Everyone is invited to join the worldwide Openstreetmap Christmas Party this year. We have small event cum micro-mapping here in Metro Manila.
Details
Date: December 12, 2009 8:00 AM till 5:00 PM
Mapping Area: Cubao/Araneta Center
Mapping Goal: To map amenity details around Araneta Center with walking-papers and GPS.
Schedule: 8:00 AM - Meet at Starbucks Araneta Center (approximate location). 8:00 – 3:00 - Collect mapping data. 3:00 – onwards – Back to Starbucks to upload data, share stories and plans for next year.
Another OSM-PH mapping party brewing down south in Davao City.
What’s so cool with these guys are:
1. They have a pre-mapping party workshop!
Just register and head on to the DabaweGNU Lab at 1PM on June 20, 2009 and be part of the workshop where you will be given instructions on how to map. You will also be lent a GPS device you can use during your mapping session.
Warning: long post on the Tagaytay Mapping Party, if you’re not interested in the details, just look at the first picture and the last video below.
We finally completed our first OSM Philippines Mapping Party in Tagaytay. For me this was a very exciting event because ever since I joined OSM, I never had an opportunity to map an area with another OSMer. I talked a couple of times about OSM Philippines but never really did mapping with any group.
This party was our first and an acid test as to how our group can organize future mapping events. The transcript below are my notes on how the party went. Before the party, Tagaytay in OSM was pretty basic (as in most onlinemaps).
Tagaytay in OSM before May 16, 2009
Tagaytay City is a famous tourist spot adjacent to the country’s capital, the event turned into a family outing because several mappers brought along their family for a brief respite to the city.
Dividing the cake
We divided the mapping area into four sections, mostly along the north ridge of the mountain. Each slice cuts across the primary and secondary road going to the city proper. The goal is to map most POI and residential roads within the slice. Since Tagaytay is a tourist spot, we focused on mapping tourist related POIs (attractions, amenities, pub and restaurants). We then proceeded to our respective vehicles and agreed to be back by late afternoon on the same cafe.
Rally, Neil and Seav slicing the cake
The teams
The “looking for houses for sale” team (maning and andre) – surveyed the western section using the photo-mapping technique. Both the GPS and the camera’s time are synched so that each photo is correlated to the gps trace. In order to get inside exclusive housing complex, we posed as prospective buyers of houses (a pretty good excuse if you can get away with it). Before this party, andre was not a mapper but an avid supporter of OSM-PH , now he is.
The “NAVTEQ we are mappers team “(rally, neil and rem) – surveyed the central section. This group have several GPS units (4!). The main surveying rig was Rally’s eeepc hooked to an external GPS antenna using Nroute. Rem being familiar with the local area guided the group, Rally the driver and, Neil the eeepc operator. On each POI, Rally would stop (to get good average position) and shouts “Ctrl-W, left Petron, right Bulalohan!” for Neil to encode. Here’s Rally’s mail explaining his rig in detail.
The “Tourist team” (seav and ian) – surveyed the eastern section. This group used the old-school mapping with pen and paper. They roam around on foot on several tourist destinations to map footpaths and various amenities. They tried to enter the famous-highly-exclusive-members-only-vacation-resort (sorry no link love) but were denied entry.
Back to the cafe
At around 4 PM, most of the teams were back. Roger arrived to observe the event. We loaded all our traces into Rally’s eepc and demonstrated a few mapping techniques using JOSM. We had no wifi connection so we decided to edit back home. After a few conversations over coffee (no beer since most will drive back to Manila) and some photo clicks, we head home satisfied with what we accomplished for the day.
Everybody brought a GPS! Perhaps too much. My count was 4 GPS-phones, 2 GT-31 (courtesy of GPStoGO), and 3 Garmins. It seems we don’t have a shortage of GPS. This is an excellent resource in case new mappers would join future events. We have spare units we can share.
The cafe as a venue. A public venue makes for an excellent visibility. By mid-afternoon the cafe was packed with people taking a break from the full day of going around Tagaytay. I saw some people looking around our spot, probably curious about what we are doing. If they heard the word Openstreetmap, I bet they would check the word in Google.
New and “old” mapper tandem. My mapping buddy was a newbie, I had the opportunity to share the basics of field data collection. On the other hand, while I was older than Rally in OSM, I learned a couple of new tricks from him with his “Navteq style” mapping rig. By sharing several mapping techniques and pairing newbies to older mappers, we were able to exchange and learn new skills, tips and tricks.
But, we can do better
More planning discussions. Being a loose group of mappers, it is often difficult to coordinate events. We had to rely on people’s initiative to tackle the coordinating work. I think there should be more planning discussions before any OSM-PH event and a core of volunteers should handle the logistics and other technical requirements.
Slice the cake into smaller pieces. While we covered a lot for a four hour mapping, the cake slices were too big to handle by one group alone. We need to slice the cake into more manageable chunks.
Always invite a local potential mapper. We did invite one but were unable to attend. Still, it would be better if we always have a local mapper to “turn-over the data” and fill in the gaps.
Overall, I think the event was successful not only as a demonstration of how much data we can gather for such a short mapping period but most importantly, as a social event where we had an opportunity to share mapping stories and put faces to OSM usernames.
Of course, as in the OSM tradition, here is the video of gps traces gathered from the party.
Our very first OSM Philippines Mapping Party @ Tagaytay City.
An OSM Mapping party – is where a group of openstreetmappers and novices descend on an area to map it exhaustively, usually over a weekend. It’s a very social event where people can meet up and talk (usually at a pub) in between mapping sessions.
Finally, opportunity to meet Pinoy OSMers to share mapping techniques and other things over beer.
Target: map all roads, POIs and tourist attractions. The gameplan is to produce a comprehensive map suitable for basic navigation both for tourists and locals.
Uh oh, I don’t think I’ll be cycle mapping this one.
Be sure to check and edit the wiki if you want to join (or drop me a note here). Some people will be bringing along extra GPS units, so you can join even if you don’t own one.
This is my first time to participate in OSM where we actually meet and map an area as a group and not only through the mailinglist and OSM usernames.
Posted by maning 
Posted by maning 
Rally, Neil and Seav slicing the cake
Group picture. Photo courtesy of 
Posted by maning 
