User:Rickm/Mapping07

Mapping 07.

Map your place.

In summer 2007 have a series of events around the country, in towns, cities and villages encouraging people to map the place they live. Get support from key residents in each city, town or village. Provide marketing material and rationale, so posters, leaflets and press releases, and the reasons that mapping their area is worth their time (both a fun social weekend meeting people, and the benefits they'll get from having free map data (easy, quick access to information on local amenities, shops, opening times, activities, etc). Setup the facility to provide GPS's to people for the weekend. Get a GPS selling company to sponsor it and provide GPS's (100?) these GPS's travel around the country and each city/town/village has its event on a different weekend in summer 2007. People put down a deposit covering the cost of the GPS (£40?) and have the GPS for the weekend. GPS's will also be available to buy. In each area there will be an advertising campaign to raise the interest of the populace in the event, and to motivate people to come along. People that might be interested and they're reasons for being interested could be:

• school kids who want something to do for a weekend
• University students who want something to do for a weekend
• Avid walkers who enjoy going for walks, can go for a walk and map they're city (or their countryside) (in my experience I know many over 50's from my village who fall into this category)
• Possibly parents looking for something to do with they're kids for the weekend (I could imagine my mother taking me out if I was 8 years old or so for educational exploration of where we lived (she is a teacher!))

I imagine certain people wouldn't be interested, such as business people would be too busy

Can we expect all these people to enter all the data in on a computer at the end?! Perhaps in each area we will need a computer cluster to hijack where they can socialise and enter the data, and we can have a group of people there just to enter the data into OSM.

Computer clusters we could hijack:

• Libraries (towns/cities)
• University computer clusters (cities)

In each area we'd want a group of dedicated local people to champion the cause. If we can't find individuals (which would be most Open and grassroots, which is what we are), we could approach organisations that have an interest in the development of their area. Using knowledge of this area and Google, an example of the kinds of organisations in High Wycombe (My area) that might be interested in giving time, administration or money an event here would be :

• http://www.highwycombesociety.org.uk/ - A society aiming to improve the growth of High Wycombe
• [Friends of high wycombe library] (they have a history of High Wycombe page which would look great if they allowed navigation geographically)
• http://remappinghighwycombe.blogspot.com/ - A brother and sister team who are interested in the past, present and future development of High Wycombe (Remapping is here used in a philosophical not geographical context, but they are interested in presenting their studies with a geographical aid
• The chamber of commerce, which would probably love to provide better access to information about it's member businesses available (Though I'm nm,ot sure if we want to have this kind of partner)

Why summer 07? I'd love to do it now! Its cold though, and in the summer people will enjoy it a lot more, we'd have more people coming.