[OSM-talk] Bringing OSM to walkers - countering negative attitudes

[Steve Chilton]

Nick - I completely sympathise with you on bringing OSM to others (and bringing others to OSM - which should be considered too). When I try to explain the benefits of OSM to my cartography or cycling/walking friends and acquaintances I get a similar response - it is not complete and can't offer what OS maps (for instance) can. People want a complete solution, and they want it on the web, and they want it now. Now, just thinking about myself for a moment, I often want maps to plan a cycle or walk and want to be able to do that with an online solution. If, for the sake of argument, I was planning a crossing of the Sustrans C2C route I would want to know where it goes, though what towns/villages, and what types of terrain. I would hope to get this from an online source, BUT I would still expect to buy a map to actually navigate the trip with/by. Similarly if planning a walking trip (in say the Lakes). For the latter on the actual trip I would expect to be walking on some open fell land and would want the detail that something like the OS 2.5inch or Harveys maps provide - field boundaries, contours, crag details, etc being particularly useful for fine navigation.
Unfortuantely, we are some way off providing this level of detail yet in OSM. On a Lake District mapping week, for instance, would it be a realistic expectation to think about surveying all stone walls, field boundaries, etc even in a limited area? Irrespective of the difficulty of surveying and portayal of such features, I think the answer would be that roads, footpaths, bridleways, and amenities are more likely to be the focus of our efforts. So, I think one answer to your question is that we are in the too early stages of data gathering to expect automatic pickup by users like you envisage. But what can we do to address this, because we indeed want to bring these ramblers (big GPS users!) in as both users and contributors?
One thing I think we should try is a similar approach to new housing developments - with their "showhouse" where folk can see the types of fittings etc that will be available in the project when it is completed. In parallel to the image of the week we should develop an exemplars page on the wiki, where fully mapped areas can be showcased. It could have snapshots of good examples of well mapped areas - at for instance regional (IoW/Rutland?), local/urban (Cambridge/central London?) and rural (example to be developed) level. We probably have the first two covered, but interested parties in the walking and cycling parts of the (sub-)project could work up examples of walk/cycle-biaised ouput. To this end I am happy to work further on the Kentmere Valley (in the Lakes) to incorporate more detail appropriate to walking/cycling (it already has roads and streams from NPE and my local knowledge). We could work this up (or another area) in advance of the Lakes mapping week and get some decent publicity during the week (leaflets, large output map, onscreen demo), by using some of the Rightmove sponsorship to hire a hall in say Grasmere for a day and (some of us) give up mapping for one day to concentrate of publicising the value and potential of being involved in the project to locals and particularly tourists.
The other thing that would help this process has often been mooted and that is lowering the entry barrier to folks into the project. If someone "donated" a bunch of GPS tracks at the moment but didn't have the time/inclination/tools to convert to OSM data would it have any useful purpose, and would anyone do anything with them? Perhaps we need to consider the mechanical turk concept (is that the right term?). OK probably not - but some kind of web interface/process might be possible in the future (OK I am ignoring the checking of the validity of this fictional GPS data for the sake of discussion) whereby people could contribute without the full editor download/upload route.
If anyone wants to work with me on developing the exemplars approach and/or the wiki page please respond via the list or off-list if you prefer.
As pointed out in OJW's blog response, the likes of Google, Multimap, etc have very poor coverage of rural/mountanous areas like the Lakes (big white spaces between the roads). Some serious surveying in and beyond a Lakes mapping week should allow us to immediately provide better maps than that via OSM.
Don't despair Nick. As the project gets more mature there will be fuller and richer data. There will inevitably be developments that allow selective data extraction (layers by data type? different formats?), easier data input, etc and the worth of the project's maps/data to potential users will increase exponentially. 
 
Cheers
STEVE

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org on behalf of Nick Whitelegg 
	Sent: Sun 5/6/2007 11:51 AM 
	To: talk at openstreetmap.org 
	Cc: 
	Subject: [OSM-talk] Bringing OSM to walkers - countering negative attitudes
	
	


	Sadly I never seem to get a positive response when I have tried to encourage
	use of firstly Freemap, and then OSM, to walking groups on the Internet. For
	instance on thread.
	
	http://groups.google.com/group/uk.rec.walking/browse_thread/thread/f6b6aac0f12c5566/5f9cfe7b97b20965#5f9cfe7b97b20965
	
	I attempted to tell the uk.rec.walking newsgroup about the planned Lake
	District event, but have got no interest whatsoever.
	
	Am I actually completely deluded about walkers being interested in Free
	mapping? It would surprise me, because my own needs in this area were what
	brought me to this whole Free mapping thing in the first place.
	
	Maybe the Ramblers would be a better channel?
	
	Nick
	
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