On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 8:22 AM, Randal Hale <rjh...@northrivergeographic.com> wrote: > Update on the meeting. > We had 6 people attend. I was really only expecting about 3. Out of the 6, > two of us were very familiar with OSM. The other four had no experience.
Fantastic! Four potential new mappers is a huge success. > [ ... ] Unfortunately Internet went > down as the meeting began and was sketchy the rest of the night..... Arrrgh! The bane of our events; flaky connectivity! When the experienced : new numbers are close, I've found that newbies like to 'lead' the coaching, rather than having a 'formal' lecturer / listener presentation style. They often have to be tricked into leading it though. If you can lead them to doing something in OSM that is immediately interesting to them, the whole OSM thing seems to 'stick' better. The alternative to this is the presentation style, in which i talk about OSM origins and history, goals and milestones. I might go on for 20 minutes and then mention, "OpenCycleMap". If the new mapper is leading the conversation, we can get to that part that interests them sooner. Me: So glad you could join us. What is it about OSM that brought you here? New Mapper: Well the new bike trail in my neighbourhood isn't on the map... Me: [sliding computer over to new mapper] show me on this map where the bike trail should appear. Five minutes later New Mapper: Wow! I added the bike trail and it is already showing on the map. OSM is great! Me: We know. There is plenty of time, between mouse clicks for history and project goals, but the mapper who has already accomplished something they care about is already one of us. With a few more new mappers, you want to try to be in more places at once. If they all have their laptops with them, you are in great shape. Show a few slides for 1) register for OSM account. 2) zoom in to your neighbourhood or another place you know well. 3) find something that is wrong or missing 4) fix it. > [ ... ] They appear interested in - and > here's where I get lost - building an "Outdoor Chattanooga" map. They don't > have one. So from my limited experience in all this it would involve some > sort of custom "mapnik" or something similar to OpenCycleMap. Sure, that's one approach. You might find a dozen or so ways to do this depending on what they want, and what they want to spend. A full mapnik layer might be more than they want to gnaw on initially, but it is a fantastic option to show them what a "Full OSM" implementation might look like. Freemap Slovakia uses this approach, with a custom rendering of their area of interest, and "default rendering" for the rest of the world. http://www.freemap.sk/#p=48.935|19.67528|7|A Or they might want an "Event Calendar Map" that shows clickable information boxes on their locations. The OSM user group map shows this approach. http://usergroups.openstreetmap.de/?zoom=5&lat=39.23225&lon=-98.83301&layers=B0T And many variations on these themes. The first step though, in my mind, is get them to put data into OSM. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
