 
fast food, which we learned is available from two restaurants in 
this city of 50,000.

On Saturday, we were joined by wikipedian Agneta, a former 
resident of Växjö, who guided us around town.  Apart from 
collecting GPS tracklogs, we were also on a mission to shoot 
photos for Wikipedia and Wikitravel.  At 2 pm I gave a 
presentation at the city library, covering various collaborative 
Internet projects, primarily Project Runeberg and Wikipedia, but 
also a bit about OpenStreetMap.  Unfortunately, most of this was 
news to the small audience, so OSM was a bit beyond their horizon.  
Anyway, the session lasted until the library closed at 4 pm, and 
then we continued our tour of the town and ended up with dinner, 
before Agneta left us and we went back to base, which was a youth 
hostel just north of town. While Eriso started to load tracks into 
JOSM, I went out for some more driving, covering motorway exits.  
There was a magnificant thunderstorm with lightning all around.

On Sunday morning, we had the idea that we had covered all of the 
commercial centre and most of the biggest roads, so we went 
driving through some other parts of town.  The only last planned 
activity was a "wiki cafe" meetup at 2 pm, where of course nobody 
else showed up. These meetups are announced on the Swedish 
Wikipedia, and have attracted up to 20 people in Stockholm, but 
Växjö apparently belongs to some underdeveloped country, where 
nobody uses computers ever.  We left after just one hour, and 
decided to drive some uncovered roads on our way back, which 
resulted in a 7 hour journey (including a food stop and the near 
complete mapping of another city) before we got back home.

I have uploaded 15 tracklogs to OSM and 128 photos to Wikimedia 
Commons.  I hope Eriso will upload his soon.  I should write a 
better summary / documentation for the OSM wiki too.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/V%C3%A4xj%C3%B6_2006-09-30
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4xj%C3%B6

During the weekend we also found three geocaches.  There are 
around 20 in Växjö, but we only took some easy ones that we 
stumbled upon.  Perhaps a geocaching event could have attracted 
more participants to the mapping weekend?  Has anybody tried this?

All in all, it was a disappointment that the planning didn't help 
to attract more users, and that our outreach/presentation in Växjö 
didn't reach the right audience.  I don't know how that could have 
been accomplished.  Still, it was more fun than going there alone, 
and it did help to cover the city with GPS tracks and photos.  For 
now, we know that it is possible to hold a mapping weekend, but we 
still have to find out how to make them more successful.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se