Folks, I sent this summary of activities on earlier today to the HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team) and I thought it would be worthwhile sharing with you all also to give you an idea of what we have been up to for this mapathon in the hopes that some might be more tempted to take the day off work and join us in Swords at the Fingal County Council building....no pressure ;)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the last 2 weeks, we have been reaching out to many, many individuals and groups. - Every regional OSM mailing list recieved an email asking for support. There have been responses but mostly single mappers saying they will join in on the 25th. In addition, we started with 3 groups hosting mapathons (Ireland, Lesotho & Germany) and in recent days we have added 3 more, one in Poland, another in the US and most importantly, a 2nd event in Lesotho itself on the opposite side of the country - Some diary posts outlining the event / plans etc - Identified and contacted over 20 NGO's involved in working in Lesotho in some capacity, some (MSF) have come back saying they will host their own mapathon, some others (Help Lesotho) are looking for guidance so I've tried steering them to local mappers - There are 3 of us spamming twitter on a daily basis which has resulted in the numbers growing for the Irish event especially - Reached out to open data groups, and one prominent member of that community, Jason Hare, is organising his own event and has promised to start tweeting to his followers to get started on their own event - @jasonmhare. the Irish open data community have also been communicating about the event for us. - I've spoken with Derrick Rethans and he has agreed to make one of his awesome videos for us. This will be VERY important when Irish OSM members (Fingal Council staff) travel to Lesotho again next year as it will be used, along with other evidence, to show the power of what OSM can do to officials and locals alike - We've had contact from a consultancy firm here in Ireland which is involved with the Highland Development Agency in Lesotho. They have a lot of data on the highland areas, and are currently investigating inhouse to see if the data can be released to us (we will do our own due diligence on the data if given the approval). Its likely we will pull them into the mapathon event in Dublin also I'm sure I am forgetting things, but that should give you an idea of where we are at the moment. We're also starting to see a bump in the numbers currently mapping Lesotho based on the publicity though I'm aware this will die down once the 25th comes and goes. One area where we want to gain more traction is with the larger regional OSM groups e.g. Germany, France, Italy, USA, Russia etc etc, so if anyone here are members of those communities I would ask you to publicise this event to your local members. We are currently estimating just short of 100 people will be mapping on the day. The target, however optimistic, is to push that figure to 250. Lastly, does anyone know who I would talk to about getting tweets sent from the @openstreetmap account. It would be of benefit to be able to reach out to its 25,000 followers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually there's another update since I sent that, there will be a mapping party in Ottawa taking part also. Hopefully this has inspired some of you and yes I know its on a Friday, but it would be fantastic a few more of you could attend to map and to help provide support to new mappers along for the event. At present we are just short of 20 attending the Swords event. I am hoping that by the time the event rolls around, we would have closer to 40 attending Thanks, Dave OSM - DaCor Twitter - @dacor_ie On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Dave Corley <[email protected]> wrote: > Folks, > > I've been working with some of the guys in Fingal County Council over the > last few months on getting OSM going in Lesotho in Africa. > > As part of this we are organising a #MapLesotho > <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/maplesotho?source=feed_text&story_id=317550358412656> > mapathon > which will take place on Friday 25th July. > > The generous folks in Fingal are providing space, wifi and free lunch, in > the council buildings in Swords. > > i'm hoping that as a group, Irish mappers will be able to assist in this > mapathon. There are likely to be a number of new mappers there on the day > so the more experienced mappers we have there the better. > > in addition, there will be mapathons in Lesotho itself and in Germany also > participating on this on the day. > > I've set up a page just to track numbers, please feel free to share it > and/or nag your friends/family to attend > https://ti.to/osm_ie/lesothomapathon > > Further details on the wiki page - http://bit.ly/1pM1Qjf > > I hope to see some of you there. Are there any that are intrested in > attending? > > > Thanks, > > Dave (DaCor) > _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
