Micro Mapping Party

DRAFT - FOR DISCUSSION

What is it?

The purpose of a micro mapping party is to achieve a well defined mapping objective using a small group of mappers in one day or less. Micro mapping parties can work well for bringing local people together on a more casual basis with less organisational effort required. Being short means a micro mapping party can convene on a week-day evening. This format has worked well in places like London (their 'mapping party marathon') where there are quite a few OSMers living in easy travelling distance. However, smaller events are less likely to be attractive for people travelling in from a long way away, as compared with to the more normal Mapping Parties format spanning a full weekend or longer.

How

• Pick a well defined objective. A small town with a population of around 5,000 to 20,000 is ideal, but it could be any well defined area that is mappable within a day or so.
• Pick a day. A Saturday is best. Preferably two or three weeks in advance.
• Pick a meeting place. A railway station, cafe or other place that will be open early in the morning.
• Tell people about it. Expect about 4 to 6 people on the day.

On the Day

• Everyone should meet at the designated meeting place. Have coffee and plan who will go where.
• IMPORTANT: Exchange phone numbers.
• Go surveying. It should be possible to cover the whole area by bike within two or three hours. Coordinate by phone as necessary.
• While surveying, identify a suitable pub for lunch and for pub/restaurant/accommodation for the evening.
• When all surveying is complete, and not before, rendez-vous at the pub.
• Have lunch and spend the afternoon uploading and editing.
• On completion retire to the selected evening venue.

The idea is to minimise the planning and organisational effort involved. The day should be relatively spontaneous and because of this unexpected things might happen. That's all part of the fun.

Comments/Ideas?

• Maybe if you want some special fun: take twice as many people, each one with a telephone flatrate. Then form groups of two, three or more. One person stays at a Laptop with some editing software. The other ones stay connected by phone and tell the first one (in real-time) where they are, what POIs are around them and so on. (Make a conference call or so)

This method may be most effective in places with almost all of the streets tagged but only small number of POIs collected.

• ...

Towns Table

(will drop this onto a UK specific page when the table is ready)Blackadder 16:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The following is a list of principally shire towns and larger villages in England and Wales (towns within metropolitan county areas have not been included). Only places with a population in the approximate range of 2,500 to 20,000 have been included. Also to help weed out some areas which are excessively rural only towns occupying less than 500 hectares are shown. Finally the average population density was used as a basis for removing both excessively sparse and excessively dense population areas. The result is a list of approximately 1000 places.

To assist with mapping, each town/village has been given a rating for size, area and population density, each on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest in each instance.

As an approximate guide it should be possible for an experienced OSMer to map by bike (including editing time) a place with a size index of 1 comfortably in a single day. Similarly an index of 10 might indicate 10 person days or a weekend for 5 mappers.... you get the idea. Very experienced mappers will probably be able to do it more quickly, especially if they are focused and don't spend too much time in the pub ;-)

3 examples (until full table is ready)

			Index
Town/Village	County	Postcode	Size	Area	Density	% Mapped	Notes/By/When
Seghill	Northumberland	NE23	1	1	10	?
Oundle	Northamptonshire	PE8	2	3	4	?
Sandbach	Cheshire	CW11	9	10	5	100%	RichardB