There’s only a few weeks to go until FOSS4G 2007 and OpenStreetMap’s Victoria (Canada) mapping party. Some important dates are:
| Nick arrives in Victoria | Friday 21st September – Late |
| OpenStreetMap Mapping Party | Sat 22nd – Sun 23rd September |
| FOSS4G Workshops | Monday 24th September |
| OSM mapping around the conference area | Monday 24th September |
| OSM talk at FOSS4G | Tuesday 25th September |
| OSM demo session | Wednesday 26th September |
| Post FOSS4G Code Sprint | Friday 28th September |
| Nick leaves Victoria | Sunday 30th September |
OSM Mapping in Victoria – ‘Map as a party’
If you haven’t been to an OSM mapping party before, this is you opportunity to find out what open mapping is all about. Mapping parties began with the 2006 Isle of Wight workshop, when 30 OSM volunteers from across Europe descended on the Isle of Wight with the ambitious aim of mapping all of the island’s roads and footpaths in one weekend. 48 hours later, we had a pretty good free map of the island, and thanks to the dedication of local OSM volunteers, the map was soon completed.
The Isle of Wight party set the standard for OSM mapping parties and whilst there are no hard and fast rules about how to have a mapping party, we nearly always follow a similar plan.
Day 1 AM – Meet up in a local coffee shop/community centre (hopefully with WiFi), meet the mappers, decide which areas we will each be mapping, head out to map.
Day 1 Lunch – Meet up at a local pub/cafe, get some lunch, take a look at the mornings traces.
Day 1 PM – Head back out for an afternoon’s mapping.
Day 1 – Evening – Meet up at a local pub, before heading out to a restaurant.
Day 2 – Repeat Day 1
The emphasis really is on inclusiveness and having fun. Anyone who is interested in mapping, GIS, OpenSource, GPS and so on is welcome to come along to the party. OSM have a load of GPS units that we can lend out to people for the day and we will give full training – so even if you have never used a GPS before, you’ll be mapping in no time and once you start you’ll find it hard to stop. There are no rigid rules – you don’t have to map the way I think you should (in-fact one of the great things about mapping parties is hearing about other people’s mapping techniques) and you don’t have to map a particular neighborhood – its your free time that you are giving to OSM, so its up to you what you do with it.
OSM at FOSS4G
There’ll be a few OSMrs at FOSS4G – Mikel, Andrew and Corey will all be in attendance. I’m planning on doing some informal mapping on Monday 24th, so if you are interested in joining in, get in touch. Friday’s Code Sprint could also provide a good opportunity for some OSM hacking – it would be especially cool to talk to some other FOSS4G developers about integrating OSM data and software with with other FOSS tools – why include a shapefile of OSM data in the QGIS binaries for example?. There’s also the BOF sessions that could provide great opportunities.
Meet the mappers
So there’s a few ideas – if you want to meet up to talk about OSM, free data or anything else during the week in Victoria, drop me an email. If you wanted to attend but can’t make it, keep tuned to OMB and OpenGeoData – where I’ll be blogging more about the mapping party and the conference.
[...] On a lighter note, I’m really looking forward to FOSS4G next week, leaving New Zealand on Saturday for Vancouver, expect to get to Victoria Sunday at some point, disappointed to be missing the OSM party over the weekend, but the program looks excellent and I’m really looking forward to meeting loads of new people and learning loads of stuff….magic. [...]