[OSM-talk] Sourcing street names - source example and question about who can input what

[Richard Weait]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:31 AM,  <dies38061 at mypacks.net> wrote:
> I not long ago received a photocopy of a hand-drawn map of the roadway network within a company's manufacturing site,
[ ... ]
> This raises a related interesting situation. [ ... ] Rather, such release would need to go through internal legal channels and be approved by someone who does have the authority to sign away the copyright; such authority may be vested jointly in the head legal counsel and the President of the business.
[ ... ]
> Looking at accessible street signs suddenly seems much easier in light of this.

Dear ceyockey,

You've presented an interesting situation.  It almost seems easier to
approach your situation orthogonally.  One might consider approaching
the marketing team at the firm with "Hey look at this cool map. I can
put an accurate and up to date map of your campus on this world map!"
Marketing will have a process in place for what they can and can't do
for the company in terms of marketing.  So rather than an abstract
Open Map Thing, for which they have no internal model, it's just a
marketing thing.

As an alternative, approach them from an education perspective.
Perhaps a local high school student is doing a project on a local
business?  Or from a community perspective approach every business in
the area about putting them all in to an up to date business  area
map.  Sometimes, just showing a printout of the area with some other
businesses on it, but a prominent empty spot where they should be is
enough to have them ask you to add them to the map.

In each case, you can take a marketing, education or community angle,
get approval from marketing and have non-staff do the mapping with
permission as a service to the firm.  All of that is easier than
approaching the legal department and saying, "Want to release this
information?"

For some firms, you might even be able to host a presentation about
OSM as part of their Lunch and Learn program.  If you find an internal
champion for OSM they might agree to host a future mapping party.