# activities

created_at: 2019-06-14 06:30:49.300602
updated_at: 2019-06-14 06:30:49.300602
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osmradio' - Failed to open TCP connection to radio.osmz.ru:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-06-14 06:31:06.488387
updated_at: 2019-06-14 06:31:06.488387
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osmbe' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.osm.be:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-06-14 16:00:25.185487
updated_at: 2019-06-14 16:00:25.185487
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'john_mckerrell' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.johnmckerrell.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-06-15 16:30:13.245255
updated_at: 2019-06-15 16:30:13.245255
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'gregory_marler' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.livingwithdragons.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-06-17 08:00:49.094603
updated_at: 2019-06-17 08:00:49.094603
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'shtosm' - Failed to open TCP connection to shtosm.ru:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-03 07:30:09.763935
updated_at: 2019-07-03 07:30:09.763935
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'mikel_maron' - Failed to open TCP connection to brainoff.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:30:23.262368
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:30:23.262368
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osm_blog' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.openstreetmap.org:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:30:43.289611
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:30:43.289611
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osm_diaries' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.openstreetmap.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:03.315062
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:03.315062
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'shaun_mcdonald' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:23.352591
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:23.352591
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'mapbox' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.mapbox.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:43.375999
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:31:43.375999
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'richard_fairhurst' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.systemed.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-09 07:32:20.130859
updated_at: 2019-07-09 07:32:20.130859
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'dan_karran' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.dankarran.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-07-23 13:00:15.090593
updated_at: 2019-07-23 13:00:15.090593
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'tom_chance' - Failed to open TCP connection to tom.acrewoods.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-08-12 15:01:21.044091
updated_at: 2019-08-12 15:01:21.044091
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osmbe' - Failed to open TCP connection to openstreetmap.be:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-08-21 09:00:18.064010
updated_at: 2019-08-21 09:00:18.064010
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'harry_wood' - Failed to open TCP connection to harrywood.co.uk:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-08-23 08:00:30.402558
updated_at: 2019-08-23 08:00:30.402558
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'opensnowmap' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.opensnowmap.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-07 21:00:38.891629
updated_at: 2019-09-07 21:00:38.891629
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'derick_rethans' - Failed to open TCP connection to derickrethans.nl:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:32:43.718330
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:32:43.718330
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'andy_allan' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.gravitystorm.co.uk:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:33:03.742927
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:33:03.742927
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'nick_burch' - Failed to open TCP connection to gagravarr.livejournal.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:33:43.791810
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:33:43.791810
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'chris_hill' - Failed to open TCP connection to chris-osm.blogspot.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:34:23.834625
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:34:23.834625
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'tim_waters' - Failed to open TCP connection to thinkwhere.wordpress.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:34:43.857176
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:34:43.857176
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'chris_fleming' - Failed to open TCP connection to chrisfleming.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:35:43.928153
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:35:43.928153
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'matt_amos' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.asklater.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:03.952651
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:03.952651
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'peter_reed' - Failed to open TCP connection to tlatet.blogspot.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:23.976620
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:23.976620
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'geofabrik' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.geofabrik.de:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:43.997033
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:36:43.997033
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'maning_sambale' - Failed to open TCP connection to epsg4253.wordpress.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:04.014547
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:04.014547
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'igor_brejc' - Failed to open TCP connection to igorbrejc.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:24.038507
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:24.038507
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'mappa_mercia' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.mappa-mercia.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:44.063440
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:37:44.063440
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'cyclestreets' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.cyclestreets.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:04.087463
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:04.087463
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'sven_geggus' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.gegg.us:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:24.112116
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:24.112116
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'christoph_eckert' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.christeck.de:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:44.136718
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:38:44.136718
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'gary_gale' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.vicchi.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:04.160568
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:04.160568
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'peter_batty' - Failed to open TCP connection to geothought.blogspot.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:24.184805
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:24.184805
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'muki_haklay' - Failed to open TCP connection to povesham.wordpress.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:44.208505
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:39:44.208505
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'tom_hughes' - Failed to open TCP connection to compton.nu:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:04.232720
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:04.232720
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'tim_teulings' - Failed to open TCP connection to framstag.wordpress.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:24.255449
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:24.255449
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osmblog' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.openstreetmap.de:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:44.280288
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:40:44.280288
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'pascal_neis' - Failed to open TCP connection to neis-one.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:41:04.300636
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:41:04.300636
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'richard_weait' - Failed to open TCP connection to weait.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 10:41:24.324475
updated_at: 2019-09-28 10:41:24.324475
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'jochen_topf' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.jochentopf.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:11:54.380814
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:11:54.380814
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'andrew_harvey' - Failed to open TCP connection to andrewharvey4.wordpress.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:12:14.405010
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:12:14.405010
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'jerry_clough' - Failed to open TCP connection to sk53-osm.blogspot.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:14.477215
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:14.477215
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'steve_singer' - Failed to open TCP connection to scanningpages.wordpress.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:34.500385
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:34.500385
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'osmand' - Failed to open TCP connection to osmand.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:54.520879
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:13:54.520879
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'sosm_ch' - Failed to open TCP connection to osmand.net:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:14:14.545072
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:14:14.545072
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'martijn_van_exel' - Failed to open TCP connection to oegeo.wordpress.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:14:34.568968
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:14:34.568968
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'toby_murray' - Failed to open TCP connection to ksmapper.blogspot.com:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:14.613998
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:14.613998
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'dennis_nienhuser' - Failed to open TCP connection to nienhueser.de:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:34.638287
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:34.638287
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'mkgmap' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.mkgmap.org.uk:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:54.662708
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:15:54.662708
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'weeklyosm' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.weeklyosm.eu:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:16:31.226916
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:16:31.226916
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'florian_lohoff' - Failed to open TCP connection to f.zz.de:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:16:51.251250
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:16:51.251250
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'openrailwaymap_en' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.openrailwaymap.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:11.275397
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:11.275397
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'openrailwaymap_de' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.openrailwaymap.org:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:31.299898
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:31.299898
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'marcos_dione' - Failed to open TCP connection to www.grulic.org.ar:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:51.315358
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:17:51.315358
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'hartmut_holzgraefe' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.osm-baustelle.de:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-09-28 11:18:31.364554
updated_at: 2019-09-28 11:18:31.364554
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'klokantech' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.klokantech.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-10-09 12:30:33.918745
updated_at: 2019-10-09 12:30:33.918745
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'john_mckerrell' - Failed to open TCP connection to blog.johnmckerrell.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


created_at: 2019-10-14 13:00:26.309305
updated_at: 2019-10-14 13:00:26.309305
text:
  *** error: fetching feed 'weeklyosm' - Failed to open TCP connection to weeklyosm.eu:80 (getaddrinfo: Name or service not known)


# feeds

key: osm_blog
encoding: utf8
format: rss 2.0
title: OpenStreetMap Blog
url: https://blog.openstreetmap.org
feed_url: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/feed/
summary: Supporting the OpenStreetMap project
generator: https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.4
updated: 2019-10-24 07:43:57
twitter: openstreetmap
items_last_updated: 2019-10-24 07:43:55
fetched: 2019-10-24 08:00:04.334881
http_etag: "80567dbf6d39da2eceac8f391bdecc58-gzip"
http_last_modified: Thu, 24 Oct 2019 07:43:57 GMT
http_server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu)
md5: 3d2db6767ac6dccecb50b951aac5e5b8
created_at: 2019-06-09 18:11:33.256608
updated_at: 2019-10-24 08:00:04.540060
body:
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"
  	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
  	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
  	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
  	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
  	>

  <channel>
  	<title>OpenStreetMap Blog</title>
  	<atom:link href="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
  	<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org</link>
  	<description>Supporting the OpenStreetMap project</description>
  	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2019 07:43:57 +0000</lastBuildDate>
  	<language>en-US</language>
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  	<item>
  		<title>Making it easier to join the OpenStreetMap Foundation</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/10/24/making-it-easier-to-join-osmf/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/10/24/making-it-easier-to-join-osmf/#respond</comments>
  				<pubDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2019 07:43:55 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[membership]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[OSMF]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176637220</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Joining the OpenStreetMap Foundation used to always require a membership fee (£15 per year, which you can pay by PayPal or bank transfer). However, if you are involved in the OpenStreetMap project, and cannot pay this membership fee, it can be waived. Some OSMers live in a country under economic sanction/embargo (and thus without PayPal). [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p><a href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/">Joining</a> the OpenStreetMap Foundation used to always require a membership fee (£15 per year, which you can pay by PayPal or bank transfer). However, if you are involved in the OpenStreetMap project, and cannot pay this membership fee, it can be <a href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/fee-waiver-program">waived</a>. Some OSMers live in a country under economic sanction/embargo (and thus without PayPal). Others are in nations where the bank transfer costs themselves exceed the cost of membership. Others live under circumstances where this fee alone would constitute a substantial personal financial hardship. One of the main reasons for the Membership Fee Waiver program, is a wish to be more representative of mappers from around the world. </p>



  <p>To address this, the Fee Waiver Program was created, which, for those who qualify, will grant an Associate Membership in the Foundation at no cost, subject to annual renewal.</p>



  <h3><strong>Some reasons to join the OSMF</strong></h3>



  <p>As a member of the Foundation you can influence the future direction of the project by </p>



  <ul><li>participating in the <a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk">discussions between members</a> and by </li><li>voting in the annual OSM Foundation elections for the board that steers the project.</li></ul>



  <p>Without being a member you can still edit OpenStreetMap, by creating a free account at <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org">https://www.openstreetmap.org</a> and help the Foundation by joining one of the <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups">Working Groups</a>.</p>



  <h3>Eligibility</h3>



  <p>Currently you are eligible to apply for a fee waiver if: </p>



  <ul><li>You are an active mapper, and are from a country which lacks suitable money transfer.</li><li>You are an active mapper, and paying the membership fee would present an unreasonable burden to you because of financial hardship</li></ul>



  <p>Please note that there might be changes after the 2019 Annual General Meeting.</p>



  <h3>Languages</h3>



  <p>You can apply in a language other than English.</p>



  <h3>Where to find more information</h3>



  <p>Please read the <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MWG_Fee_Waiver_Manual">Fee Waiver manual</a> on the OSM wiki, to find out how to fill the forms, the procedure and the links to the forms.</p>



  <h3>How to help</h3>



  <p>If you are interested in helping more people from your community become members of the Foundation, please:</p>



  <ul><li>Add translations of the <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MWG_Fee_Waiver_Manual">fee waiver manual</a> to the wiki.</li><li>Contact the <a href="http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Communication_Working_Group">Communication Working Group</a> (communication@osmfoundation.org) if you are willing to translate <em>submissions</em> in your native (or other languages) to English. You will have to sign a <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/File:OSMF_Non_Disclosure_Agreement_20180911.pdf">non-disclosure agreement</a>.</li><li>You can also help our work at the <a href="http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Membership_Working_Group">Membership Working Group</a> (mwg@osmfoundation.org) by joining.</li></ul>



  <p>Thank you.</p>



  <p>Membership Working Group</p>



  <p>The fee-waiver program has been developed under the Board’s direction by the volunteers of the <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Membership_Working_Group">Membership Working Group</a>, with particular thanks to Joost Schouppe, Michael Spreng and Steve Friedl who have kept up the regular work with the Registrar. </p>



  <p><br /><em>Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language..? Please send an email to </em><a href="mailto:communication@osmfoundation.org"><em>communication@osmfoundation.org</em></a><em> with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]</em></p>



  <p><em>The </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>OpenStreetMap Foundation</em></a><em> is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://donate.openstreetmap.org/" target="_blank"><em>donations</em></a><em>, and organises the annual, international </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stateofthemap.org/" target="_blank"><em>State of the Map</em></a><em> conference. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/WorkingGroups" target="_blank"><em>Working Groups</em></a><em>. Please consider becoming a </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>member</em></a></p>



  <p></p>
  ]]></content:encoded>
  							<wfw:commentRss>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/10/24/making-it-easier-to-join-osmf/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>Pre-SotM2019 survey &#8211; initial numbers and reflections from board members</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/09/17/pre-sotm2019-survey-initial-numbers-and-reflections-from-board-members/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/09/17/pre-sotm2019-survey-initial-numbers-and-reflections-from-board-members/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:32:19 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176637058</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[It’s difficult to detect patterns in the huge variety of experiences and perspectives in the responses to the OSM community survey. What is clear from the responses of over 300 people (thank you all!) is that community is valued, important and desired; as well as complicated, and energy and time consuming. One common thread is [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>It’s difficult to detect patterns in the huge variety of experiences and perspectives in the responses to the <a href="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/08/08/survey-on-global-and-local-communities/">OSM community survey</a>. What is clear from the responses of over 300 people (thank you all!) is that community is valued, important and desired; as well as complicated, and energy and time consuming. One common thread is the need for more support for community building efforts. The specific ideas for that support vary so much, as well as who and how to marshal the effort.</p>



  <p>Communities vary from isolated mappers who only see others editing on the map but don’t connect online or offline in person, to places with a full formal organized presence. But an organization doesn’t guarantee a growing, connected and vibrant community. Most places are in between, from a few friends coordinating together closely, to a core group with ‘fly by tourist mappers’, to places with regular meetups and local conferences. The scope of what people consider their community varies from an individual city or region, to an entire country, to being a part of several places. Many feel disconnected or unconcerned with the “global community”, though some feel the global community is their community, with unique issues and dynamics of its own. The communication channels people prefer are probably only going to grow from the large list we have already.</p>



  <p>Yes, you can say that anyone who bothers to answer this survey would be a biased self selected sample, and of course would care about community. Someone happily mapping without talking to anyone wouldn’t care about a survey, and certainly there are some people who are happy to edit OSM without talking to others. But, these community connections — online and offline in person — are widely agreed as the key to what makes OSM work. A bunch of disconnected people editing a database without talking to each other would fail. We can do more together than apart. The means to connect and support all these communities is the major challenge.</p>



  <p>Below we present some of the numbers from the quantitative questions, and some individual reflections from the Board. We don&#8217;t anticipate this is the only post from this survey; there&#8217;s a lot to work through here, so likely more to come.</p>



  <p>You are welcome to read and draw your own conclusions from the anonymous answers to the set of narrative questions on community; find those shared at the bottom of this post.</p>



  <h2>Stats</h2>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176637059" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph1.jpg 499w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph1-300x189.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px" /></figure>



  <p>This survey was filled in by people who saw the link and decided to fill it out. So it is obviously not a random sample of the OSM community. That was always the plan, but it means we should tread with care to generalize. For example, if we see that many Latin Americans in our sample are using Telegram, that might just mean that by chance the link has only been visibly shared on that network.</p>



  <p>Although we had 310 useful responses, not everyone filled out the interesting free text questions. For example, the first block of open questions was answered (at least partially) by 204 people.</p>



  <p>Volunteers translated the survey itself, as well as the answers. This was a huge job, as there were 139 people who filled in the survey in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese, Farsi, Chinese and Lithuanian.</p>



  <h3 id="Background">Background</h3>



  <p>People could mark any of the below to describe their involvement in OSM. People who didn’t mark anything aren’t included in the graph below.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph2.gif" alt="" class="wp-image-176637077"/></figure>



  <h3 id="Communications-channels">Communications channels</h3>



  <p>The graph below shows the communication channels sorted by number of readers. Thematic and local mailing lists together are the most widely read, as well as contributed-to channels.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph3.gif" alt="" class="wp-image-176637095"/></figure>



  <p>We look forward to dig further into the data. One thing we already did, was have a look at how the communication channels differ by region. The below graph shows the percentage of people by region who follow a certain channel. This brings up some interesting data points. For example, mailing lists seem most popular in Asia and least in Africa. The Weekly and the blog are underrepresented in Latin America. Telegram is popular there (and to a lesser extent in Asia), Slack in North-America and Facebook in Asia and Africa. The forum stands out by being so consistent. There were only 3 responses from Oceania, so can not draw any pattern from those.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph4.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176637113" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph4.jpg 755w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph4-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Pre-SotM_survey_graph4-624x416.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 755px) 100vw, 755px" /><figcaption><br /></figcaption></figure>



  <h3 id="Countries">Countries</h3>



  <p>People from 45 different countries filled in the survey. </p>



  <p>Germany &#8211; 35<br />US &#8211; 33<br />Italy &#8211; 17<br />France &#8211; 16<br />UK &#8211; 15<br />Spain &#8211; 11<br />Argentina &#8211; 7<br />Hungary &#8211; 7<br />Switzerland &#8211; 7</p>



  <p>5 or less respondents <br />Brazil<br />Guinea<br />Philippines<br />Australia<br />Belgium<br />India<br />Portugal<br />Canada<br />Colombia<br />Denmark<br />Japan<br />Lithuania<br />Nigeria<br />Paraguay<br />Poland<br />Sweden<br />Belarus<br />Bolivia<br />Europe<br />Indonesia<br />Iran<br />Ivory Coast<br />Kazakhstan<br />Luxembourg<br />Malaysia<br />Mexico<br />Panama<br />Peru<br />Romania<br />Russia<br />South Africa<br />Taiwan<br />Thailand<br />Togo<br />Uganda<br />Ukraine</p>



  <h2 id="Reflections">Reflections from board members</h2>



  <h3 id="from-Joost">from Joost</h3>



  <p>Is there a community? Do you meet other mappers? Some of you seemed surprised by the very question. And in other places, there is more going on than you can follow. But national activity is not enough. Even if there’s for example an Italian community, people organize in their own more local area. Some of these groups are really inspiring &#8211; and though the OSM weekly does a great job highlighting what’s happening everywhere, we still picked up things we hadn’t heard of. A suggestion was a yearly report on what is happening locally. We were pleasantly surprised to hear about what is happening in for example Bretagne or Piedmonte. But then in a place like New York City, even if a lot of things happened in the past, current heavy mappers might feel rather alone. A different kind of struggle happens in low population places, where mappers are just too far apart.</p>



  <h3 id="from-Mikel">from Mikel</h3>



  <p>In the early years of OpenStreetMap, it was easy to just do it. If you had an idea and energy, there was nothing but space to try things out. After 15 years, OSM has grown enormously, accreted data, communication channels, cultural practices and history, and its harder to see ideas through to actualization. There’s still no shortage of inspiration, as the ideas in the survey show. How can we cultivate the space to make it easy to just try things out again?</p>



  <p>To name a few ideas that stuck out for me: annual reports, grants, “twinning” chapters, individuals who “bridge” communities, community building training, informal planned live chats between communities.</p>



  <p>Exciting and exhausting. It’s takes energy for all these things. Take one example: microgrants. The jury is out on whether this will help build community or not, but that’s certainly the intention. The OSMF Board have wanted to do this for years. We’re actually fairly close to launching this finally, but it’s taken so long.</p>



  <p>In the middle of reviewing the responses, I had to <strong>do something</strong>, so I built an <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://mikelmaron.github.io/map-demos/osm-community-index/" target="_blank">interactive map from of the OSM Community Index</a>. Yet another map solves nothing, but satisfying to see our presence across the globe, and think about better ways to share what’s happening between us.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image-1024x556.png" alt="" class="wp-image-176637131" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image-1024x556.png 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image-300x163.png 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image-768x417.png 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image-624x339.png 624w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PreSotM_survey_image.png 1261w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



  <p>Excited to talk about this all in Heidelberg! Especially think the <a href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/sessions/8GY9WF/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Local Chapter Congress</a> can be a place to pick up some of these topics.</p>



  <h3 id="from-Heather">from Heather</h3>



  <p>OSMF should consider a community engagement plan to further delve into the needs of the ‘community of communities.’ There is a large potential to, with a data-enabled process, make some ‘light-touch’ adjustments to improve the health of the network. This should be done in consultation with the various groups across OSM. We need to buid on activities, events, and surveys to a more inclusive, distributed plan.</p>



  <h3 id="from-Frederik">from Frederik</h3>



  <p>Browsing through the answers we got here, I see a serious need for arbitration in the future. The issues people want prioritized are often contrary &#8211; one person wants more of something, the other wants to ban the same thing altogether. There are many issues on which the OSMF hasn’t defined for themselves a clear standpoint, and for good reason &#8211; because even without a survey it was clear that opinions differ greatly. Many people seem to expect things from the OSMF that would far exceed its current, established mandate. Does that mean the OSMF should expand its influence &#8211; or have those who want the OSMF to stand back and shut up simply not participated?</p>



  <h3 id="from-Tobias">from Tobias</h3>



  <p>The  survey responses seem to demonstrate a considerable appetite for a more  unified OSM community communication platform. At the same time, they  also make it clear that we often look for very different things in  communication channels, and that preferences regarding the existing ones  also vary wildly between contributors, making this a challenging situation for our project. I believe it’s important to continue improving OSM’s own communication platforms, which might mean technological updates as well as working on our social dynamics. Our goal should be spaces that people enjoy visiting and productively contributing to. If we succeed in this effort, we might even win over some contributors who currently choose to use third-party tools.</p>



  <p>Several participants shared their insights about local events and meetups: The benefits for motivation and community building, but also their struggles in getting regular meetings off the ground or keeping existing groups alive. While these initiatives must ultimately be run by local community members, the OSMF should explore possibilities to offer support. Suggestions from the survey included making existing groups more visible on the OSM website, providing tools for finding other local contributors interested in such events, and improving the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://osm.org" target="_blank">osm.org</a> messaging tools.</p>



  <p>Although not strictly about communication and communities, the more open-ended questions saw many of the pressing issues from our <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/13/surveying-openstreetmap/" target="_blank">previous survey</a> brought up again – which should remind us that the OSMF, and the board in particular, must make faster and more visible progress on addressing them.</p>



  <p>Finally, kudos to WeeklyOSM! While reading through the responses, it stood out to me how often this channel was mentioned in a positive light, especially given the controversial opinions on many other platforms. Providing an overview of the vast OSM landscape with its fractured platforms and sub-communities is an invaluable service.</p>



  <h2><strong>Partial Dataset</strong> released</h2>



  <p>Many community members have allowed us to share their answers publicly, aggregated and anonymously. We are now sharing the answers to the first set of questions:</p>



  <ul><li>What is happening in your local community?</li><li>What about your local community should be more widely known? What can other communities learn from yours? </li><li>Do you meet other mappers in person? Is there a local community beyond mapping?</li><li>Are you engaged in the &#8220;global community&#8221;. If you aren&#8217;t, why not?</li><li>What do you think could improve the interaction between global and local communities? How can you help?</li><li>Do you know who organises the global State of the Map conference? If you&#8217;re going to SotM, why? If you&#8217;re not going to SotM, why not?</li></ul>



  <p>There were 158 individuals that have answered at least one of those questions and gave us permission to share their answers. You can find that partial dataset at the <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/9/9b/Pre-SotM2019_survey_shareable_answers_set1.ods">OSMF website</a>.</p>



  <p>If you prefer an online spreadsheet, we have also put them at <a href="https://lite.framacalc.org/nqwom1qdul9eudtcss4m">framacalc</a>, but please note that the OSMF spreadsheet is the definite reference.</p>



  <p></p>



  <p>T<em>he </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>OpenStreetMap Foundation</em></a><em> is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://donate.openstreetmap.org/" target="_blank"><em>donations</em></a><em>, and organises the annual, international </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stateofthemap.org/" target="_blank"><em>State of the Map</em></a><em> conference. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/WorkingGroups" target="_blank"><em>Working Groups</em></a><em>. Please consider becoming a </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>member</em></a><em> and read about our </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/fee-waiver-program/" target="_blank"><em>fee-waiver program</em></a><em>. </em></p>
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  		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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  		<title>We need your vote at the OpenStreetMap Awards</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/09/03/we-need-your-vote-at-the-openstreetmap-awards/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/09/03/we-need-your-vote-at-the-openstreetmap-awards/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 03 Sep 2019 11:32:30 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ilya Zverev]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[State of the Map]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Awards]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176637026</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The community voting for the OpenStreetMap Awards 2019 is open! We had a call for nominees, during which you have submitted the names of almost a hundred mappers, bloggers, developers and teams. Then OSMF working groups, the Board and past winners helped to prepare a shorter list. And now it is again your turn: choose [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sotm_2018_awards-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176637028" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sotm_2018_awards.jpg 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sotm_2018_awards-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sotm_2018_awards-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sotm_2018_awards-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>2018 OSM Awards, photo by <a href="https://twitter.com/mapkibera/status/1023949284952010753">Map Kibera</a></figcaption></figure>



  <p>The community voting for the OpenStreetMap Awards 2019 is open! We had a call for nominees, during which you have submitted the names of almost a hundred mappers, bloggers, developers and teams. Then OSMF working groups, the Board and past winners helped to prepare a shorter list. And now it is again your turn: <a href="http://awards.osmz.ru/">choose who gets an award</a> during the ceremony at the State of the Map in Heidelberg.</p>



  <p>We have 28 nominees to choose from: six categories of notable mappers, developers, writers and community builders, and a new category for teams: commercial companies and groups of people working together to make OpenStreetMap better. Every one of these worked hard, and deserves every bit of our love.</p>



  <p>You don&#8217;t have to choose only one nominee per category: that would be an impossible choice, given we have so many great people on the list. Click as many checkboxes as you like, even all of them. What matters is not winning, but knowing that hundreds of people support you and your project. The main point of a community is to support its members, and this is your chance to do that. Don&#8217;t forget to press the &#8220;Vote&#8221; button afterwards.</p>



  <p>The voting ends soon, on 18th of September, so please do not postpone visiting the website — spend a minute right now. <strong><a href="http://awards.osmz.ru/">Please vote now</a></strong> and show your appreciation!<br /></p>
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  		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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  		<title>Survey on global and local communities in OpenStreetMap</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/08/08/survey-on-global-and-local-communities/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/08/08/survey-on-global-and-local-communities/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Thu, 08 Aug 2019 00:26:22 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636955</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[In advance of State of the Map 2019, with this survey we are reaching out to communities across the globe, especially to voices we might not otherwise hear. This will not be a quantitative poll. Since we are circulating this through all our networks, it can’t even give a representative sample of the OSM community.&#160; [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network-1024x560.png" alt="" class="wp-image-176636960" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network-1024x560.png 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network-300x164.png 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network-768x420.png 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network-624x341.png 624w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OSM_world_network.png 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption><a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Osm_world_network.png"><em>Image</em></a><em> by Harry Wood. <a href="http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=1967">Background</a> by Michael Belew (public domain).</em><br /><em><a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Public-images-osm_logo.svg">OSM logo</a> by Ken Vermette (cc-by-sa &amp; trademarks apply)</em></figcaption></figure>



  <p>In advance of <a href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/">State of the Map 2019</a>, with this survey we are reaching out to communities across the globe, especially to voices we might not otherwise hear. This will not be a quantitative poll. Since we are circulating this through all our networks, it can’t even give a representative sample of the OSM community.&nbsp;<br /><br />The next big thing is State of the Map (SotM), and we want to feed the discussions there. SotM is the place where people from all over the world meet and mingle, and in this survey we would like to focus on communication and what is happening around the world. What are people doing in Bali, Belarus and Brazil? Is there a local community? What can we learn from each other? How do we all get involved in the global community?&nbsp;<br /><br />We would like to see how the local communities are connected to the global OpenStreetMap community. What actions should the OpenStreetMap Foundation undertake? What concerns and ideas does they community have? Please note that this is in no way a vote, but rather a means of gathering information to take better informed decisions.&nbsp;<br /><br />We encourage people to get together and discuss and even provide group answers. You can choose to provide answers only to the Board, or indicate they be shared publicly but anonymously.</p>



  <h4 style="text-align:center"><br /><a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835</a><br /></h4>



  <p><strong>End of survey period</strong>: 2019-08-21<br /><br /><strong>Ability to resume answering</strong>: yes. <br /><br /><strong>Note:</strong> Please have javascript enabled and make sure your ad-blocker does not interfere. You might want to save any free-text answers on a text document and then paste them on the survey. If you encounter any problems, please email dorothea@osmfoundation.org</p>



  <h4><strong>On privacy</strong></h4>



  <p>We will collect all answers. Answers might contain personal information that you provided, such as country, OSM username, email address, years of mapping, whether you identify as a mapper/OSMF member/etc.</p>



  <ul><li><strong>You don&#8217;t have to answer any question, except the first one, about consent.</strong></li><li>Please email privacy@osmfoundation.org for privacy matters regarding the questionnaire.</li></ul>



  <h4><strong>On translations</strong></h4>



  <p>Community members have volunteered and translated the survey in their languages. Thanks!<br /><br /><strong>Links you can share</strong><br />English (Base language): <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=en">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=en</a><br />Chinese (Simplified): <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=zh-Hans">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=zh-Hans</a><br />Chinese (Traditional; Hong Kong): <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=zh-Hant-HK">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=zh-Hant-HK</a><br />French: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=fr">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=fr</a><br />German: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=de">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=de</a><br />Hungarian: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=hu">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=hu</a><br />Italian: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=it">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=it</a><br />Lithuanian: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=lt">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=lt</a><br />Persian: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=fa">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=fa</a><br />Portuguese (Brazilian): <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=pt-BR">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=pt-BR</a><br />Spanish: <a href="https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=es">https://osmf.limequery.org/428835?lang=es</a><br /><br /><strong>Helping with translations</strong><br />If you want to help translating answers from the above languages, please sign <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/b/be/OSMF_Non_Disclosure_Agreement_20180911.pdf">this non-disclosure agreement</a> and send it to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject “Helping with translations in [language]”. Thank you.</p>



  <p></p>



  <p><em>The </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>OpenStreetMap Foundation</em></a><em> is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://donate.openstreetmap.org/" target="_blank"><em>donations</em></a><em>, and organises the annual, international </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stateofthemap.org/" target="_blank"><em>State of the Map</em></a><em> conference. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/WorkingGroups" target="_blank"><em>Working Groups</em></a><em>. Please consider becoming a </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>member</em></a><em> and read about our </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/fee-waiver-program/" target="_blank"><em>fee-waiver program</em></a><em>. </em></p>
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  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>Celebrate the 15th OSM anniversary with a birthday party!</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/30/15th-osm-anniversary/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/30/15th-osm-anniversary/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jul 2019 01:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[fun]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[party]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636822</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The &#8220;Birthday&#8221; of OpenStreetMap is lost in the sands of time. Observance of the anniversary of the creation of OpenStreetMap is held on or about the 9th of August, which is the anniversary of the registration of the OpenStreetMap.org domain name. The concept of OpenStreetMap predates the domain name registration, but that seems a suitable [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/15_OSM_anniversary-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636823" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/15_OSM_anniversary-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/15_OSM_anniversary-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/15_OSM_anniversary-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/15_OSM_anniversary-624x416.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption><em>The 15th OpenStreetMap anniversary will be celebrated on 10th of August, 2019! </em><br /><em><a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Public-images-osm_logo.svg">OSM logo</a> by Ken Vermette</em></figcaption></figure>



  <p>The  &#8220;Birthday&#8221; of OpenStreetMap is lost in the sands of time. Observance of  the anniversary of the creation of OpenStreetMap is held on or about the  9th of August, which is the anniversary of the registration of the  OpenStreetMap.org domain name. The concept of OpenStreetMap predates the  domain name registration, but that seems a suitable anniversary date. </p>



  <h3 style="text-align:center"><strong>This year the anniversary will be celebrated on </strong><br /><strong>10th of August!</strong> <br /><br /><strong>Will you organise an OSM birthday party?</strong></h3>



  <p><strong>How to organise a community birthday party</strong></p>



  <ul><li>Contact OSMers in your area and talk among yourselves. Decide what you want to do.</li><li>It can be as big or as small as you want. A few people meeting for some food/drink, or a bigger event.</li><li>Invite new people! It can be a great way to spread the word about OSM. Promote your event.</li><li>You can make/order a birthday cake. See <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cake">previous examples of OSM cakes</a> for inspiration. Don&#8217;t forget the attribution!</li><li>If you take photos, you can share them on the <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_15th_Anniversary_Birthday_party">OSM wiki</a> afterwards.</li><li>Edit <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_15th_Anniversary_Birthday_party">this wiki page</a> and put details of your event in.</li><li>Remember a core principle of OSM: Have fun!</li></ul>



  <p>If wiki editing isn&#8217;t your thing, email communication@osmfoundation.org with your event details and we&#8217;ll add it <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/12.0.0-1/72x72/1f642.png" alt="🙂" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" /><br /><br />Events are already planned in Japan, Belarus, Germany and the US. <br />Join us!</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



  <p><em>Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language..? Please send us an email to </em><a href="mailto:communication@osmfoundation.org"><em>communication@osmfoundation.org</em></a><em> with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]</em><br /><br /><em><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org">OpenStreetMap</a> was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of  the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about  roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide.  Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any  purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own  maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc.  OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very  quickly, or easily, updated.</em></p>
  ]]></content:encoded>
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  		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>Call for help with translations of blog posts and surveys</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/13/call-for-help-with-translations/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/13/call-for-help-with-translations/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Sat, 13 Jul 2019 23:05:51 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[366]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636761</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Would you like to translate posts on blog.openstreetmap.org? Or see surveys from the OpenStreetMap Foundation in your language..? This is a call to community members who have helped with translations in the past or want to help now. You can translate as many old or new blog posts as you like &#8211; expressing an interest [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/languages-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636794" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/languages-1.jpg 960w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/languages-1-300x194.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/languages-1-768x497.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/languages-1-624x404.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" /></figure>



  <p>Would you like to translate posts on blog.openstreetmap.org? Or see surveys from the <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/">OpenStreetMap Foundation</a> in your language..? This is a call to community members who have helped with translations in the past or want to help now. </p>



  <ul><li>You can translate as many old or new blog posts as you like &#8211; expressing an interest does not mean you have to translate every new post.</li><li>We would like to encourage people to collaborate! If more than one person can do a translation, we would be thrilled if you work together.</li></ul>



  <h3><strong>Blog post translations</strong></h3>



  <p>We&#8217;d like to make the official blog at blog.openstreetmap.org available in more languages, and for some of the existing languages we&#8217;d need to catch up on translations of recent blog posts. These are straightforward and we will provide initial guidance.</p>



  <h3><strong>Extra help needed for translations of surveys</strong></h3>



  <p>For surveys we need help both in translating the questions, as well as the answers. For that reason we would be thrilled if local communities decided to form small groups that will volunteer to help us. Please note that as anyone who helps with surveys will have access to information that people might want to keep private, you will have to sign a <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/b/b9/Draft_NDA_version_20180911.pdf">non-disclosure agreement</a>.<br /><br />The OpenStreetMap Foundation will start doing surveys 2-3 times per year. The next one is planned just before the State of the Map 2019 conference and translation of questions will start this week.</p>



  <h3><strong>Next step</strong></h3>



  <p>Want to help? <br />Please send us an email to <a href="mailto:communication@osmfoundation.org">communication@osmfoundation.org</a>&nbsp;<br />with subject: <em>Helping with translations in [your language]</em><br />and indicate whether you want to help with translations of blog posts, surveys or both.<br /><br />Thank you!<br /><br /><em><a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Communication_Working_Group">Communication Working Group</a></em><br /></p>



  <p><em>The </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>OpenStreetMap Foundation</em></a><em> is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://donate.openstreetmap.org/" target="_blank"><em>donations</em></a><em>, and organises the annual, international </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stateofthemap.org/" target="_blank"><em>State of the Map</em></a><em> conference. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/WorkingGroups" target="_blank"><em>Working Groups</em></a><em>. Please consider becoming a </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/" target="_blank"><em>member</em></a><em> and read about our </em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/fee-waiver-program/" target="_blank"><em>fee-waiver program</em></a><em>. </em></p>
  ]]></content:encoded>
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  		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>State of the Map 2019 program and call for posters</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/06/sotm2019-program-and-call-for-posters/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/07/06/sotm2019-program-and-call-for-posters/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Sat, 06 Jul 2019 01:14:58 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[State of the Map]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636728</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[SotM 2019 Program Announced The last couple of months have been busy with organising the State of the Map 2019 conference. In particular, the program committees have done the difficult job of selecting which talks will be presented at the conference. We had many submissions and unfortunately we could not accept them all, but we [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SotM2018_viewing_posters-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636736" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SotM2018_viewing_posters-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SotM2018_viewing_posters-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SotM2018_viewing_posters-768x512.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SotM2018_viewing_posters-624x416.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption><em>Viewing SotM 2018 posters. Photograph by </em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomersch/28801465347/in/album-72157697903865771/"><em>Thomas Skowron,</em></a><em> </em><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"><em>CC BY 2.0</em></a></figcaption></figure>



  <h2>SotM 2019 Program Announced</h2>



  <p>The last couple of months have been busy with organising the State of the Map 2019 conference. In particular, the program committees have done the difficult job of selecting which talks will be presented at the conference. We had many submissions and unfortunately we could not accept them all, but we aimed at selecting talks that we believe you will all find really interesting.</p>



  <p>As well as the regular talks in the program, this year also sees a full track on Sunday dedicated to academic talks which anyone is welcome to attend, not just the academically inclined among you!<br /><br />For more information on the talks that were selected and when they will be presented, take a look at the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)" href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/program/" target="_blank">program</a>. Most talks will be recorded, so if you cannot attend, you can watch them online after the conference!</p>



  <h2>Call for Posters</h2>



  <p>Getting the selection of talks ready was not the only thing happening the past few weeks &#8211; we have also been preparing for the annual poster competition. This year we have a dedicated poster session at the conference where selected posters will be exhibited and you will have a chance to meet the creators and talk with them.</p>



  <p>For more details on how to submit, see our <a href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/calls/posters/">Call for Posters</a>.</p>



  <p>Your poster could show how well your home region is mapped, it could be a beautiful new style or map. It might focus on a community project or statistics, it might be a poster explaining and inviting people to OpenStreetMap. What&#8217;s important, is we want it to be about OSM. We&#8217;re also welcoming academic posters about research around OpenStreetMap data. <br /><br />You don’t have to attend SotM 2019 to submit a poster.</p>



  <h2>Early Bird Tickets</h2>



  <p>Early bird tickets are still available at the <a href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/?page=CiviCRM&amp;q=civicrm%2Fevent%2Finfo&amp;reset=1&amp;id=13">ticket sales web page</a>. These prices are only available until the 21st of July, so get your ticket now!</p>



  <p><em>SotM Organising Committee</em></p>



  <p><a href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/"><em>Sign up for event updates</em></a><em> and follow us </em><a href="https://twitter.com/sotm"><em>@sotm</em></a><em>!</em></p>



  <p><em>The <a href="https://stateofthemap.org/">State of the Map</a> conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap</em>,<em> organised by the <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/">OpenStreetMap Foundation</a>. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project and you can support it by becoming a <a href="https://join.osmfoundation.org/">member</a>. The <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/StateoftheMap_Organizing_Committee">State of the Map Organising Committee</a> is one of our volunteer <a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups">Working Groups</a>.</em></p>
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  		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>Why your community should host State of the Map</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/25/host-sotm/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/25/host-sotm/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:45:29 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[State of the Map]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636674</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Post by Gregory Marler on LivingWithDragons. Re-posted with permission. The OpenStreetMap event of the year is “State of the Map” (SotM), an international conference run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation and I love being part of the organising committee that brings so many people to one place. We’re volunteers and it takes a lot of work [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p><em>Post by Gregory Marler on <a href="http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2019/06/why-your-community-should-host-sotm">LivingWithDragons</a>. Re-posted  with permission.</em></p>



  <p>The OpenStreetMap event of the year is “<a href="https://2019.stateofthemap.org/">State of the Map</a>” (SotM), an international conference run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation and I love being part of the organising committee that brings so many people to one place. We’re volunteers and it takes a lot of work and a lot of local knowledge throughout the year to organise a 400+ conference, so we ask for communities to bid to host it in their city/area. There’s support in overseeing what needs to be done, budgeting, and links with previous sponsors, but it relies on a full local team to join in the help. This led me to ask, <strong>why should your community host State of the Map?</strong> </p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd1-1024x509.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636676" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd1.jpg 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd1-300x149.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd1-768x382.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd1-624x310.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption><em>The photographer takes a group photo of delegates and team at SotM 2018 (Italy)</em></figcaption></figure>



  <p>It will use the skills of your community. The organisation work requires researching suppliers of booklet printing, catering, etc. It needs people to communicate with the venue and with our sponsors, even speakers and scholarship applications. There’s usually help needed with graphics and there’s space for people to suggest new ideas for the conference. During the event we need welcoming people, and people to keep the schedule running on time. There’s so many different things to do and they vary in how visible from them. I firmly believe the best way to <strong>appreciate individuals</strong> is to know they’ve dealt with an essential task or to encourage them to take on a task you think they’ll be good at.</p>



  <p>Along with the conference, of course comes lots of knowledgeable people. In the talks and in the coffee break discussions you get to hear updates about OpenStreetMap, learn new things or get more detail from<strong> the experts and different communities</strong>. This is both for your local SotM team, as it’s encouraged to listen to the talks if you’re helping out, and it’s for your wider community of OSMers and newbies in the city/country/region. This can be a great <strong>chance for locals to attend SotM</strong> when they might not usually due to travel distance and barriers such as costs or visas.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636690" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd2.jpg 298w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd2-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="(max-width: 298px) 100vw, 298px" /><figcaption><em>Stickers at a SotM Scotland event in 2012</em></figcaption></figure></div>



  <p>Don’t think about one weekend, as often the conference is <strong>a catalyst to have more local events</strong>. In the build up to SotM you’ll want to meet more often and you’ll get to know people who live near by. Hosting SotM has also led to more events following it as people want to continue the in-person sharing of knowledge and community. You might host extra events in collaboration with other organisations, in the past countries have even ended up having scenarios like “The month of maps”. I would encourage you to have had some community meetups before bidding for SotM, it gives you practice setting dates, communication, and venues.</p>



  <p>Remember that OpenStreetMap is not about a conference. However, the conference helps us build new understanding. This can lead to <strong>new contributors joining OpenStreetMap</strong> (maybe getting more involved) and <strong>new uses of OpenStreetMap</strong> by being inspired and encouraged what others can do. You might want to invite local government or companies that are on the fence with deciding to use or release open data.</p>



  <p>My last reason is that, <strong>it’s&nbsp;fun</strong>. We’re all a nice bunch of people really. There’s usually an organised social evening at SotM (we’ve had private tram tours, picnics in the park, a performance by Japanese drummers, all sorts). On the other nights the visiting mappers will look to your community team for advice on where to eat/drink and what are really the best nearby tourist sights. <strong>If you love your town, then you should love sharing the best bits</strong> and the secrets with the new friends you make.</p>



  <p><strong>What to do now?</strong> First of all, read the <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2020/Call_for_venues">Call for Venues</a> page, because that contains a lot better detail on what is needed to be ready and what is needed in your bid. I would suggest getting together a community that is interested in hosting, even if they have different levels of interest and different amounts of availability. Find a date to give about 2 weeks notice, find a place to meet like a coffee shop or a friendly office, and use various social media to <strong>invite local mappers to come and chat about State of the Map in your town</strong>. You might start writing the bid there (copy the example bid format), you might assign people to go away and research the different sections required. </p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd3-1024x652.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636704" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd3.jpg 1024w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd3-300x191.jpg 300w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd3-768x489.jpg 768w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/lwd3-624x397.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption><em>Dinner and a drum performance at State of the Map 2017 (Japan)</em></figcaption></figure>



  <p>You are very welcome to <strong><a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/StateoftheMap_Organizing_Committee">contact the SotM team</a> early on</strong>, this might be once you’ve suggested it to your community it might be before that initial meeting I suggested. We want to help you out, and to help you with your bid. This could be linking you up with others nearby that have got in touch with us, or answering questions you have.</p>



  <p>After the bids come in we get the challenge of choosing which bid will host SotM next year. It’s a difficult decision, and we’ve come to learn what will make the conference run smoothly. Don’t be disheartened if your bid is not selected. All that <strong>research and team building can be usefully adapted to running a smaller conference for your country or region</strong> (there’s a whole list of them). These won’t be an OSMF-run conference but the global team is still keen to assist in small ways. Often local/regional conferences contact us with their proposed dates before they announce, and find it helpful to know if they might clash with others (potentially causing less people to attend). Running a country-level conference can also show how well you can run an event, it could set you up well to bid for SotM in future years. I’d love to see some of the previous ones run on an international level, and it’s great to see more of these pop up.</p>



  <p>The Call for Venues deadline is 30th August 2019.</p>



  <p><em><a href="http://www.livingwithdragons.com/">Gregory Marler</a></em></p>



  <p></p>



  <p><em>Follow State of the Map </em><a href="https://twitter.com/sotm"><em>@sotm</em></a><em>!</em></p>



  <p><em>The <a href="https://stateofthemap.org/">State of the Map</a> conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap</em>,<em> organised by the&nbsp;<a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/">OpenStreetMap Foundation</a>. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project. The&nbsp;<a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/StateoftheMap_Organizing_Committee">State of the Map Organising Committee</a>&nbsp;is one of our volunteer&nbsp;<a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Groups">Working Groups</a>.</em></p>
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  		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>Can you help the Operations Working Group?</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/21/help-the-owg/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/21/help-the-owg/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 21 Jun 2019 22:08:01 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Operations]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636639</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The OSM Operations Working Group is a volunteer group, responsible for running of the servers owned by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. We are always keen to find new members and we are particularly looking for people who: can analyse our server infrastructure make plans forecast future hardware needs draw up budgets This does involve a certain level [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>The OSM <a href="https://operations.osmfoundation.org ">Operations Working Group</a> is a volunteer group, responsible for running of the servers owned by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. <br />We are always keen to find new members and we are particularly looking for people who:</p>



  <ul><li>can analyse our server infrastructure</li><li>make plans</li><li>forecast future hardware needs</li><li>draw up budgets</li></ul>



  <p>This does involve a certain level of technical expertise but it’s not writing code, for example, and OWG membership doesn’t grant access to any of the servers &#8211; that’s for our Sysadmins. If you would like to join us, have a read of our <a href="https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/owg-membership/">membership policy</a>, and please get in touch!<br /><br />Some additional information:</p>



  <ul><li>OWG&#8217;s main communication channels are <a href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations">Github</a> and email. We rarely have meetings.</li><li>Estimate of hours per week: 1-3</li></ul>



  <p style="text-align:center">Email us at operations@osmfoundation.org<br />We are also on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/osm_tech">@OSM_Tech</a></p>



  <p>If you have the technical expertise and experience to be a sysadmin, read our <a href="https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/sysadmin-membership/">sysadmin membership policy</a> and get in touch.</p>
  ]]></content:encoded>
  							<wfw:commentRss>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/21/help-the-owg/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
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  							</item>
  		<item>
  		<title>The June solstice is upon us</title>
  		<link>https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/06/19/june-solstice/</link>
  				<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jun 2019 01:55:13 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[OpenStreetMap]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.openstreetmap.org/?p=176636581</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The June solstice is upon us, which means the seasons are changing &#8212; and with that, lots of opportunities to map, no matter which hemisphere you&#8217;re in! If you&#8217;re in the northern hemisphere, why not take a look at your local outdoor fun: maybe it&#8217;s swimming pools, beaches, hiking and biking trails, and the like. [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img src="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Sundial_by_Simon_Moroder_photo_by_Giovanni_Novara_at_flickr-746x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-176636616" width="560" height="768" srcset="https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Sundial_by_Simon_Moroder_photo_by_Giovanni_Novara_at_flickr.jpg 746w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Sundial_by_Simon_Moroder_photo_by_Giovanni_Novara_at_flickr-219x300.jpg 219w, https://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Sundial_by_Simon_Moroder_photo_by_Giovanni_Novara_at_flickr-624x857.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px" /><figcaption><em>Spherical sundial by Simon Moroder. Photo by </em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/giovanni_novara1"><em>Giovanni Novara</em></a><em>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">CC BY-NC-SA 2.0</a></em></figcaption></figure></div>



  <p>The June solstice is upon us, which means the seasons are changing &#8212; and with that, lots of opportunities to map, no matter which hemisphere you&#8217;re in!<br /><br />If you&#8217;re in the northern hemisphere, why not take a look at your local outdoor fun: maybe it&#8217;s swimming pools, beaches, hiking and biking trails, and the like. The parks and playgrounds might be busy, as well as sports pitches, places to camp, national parks, wildlife parks and more. Midsummer is also a holiday in many countries, why not map the local traditions like permanent maypoles? Or mapping your local ice cream parlours might be fun.</p>



  <p>And if you&#8217;re in the southern hemisphere, it&#8217;s winter! It may be a bit colder, and good weather for winter sports like skiing, or maybe just staying indoors at your local pub, restaurant, indoor pool and so on. Are your local favorites on the map already? There are also winter festivals all over the hemisphere, have you mapped them? And in warmer climates, it may be nice weather for exploring outside, going surfing, taking road trips and more.</p>



  <p>Speaking of the solstice, are the observatories and other astronomical facilities in your area mapped? Is the sundial of the cover photograph mapped?</p>



  <p>You can also try recording GPS tracks or taking GPS-tagged photos of your outings to help yourself and others add more data to the map. Or you can even look for things named summer and help complete the map there! For example, the <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1577430183#map=18/36.51248/4.36354">hamlet of Summer, Algeria</a>, the <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/29228773">Summer Palace in Beijing</a>, the <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2249505473">Summer Place pub in San Francisco</a> and the <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/457391214">Summer Hill Creek in Australia</a>. Or maybe there are locations named Winter near you.<br /><br />Do you have any other ideas for seasonal mapping? Let everyone know in the comments.</p>



  <p></p>
  ]]></content:encoded>
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title: OpenStreetMap User's Diaries
url: http://www.openstreetmap.org/diary/
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summary: Recent diary entries from users of OpenStreetMap
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    <channel>
      <title>OpenStreetMap diary entries</title>
      <description>Recent diary entries from users of OpenStreetMap</description>
      <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/diary</link>
      <image>
        <url>https://www.openstreetmap.org/assets/mag_map-rss2.0-4f212209b7745e172d20b38bd751327337c6b7a7fc641c8b6d54f7ff33abcea7.png</url>
        <title>OpenStreetMap diary entries</title>
        <width>100</width>
        <height>100</height>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/diary</link>
      </image>
      <item>
        <title>Projeto de Mapeamento de CEP´S da Cidade do Recife/PE com Base do CNEFE.</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/raphaelmirc/diary/391056</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/raphaelmirc/diary/391056</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Esse Projeto foi Baseado nos dados do CNEFE e aplicado na Cidade do Recife em Ruas e  Avenidas dos Bairros do Recife, a base de CEP do CNEFE pode ser encontrada no link;. &lt;a href="ftp://ftp.ibge.gov.br/Censos/Censo_Demografico_2010/Cadastro_Nacional_de_Enderecos_Fins_Estatisticos/PE/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;ftp://ftp.ibge.gov.br/Censos/Censo_Demografico_2010/Cadastro_Nacional_de_Enderecos_Fins_Estatisticos/PE/&lt;/a&gt; (Cadastro Nacional de Endereços para Fins Estatísticos).&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://guiaosmbr.webnode.com/_files/200000023-8ab1e8baa6/consulta-overpass.jpg" alt=""&gt;
  Consulta Cep no Overpass;  &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/CnQ" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/CnQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Arquivos PDF dos CEP´S usado no Projeto Mapeia Recife. 
  &lt;a href="https://mega.nz/#!HpIjRYgC!UbxkNWLHGLe4N2dAMlD2tCgbNSwJG6SbR-i6dsZGAPw" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://mega.nz/#!HpIjRYgC!UbxkNWLHGLe4N2dAMlD2tCgbNSwJG6SbR-i6dsZGAPw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Consulta Cep´s de Ruas e Avenidas do Recife no Site do Geofabrik. 
  &lt;a href="https://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Pagina do Projeto Mapeia Recife. 
  &lt;a href="https://guiaosmbr.webnode.com/l/projeto-de-mapeamento-de-cep%C2%B4s-da-cidade-do-recife-pe-com-base-do-cnefe-projeto-mapeia-cep/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://guiaosmbr.webnode.com/l/projeto-de-mapeamento-de-cep%C2%B4s-da-cidade-do-recife-pe-com-base-do-cnefe-projeto-mapeia-cep/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Os Cep´s do OSM pode ser Consultado no App OsmAnd Android &lt;a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand&amp;amp;hl=pt_BR" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand&amp;amp;hl=pt_BR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Conheça nosso Grupo no Telegram; 
  &lt;a href="https://web.telegram.org/#/im?p=@osm_pernambuco" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://web.telegram.org/#/im?p=@osm_pernambuco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Um Forte Abraço,&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Raphaelmirc
  Recife/PE.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>raphaelmirc</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Sat, 26 Oct 2019 10:08:05 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/raphaelmirc/diary/391056#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Footpath and Bridleway tagging in England and Wales - a personal view</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/diary/391053</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/diary/391053</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://www.highparadise.co.uk/uploads/3/8/3/3/38330711/background-images/914250677.jpg" alt="Service road into High Paradise Farm, Yorkshire"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;I was prompted to write this because of a few discussions over the last couple of months - people talking about the default tags on various OSM elements, reactions to Amazon mappers’ additions of “last mile” service roads and discussions about how to tag England and Wales’ public rights of way network.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;This is very much a personal view and one that’s very “England and Wales” centric - there are lots of different approaches to rural tagging in general and footpath tagging in particular, and many places around the world (enlightened places like Scotland and Scandinavia) have different default access rights to the curious set we have ended up with in England and Wales.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Let’s start with an example - what’s the reasoning for the tags on &lt;a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/68571983/history" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; way in OSM?&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Firstly - “&lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dservice" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;highway=service&lt;/a&gt;”.  That’s simply the physical type of highway that it is most like.  Functionally it offers access to the farm and &lt;a href="http://www.highparadise.co.uk/tea-rooms.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;other businesses&lt;/a&gt;.  Maybe people might argue it should have a driveway tag; maybe someone might think it was a paved track, but service is what it’s been in OSM for 9 years and it’s near enough for me not to change it.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Next, “&lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:designation" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;designation=public_bridleway&lt;/a&gt;”.  Where does that come from?  The answer, I think is roughly &lt;a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-March/035412.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; back in 2009.  That thread (and parallel ones on talk-gb at the time) discussed how to tag a thing that’s legally one thing, but physically a bit like something else as well, very similar to “my” service road.  The source for me to add the tag here was “Public Bridleway” signs along the route.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Next, the basic access tags - “&lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;foot=yes&lt;/a&gt;”, “horse=yes” and “bicycle=yes”.  These say that you’ve got a legal right to walk, cycle or ride a horse up here - they’re also implied by the “Public Bridleway” signs.  To an extent it makes sense in OSM not to have duplicate tags for things (it’d be a pretty unusual “&lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:highway%3Dmotorway" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;highway=motorway&lt;/a&gt;” that needed “motor_vehicle=yes”), but it’s not really fair on routers that have to work internationally to expect them to know every nuance of “designation” tagging (which in this case doesn’t even apply to a whole country).&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;So far, that’s pretty close to the National Trust’s proposed public right of way (PRoW) tagging &lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/National_Trust_Paths#Proposed_Tagging_Schema" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  There’s one difference - they’d suggest “=designated” instead of “=yes” on the access tagging, so it’s looking at where that came from.  There’s a discussion about the use of those keys in the context of England and Wales PRoWs &lt;a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2007-August/005733.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The reason I’ve not gone with “=designated” on this service road is that it has it’s own meaning documented &lt;a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:access%3Ddesignated" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; - think of a sign people of transport mode X to use a particular route.  An example of this is &lt;a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/299375428" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; near Sheffield - there’s a poorly-signed public foootpath across the road there, but signage diverting pedestrians along the road via the roundabout (playing human frogger on a dual carriageway is not a good idea).  The usage of “=yes” vs “=designated” on “designation” ways varies around England and Wales.  Compare &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nsw" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (roughly the same number of each) with &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nsx" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (hugely in favour of “=designated”).&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Other tagging would also make sense, such as a surface tag on the service road (I added one &lt;a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/736903162" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but forgot further on), but there’s always the option to add more detail later.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Returning to one question from the start of this diary entry - do Amazon mappers’ additions additions of “last mile” service roads cause a problem?  Imagine if someone added a track or driveway between two public roads that wasn’t public - wouldn’t it confuse people into thinking that there was a public route between the two when there really wasn’t?  I’d argue not really, since without access tags you simply can’t assume (in England and Wales) that you have access along a track or driveway, even on foot.  Where people have mapped access properly it’s easy to see where you know you definitely can go and where you’re not sure, and someone can always add access tags later - OSM has always progressed incrementally like that.   This is if you’re using a map that shows it, of course but since 2009 I’ve always used e.g. Garmin maps that do.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Best Regards,&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Andy&lt;/p&gt;

  </description>
        <dc:creator>SomeoneElse</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2019 23:22:32 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/diary/391053#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>54.2905</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>-1.2269</geo:long>
        <georss:point>54.2905 -1.2269</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>OpenStreetMap-Carto release v4.24.0</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Joseph%20E/diary/391049</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Joseph%20E/diary/391049</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Dear all,&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Today, v4.24.0 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default
  stylesheet on the OSM website) has been released. Once changes are deployed
  on the openstreetmap.org it will take couple of days before all tiles
  show the new rendering.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Changes include:&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Create darker river-color for river &amp;amp; canal areas and waterway lines (#3930)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The color of river, canal, ditch and drain waterway lines
  and river and canal areas is changed to #8fcadd (Lch78,21,227)&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Fix rendering of water body labels (#3919)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Restores rendering of water body labels on points (node features)
  Fixes rendering of natural=bay to use italic font at all z levels
  Cleans up duplicate natural=strait code in water.mss&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Precedence of junctions over POIs (#3915)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Junction=yes, =motorway and man_made=bridge labels now render before amenity-points
  This prevents icons from blocking the display of these text labels&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Remove rendering of waterway=wadi (#3931)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The tag waterway=wadi is deprecated, suggested replacement:
  waterway=river/stream + intermittent=yes OR natural=valley&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Move parking to amenity-points layers, change way_pixels limit and initial zoom level (#3923)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Moved parking features back to amenity-points layers
  Changed parking text intial zoom to z14, as planned in PR #3612
  Change way_pixels limit for parking icon (750) and text (3000)&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Don’t use classes anymore (#3912)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Convert state &amp;amp; country layers to ST_PointOnSurface (#3920)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Convert addresses to use ST_PointOnSurface (#3898)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Apply bbox to part of “addresses” query (#3942)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The 4 changes above are needed to allow use of vector tiles
  ST_PointOnSurface is used to generate a point for labeling
  Classes are removed, replaced with the layer id&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Documentation updates (#3911) &amp;amp; (#3910), Code clean-up (#3899) &amp;amp; (#3922)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Document inner line rendering, update docker documentation
  Clean-up text-placement / marker-placement, remove natural=marsh&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to all the contributors for this release, including Adrian Piotrowicz (@nexces), a new contributor.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;For a full list of commits, see
  &lt;a href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/compare/v4.23.0…v4.24.0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/compare/v4.23.0…v4.24.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;As always, we welcome any bug reports at
  &lt;a href="https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;We would love to have new contributors who might be interested in solving some of the
  many open issues.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Joseph E</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:42:08 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Joseph%20E/diary/391049#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>-4.0</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>139.0</geo:long>
        <georss:point>-4.0 139.0</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Сергей Синицын: «OSM — это больше, чем просто рисовать домики или дорожки. Это еще истории!»</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Silka123/diary/391046</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Silka123/diary/391046</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://habrastorage.org/webt/ni/nx/zb/ninxzb8jrlz3js8heju_3cafj5c.jpeg" alt="Сергей Синицын"&gt;
  Сергей Синицын — кандидат биологических наук, который окончил психфак МГУ, но в итоге связал свою жизнь с видео-артом и работает с известной арт-группой AES+F и художницей Ириной Наховой. При этом он правит карту в OpenStreetMap. Зачем нужно рисовать дорожки, стоит ли приходить в сообщество и как OSM связан с интересными жизненными историями — обо всем этом он рассказал в &lt;a href="https://habr.com/ru/post/473058/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;интервью&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Silka123</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2019 10:03:57 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Silka123/diary/391046#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Editing OSM for the first time</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/straxY8/diary/391045</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/straxY8/diary/391045</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Hello from Japan.
  Today ( technically yesterday ) is my first day of OSM.&lt;br&gt;
  I think this activity will make me know my local area.&lt;/p&gt;

  </description>
        <dc:creator>straxY8</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Fri, 25 Oct 2019 07:21:15 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/straxY8/diary/391045#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Florianópolis</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Prblanco/diary/391042</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Prblanco/diary/391042</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Moro na região continental de Florianópolis e realizei por anos edições e adições ao mapa do OSM. Mas ultimamente a quantidade de alterações irresponsáveis no mapa, beirando o vandalismo, é de quantidade e frequência tais que se passa muito mais tempo corrigindo o mapa e muito menos tempo melhorando o mapa. Então boa sorte aos colegas mapeadores que permanecerem no serviço.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Prblanco</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2019 20:01:09 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Prblanco/diary/391042#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>-27.5912185634047</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>-48.5850191116333</geo:long>
        <georss:point>-27.5912185634047 -48.5850191116333</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>addr:county tag within Somerset</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/UKChris/diary/391041</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/UKChris/diary/391041</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;I’ve recently been going through Wellington and Taunton (in Somerset) to find addresses that didn’t have the tag addr:county=”Somerset”, aided by &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;Overpass Turbo&lt;/a&gt; and adding the tag and value, so as to be consistent with other addresses in the area.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Overpass Turbo link for Taunton search: &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nqr" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nqr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Overpass Turbo link for Wellington search: &lt;a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nqu" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Nqu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>UKChris</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2019 19:02:10 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/UKChris/diary/391041#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>50.9803604702911</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>-3.23272705078125</geo:long>
        <georss:point>50.9803604702911 -3.23272705078125</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>ВОПРОС: СГЕНЕРИРОВАННЫЕ СПУТНИКОВЫЕ СНИМКИ</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391040</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391040</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Коллеги, кто-нибудь знает, есть ли стиль для мапника, мапбокса, или любой тулзы, хоть бы для османда, который бы имитировал бы спутниковые снимки?&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Чтобы по данным осм генерировались бы тайлы, похожие на спутниковые снимки/аэрофотосьемку?&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Zkir</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Thu, 24 Oct 2019 12:58:03 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391040#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Understanding How Others Map Roads and Rivers</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Uyan/diary/391034</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Uyan/diary/391034</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Today was the usual mapping of buildings. When I went to upload these changes, however, quite a few warning signs came up regarding “tertiary road crosses river”. Usually only a few come up so I can click “ignore this issue” but today there were too many signs to ignore.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;I can’t move or delete these rivers as I lack the knowledge on where these rivers run, and I also lack the geographical knowledge to predict where these rivers might run underground, if at all (I don’t move the roads as I can see them and know that they’re in the correct positions). I also don’t know where the mappers of these rivers got their information regarding the locations of the rivers underground unless it was first-hand knowledge from out in the field. If so, it begs the questions as to why there is a lack of labels on buildings nearby the rivers.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps this issue of roads and rivers crossing is something that mappers already look into at the validation stage. For what it’s worth, I have insufficient experience to be a validator as of yet. All in all I think it is a minor issue, but definitely something that should be looked into after the main bulk of a location is mapped.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Uyan</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:19:15 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Uyan/diary/391034#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>My first time in OSM</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Matilda%20Olsson/diary/391032</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Matilda%20Olsson/diary/391032</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Hello!&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;My namne is Matilda and I’m working with OSM in school. It’s going pretty good here. Just a lot to learn and practice.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;XOXO SWEDISH GIRL&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Matilda Olsson</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2019 12:20:02 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Matilda%20Olsson/diary/391032#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>My Osm experience</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Daniella%20San%20Pedro/diary/391031</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Daniella%20San%20Pedro/diary/391031</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Hi!
  My name is Daniella and I am working with Osm in school! I think it’s a good and quite easy site that everyone can use.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Daniella San Pedro</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2019 12:17:21 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Daniella%20San%20Pedro/diary/391031#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>ДАННЫЕ OSM В X-PLANE</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391027</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391027</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://sun9-2.userapi.com/c857120/v857120925/17ba7/yoMDwR1--ns.jpg" alt="Миниатюра видео"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Как данные Openstreetmap используются в X-plane?
  Зачем обозначать дома?
  Для чего обозначать тип зданий?&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Смотрите видео:
  &lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzmRKjkiRMc" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzmRKjkiRMc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Zkir</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Wed, 23 Oct 2019 09:23:35 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zkir/diary/391027#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>State of the Map 2019: Journey of Creation to Use</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Pradip%20Khatiwada/diary/391021</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Pradip%20Khatiwada/diary/391021</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;My journey with OpenStreetMap (OSM) started unofficially after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake.
  During this time I experienced the real impact of the use of OSM data by humanitarian agencies
  in Sindhupalchok—the second most devastated district after the earthquake. After the
  earthquake for immediate and effective response, the Government of Nepal, National Planning
  Commission and Himalayan Climate Initiatives’ collective established National Volunteering
  Program (NVP). I lead the initiative as the national coordinator. As soon as I came back to
  Kathmandu, I start following mapping work and got introduced to Dr. Nama Raj Budhathoki
  who was leading the mapping initiative with national and international digital mappers. Later,
  KLL became one of the co-implementation partners of NVP.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;On 27 Oct 2016, I got my account on OSM and started contributing to my best ability on point,
  line, and polygon. My interest in OSM grew so much that I decided to leave NVP and join KLL to
  lead the community of OSM Nepal representing KLL. Thanks to the mentorship of Dr.
  Budhathoki and the team at KLL, I got involved with community expansion by sensitizing around
  3000 new people about OSM by visiting various schools, colleges, conferences, and institutions.
  It was a proud moment for me and KLL that we were able to introduce the first and second
  cohort of Digital Internship and Leadership Program (DIAL) which was very successful for both
  quality and quantity contribution to OSM. It was another proud moment to represent the OSM
  Nepal community to host the 2017 State of the Map Asia conference in Nepal as one of the
  organizers which were a grand success. The journey with OSM in 2016, 2017, and early 2018
  remained more as a contributor on a daily basis whereas the post-2018 is focused on the use of
  it.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;I shortly started my own venture, the Youth Innovation Lab–a not for profit civic tech company
  in late 2017 and started working on various initiatives using OSM data. The first product that we
  developed from YI-Lab was mahilapratinidhi.com that uses some layers of OSM. Our second
  product became revolutionary when we started working with the Government of Nepal,
  Ministry of Home Affairs on Integrated Disaster Information Management System (DIMS) which
  is locally named as Building Information Platform Against Disaster (BIPAD). BIPAD was
  developed to harness the use of Open Data in a Government portal to advance data-based
  decision making and disaster response. In a six-module platform, the role of Open Data has
  been instrumental to support each component of incident reporting to risk-related information.
  This innovation also led to the prestigious Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) mini award and
  Yi-Lab’s representation to Global Partnership on Disaster Risk Reduction Conference (GPDRR)
  2019 in Geneva, Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;As being closely associated with OSM, it was a proud moment to receive a scholarship as a
  scholar to attend and speak at the State of the Map (SotM) 2019. This opportunity gave me a
  chance to meet people with different backgrounds but a common passion for OSM from
  around the globe. It was great to see how OSM is being helpful all over the world to bridge the&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;data gap in solving the most critical issues around. It has been great to see initiatives developed
  based on OSM to solve problems of food and nutrition in Africa, the tools used in mapping
  hurricane in Asia to the transportation offline app is useful for the Government in
  transportation navigation—there were dozens more.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The weather of Heidelberg and Kathmandu is pretty similar regardless, it was a little challenging
  for me to cope up with the environment. But the sessions were so interesting that I possibly
  could not have missed any of those, be it planned indoor/outdoor or as a social gathering after
  the session. I was also able to hang out with my friends in the beautiful city of Heidelberg and
  explore the beauty of ancient civilization that still stands out as the most attractive tourist
  destination. Attending this conference, I received a lot of ideas and collaboration requests from
  different Open Data and OSM enthusiasts to work together in each other’s intervention.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, I am reaching out to them to establish a productive partnership and to take the
  idea of co-working forward. I can proudly say that attending SotM 2019 was one of the best
  things that I did in 2019. After the conference, I also managed to extend my travel and visit
  some of the European countries like Spain, France, Belgium, which added more fun to my visit.
  I am determined that I will keep continuing my efforts to make the OSM community strong and
  will be guiding more people to join this network and contribute to OSM. I will also make use of
  my learnings from SotM 2019 in my work and for the sensitization among fellow OSM
  contributors.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Pradip Khatiwada</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2019 09:43:51 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Pradip%20Khatiwada/diary/391021#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>27.7121023784587</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>85.3205108642578</geo:long>
        <georss:point>27.7121023784587 85.3205108642578</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Школьный урок по OpenStreetMap</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zverik/diary/391020</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zverik/diary/391020</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://not.textual.ru/zverik/2/5/osm_course_promo.jpg" alt="Илья показывает на слайд «OpenStreetMap»"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;На прошлой неделе меня по работе отправили в Бобруйск. Это такой большой маленький город, где делают вкусный ирис, а с недавних пор мы в Juno Lab помогаем там делать умных школьников. Рассказывал, как обычно, про OpenStreetMap. Пришлось много тренироваться, чтобы дети смогли высидеть полтора часа и не заскучать. Разумеется, стоило им открыть iD, как их школа пропала с карты — но затем появилась, заново нарисованная.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Чтобы результат не пропал, повторил весь текст на камеру. Сорок минут отборной картографии. Теперь есть что присылать людям, которые не знают про OpenStreetMap, а вам лень объяснять:&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=469pkgFDYhk" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=469pkgFDYhk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Zverik</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2019 08:07:54 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Zverik/diary/391020#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>China 2020</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%E5%8D%9C%E5%87%AF%E6%96%87/diary/391019</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%E5%8D%9C%E5%87%AF%E6%96%87/diary/391019</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;dreaming my life away,,,&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>卜凯文</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2019 02:00:10 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%E5%8D%9C%E5%87%AF%E6%96%87/diary/391019#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>should everything be grouped into one mega relation</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Lil%20Wayzz/diary/391018</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Lil%20Wayzz/diary/391018</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;so then other osm programs can use all the stuff to add to their own site.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Lil Wayzz</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2019 01:37:18 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Lil%20Wayzz/diary/391018#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Sight Safari - поиск интересных пешеходных маршрутов теперь и на Android</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%D0%95%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%20%D0%A1%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2/diary/391017</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%D0%95%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%20%D0%A1%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2/diary/391017</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Наш пешеходный навигатор обзавелся Android версией. Да, это еще один Android навигатор по OSM данным, но с уникальной фичей - он ищет не кратчайшие, а наиболее интересные для пешехода маршруты, идущие мимо парков, памятников и дворцов.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Кроме прямых маршрутов между двумя точками можно строить круговые, с возвратом назад за указанное время. Ну вот есть два часа до поезда, далеко от вокзала не уйдешь, а посмотреть что-то интересное поблизости хочется.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="https://sun9-19.userapi.com/c857728/v857728417/51c92/N5k9xL2yFlU.jpg" alt="Скрин из Play Market"&gt;
  &lt;img src="https://sun9-35.userapi.com/c857728/v857728417/51ca6/xtKDjWjQ08s.jpg" alt="Скрин из Play Market"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Раньше писал уже &lt;a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Егор%20Смирнов/diary/44235" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;тут&lt;/a&gt; про идею алгоритма.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Уже есть 100+ городов России и мира, благодаря OSM новые добавлять можно в пару кликов.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Кому интересно - скачивайте, пользуйтесь, все бесплатно и без рекламы.  &lt;a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=city.sightsafari.android&amp;amp;utm_source=openstreetmap.org" rel="nofollow noopener noreferer"&gt;Ссылка на приложение в Play Market&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Егор Смирнов</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2019 22:26:19 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/%D0%95%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%20%D0%A1%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2/diary/391017#comments</comments>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Add this location in the map</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Talib%20Rahoo/diary/391016</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Talib%20Rahoo/diary/391016</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Haji Ali Muhammad Rahu&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>Talib Rahoo</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2019 15:13:29 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Talib%20Rahoo/diary/391016#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>25.3644397</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>69.3748155</geo:long>
        <georss:point>25.3644397 69.3748155</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Studiu la faţa locului în cartierul Tractorul şi pe Drumul Poienii</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391015</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391015</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;…pe Strada Gloriei şi jumătatea dinspre Strada Bronzului a Străzii 1 Decembrie 1918, precum şi în cartierul Belevue Residence, pe Strada Stejarului, pentru adăugare numere la blocuri.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>asterix^^</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2019 13:58:59 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391015#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>45.6664483273102</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>25.5988942086697</geo:long>
        <georss:point>45.6664483273102 25.5988942086697</georss:point>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Studiu la faţa locului pe Strada Lacurilor şi Strada Ioan Meşotă</title>
        <link>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391014</link>
        <guid>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391014</guid>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;…pentru adăugare numere la blocurile adiacente, efectuat ieri 20 octombrie 2019.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <dc:creator>asterix^^</dc:creator>
        <pubDate>Mon, 21 Oct 2019 13:53:50 +0000</pubDate>
        <comments>https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/asterix%5E%5E/diary/391014#comments</comments>
        <geo:lat>45.6177000830987</geo:lat>
        <geo:long>25.6493479013443</geo:long>
        <georss:point>45.6177000830987 25.6493479013443</georss:point>
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  		<title>5 minutes and 4 crossing to cross the main road outside Royal Infirmary Edinburgh</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/yj4ZIicaUeg/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2019/07/5-minutes-and-4-crossing-to-cross-the-main-road-outside-royal-infirmary-edinburgh/#respond</comments>
  				<pubDate>Mon, 08 Jul 2019 22:52:42 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Council]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Edinburgh]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[walking]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=1045</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Last month I was up in Edinburgh visiting family. Whilst on a wander I came across a crazy long crossing over the main road outside the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh. The 4 crossings took just under 5 minutes to cross with a button press at each crossing. I used the most direct crossing possible, following the [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>Last month I was up in Edinburgh visiting family. Whilst on a wander I came across a crazy long crossing over the main road outside the Royal Infirmary Edinburgh. The 4 crossings took just under 5 minutes to cross with a button press at each crossing. </p>



  <p>I used the most direct crossing possible, following the pedestrian crossings, to be able to get across the main road from the walking and cycling route that runs past the hospital from the walking routes from the back of the hospital and Greendykes, to the Moredun/Craigour side of Old Dalkeith Road.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><a href="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital.png"><img src="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital-1024x680.png" alt="Anotated map showing the crossings" class="wp-image-1048" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital-1024x680.png 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital-300x199.png 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital-768x510.png 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Map-of-crossings-outside-hospital-624x414.png 624w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption>Annotated map of the crossings. (Google Satellite view).</figcaption></figure>



  <p>I&#8217;ve recorded a video walking across this road (just the crossings):</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <iframe class='youtube-player' type='text/html' width='625' height='352' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/zHl1G2AZb-c?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;autohide=2&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;wmode=transparent' allowfullscreen='true' style='border:0;'></iframe>
  </div><figcaption>Video of the slow pedestrian crossing.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>Is 5 minutes too long to cross a main road? I think it is. Is it any wonder why pedestrians walk across roads without waiting for a green man when it take so long? Edinburgh is investing in active travel, though I&#8217;m sure reducing the time it takes for pedestrians to cross main roads would be a cheap and cost effective way to improve pedestrian safety and make walking and cycling more desirable. Maybe more people would walk places if the waiting time wasn&#8217;t as long?</p>



  <p>Maybe it&#8217;s time car drivers had to wind down the window and press a button several times to get through junctions like this?</p>



  <p>For the eagle eyed, after completing the crossing I reported the red men on the crossings as not working via the <a href="http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/20089/roads_and_pavements/1228/report_a_problem_with_a_traffic_signal">Clarence hotline</a>.</p>
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  		<item>
  		<title>Roll out of flexi season rail tickets in the UK</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/f2Jfw6NypJc/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2019/02/roll-out-of-flexi-season-rail-tickets-in-the-uk/#respond</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 01 Feb 2019 23:06:39 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Train]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Tickets]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Trains]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=1004</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[There has been much talk of a drop in rail season ticket sales in the UK, whilst overall journeys are increasing. Much of the commentary has been around the change in working patterns where people are working from home more often. Many shorter distances season tickets are only worthwhile buying if you are travelling 4 [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>There has been much talk of a drop in rail season ticket sales in the UK, whilst overall journeys are increasing. Much of the commentary has been around the change in working patterns where people are working from home more often. </p>



  <p>Many shorter distances season tickets are only worthwhile buying if you are travelling 4 or 5 times per week on the same route (or anywhere between those 2 stations). Any less and it can be cheaper to buy tickets on the day, especially if you are a shift worker and some tickets are off-peak, for example with late shifts. Some longer journeys can be worthwhile getting a season ticket if you are doing the journey only 2 days per week, as the working pattern has already been taken into account in the pricing.</p>



  <p>Many of the rail franchises have been required to roll out flexi season ticketing. Some operators have special business travel carnet tickets. Both of these can have restrictions meaning that they are only valid on one train operator, unlike the normal season tickets which are normally valid on any operator on the route. There&#8217;s some season tickets which are cheaper due to being operator specific where there is competition, partly due to the revenue not being split between operators when going through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Settlement_Plan">Rail Settlement Plan</a>.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screenshot-2019-01-28-at-07.55.14.png" alt="" class="wp-image-1010" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screenshot-2019-01-28-at-07.55.14.png 900w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screenshot-2019-01-28-at-07.55.14-300x158.png 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screenshot-2019-01-28-at-07.55.14-768x404.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /><figcaption>Graphs showing change in UK train ticket sales. Source: <a href="http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/39983/passenger-rail-usage-2018-19-q2.pdf">Office of Rail and Road Passenger Rail Usage 2018-19 Q2 Statistical Release</a></figcaption></figure>



  <p>Is the recent drop in season tickets number in part due to the move to Flexi season tickets with people moving to part time commuting? Do the Flexi season and carnet tickets need to be included in the season ticket numbers or have their own category to show the trend of the switch of ticket type?</p>



  <p>I&#8217;m also of the view that the Flexi season tickets need to be standardised such that they are available across the whole country to and from any station, and have the same standard rules of validity as ordinary daily and season tickets. We are hopefully now at a turning point where there has been enough trials about how the Flexi season tickets should work, that a wider rollout could be done.</p>



  <p>On the pricing of the Flexi season, I&#8217;m thinking they should they be a standard multiplier from the standard anytime daily ticket prices meaning that you can easily buy the tickets from any station to any station, rather than them only being available on a limited number of routes.</p>



  <p>Another option to reduce the desire or need to Flexi season tickets, would be to reduce the cost or multiplier for season tickets by making season tickets cheaper, especially considering many people are no longer travelling to work 5 days per week, and longer route specific point to point season tickets in the UK are often more expensive than the whole country <a href="https://www.bahn.de/p/view/bahncard/ueberblick/bahncard100.shtml">Bahn Card 100 in Germany</a>. Is it time for a UK equivalent to the German Bahn Card 100 as a means to encourage more public transport use, and reduce private motor vehicle congestion and pollution?</p>



  <p>Being a part time commuter (rest of the week working from home), Flexi-tickets are of particular interest to me, including their interoperability across operators since my commute generally involves multiple operators.</p>
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  		<item>
  		<title>Rail fare anomaly between Ipswich and London</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/3MHYx6_-7eQ/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2018/09/rail-fare-anomaly-between-ipswich-and-london/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:08:54 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[England]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Ipswich]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Fares]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Greater Anglia]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Trains]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=980</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[I recently seen a at Cambridge station advertising cheap weekend returns to London so I thought I&#8217;d check the fare splitting via the longer route. This is looking at the super off-peak day returns or nearest equivalent. On the direct Ipswich to London Liverpool Street ticket there is only an off peak return valid for [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[
  <p>I recently seen a at Cambridge station advertising cheap weekend returns to London so I thought I&#8217;d check the fare splitting via the longer route.</p>



  <p>This is looking at the super off-peak day returns or nearest equivalent.</p>



  <p>On the direct Ipswich to London Liverpool Street ticket there is only an off peak return valid for a month at £42.20 or the off peak travelcard for a single day at £47.50.</p>



  <p>The most common split is at Manningtree as some trains don&#8217;t stop at Colchester.</p>



  <table class="wp-block-table"><tbody><tr><td>IPS-MNG</td><td>Off peak day return</td><td>£6.60</td></tr><tr><td>MNG-LST</td><td>Super off peak day return</td><td>£29.20</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Total</td><td>£35.80</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Saving compared direct fare</td><td>£6.40</td></tr></tbody></table>



  <p>Splitting in Colchester is cheaper:</p>



  <table class="wp-block-table"><tbody><tr><td>IPS-COL</td><td>Super off peak day return</td><td>£8.30</td></tr><tr><td>COL-LST</td><td>Super off peak day return</td><td>£25.90</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Total</td><td>£34.20</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Saving compared to direct fare</td><td>£8.00</td></tr></tbody></table>



  <p>Weekend return via Cambridge turns out to a whopping £11 cheaper compared to the direct single ticket, or £3 compared to the cheapest split ticket, if returning the same day:</p>



  <table class="wp-block-table"><tbody><tr><td>IPS-CBG</td><td>Off peak day return</td><td>£18.20</td></tr><tr><td>CBG-LST</td><td>Weekend Super Off Peak Day Return</td><td>£13.00</td></tr><tr><td><br /></td><td>Total</td><td>£31.20</td></tr><tr><td><br /></td><td>Saving compared to direct fare</td><td>£11.00</td></tr><tr><td><br /></td><td>Saving compared to cheapest direct split</td><td>£3.00</td></tr></tbody></table>



  <p>However this involves a much longer journey time. Ipswich &#8211; Cambridge is around 1 hour 20 minutes. There&#8217;s one train per hour. Cambridge to Liverpool Street on direct trains takes around 1 hour 26 minutes to 1 hour 38 minutes with 2 trains per hour. Due to the timings, and long layover in Cambridge, particularly towards Ipswich, the total through journey time is around 2 hours 50 minutes towards London and 3 to 4 hours towards Ipswich.</p>



  <p>In comparison the typical journey times on the direct route from Ipswich to London on trains stopping at either Manningtree or Colchester is around 1 hour 07 mins to 1 hour 23 minutes. Thus it&#8217;s very much faster on the more direct route for a tiny saving. If planning far enough ahead advance fares would be cheaper than the above walk up fares.<br /></p>



  <p>Hopefully the current <a href="https://www.britainrunsonrail.co.uk/fares">UK rail fares review run by the Rail Delivery Group</a> (RDG).</p>
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  		<title>The horror of “cyclists dismount and use footway” signs at roadworks</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/QB8Cc-ILS_U/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2018/02/the-horror-of-cyclists-dismount-and-use-footway-signs-at-roadworks/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 06 Feb 2018 18:55:22 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Ipswich]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=962</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[On the 13th January 2018 walking with my family from Ipswich town centre to the railway station I came across some roadworks on Princes Street including some dangerous signage around some roadworks First was the &#8220;cyclists dismount and use footpath&#8221; sign: I very much dislike the use of this sign for a number of reasons. [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>On the 13th January 2018 walking with my family from Ipswich town centre to the railway station I came across some roadworks on Princes Street including some dangerous signage around some roadworks</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_967" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1425.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-967" class="size-medium wp-image-967" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1425-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1425-300x226.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1425-768x578.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1425-1024x770.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-967" class="wp-caption-text">Roadworks in bus stop and cycle lane</p></div></p>
  <p>First was the &#8220;cyclists dismount and use footpath&#8221; sign:</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_965" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1424.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-965" class="size-medium wp-image-965" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1424-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1424-300x226.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1424-768x578.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1424-1024x770.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-965" class="wp-caption-text">Sign in cycle lane saying &#8220;cyclists dismount and use footpath&#8221;</p></div></p>
  <p>I very much dislike the use of this sign for a number of reasons. First it indirectly causes drivers to complain about cyclists not following the rules or signage.</p>
  <p>Second with some bikes (including the cargo trike I was pushing that day, as my daughter wanted to walk) its extremely hard to stop and lift it on to the pavement. I would probably be causing more delay to the traffic by doing that compared to taking the lane.</p>
  <p>Third some people with disabilities and other medical issues such as back pain, find it very difficult mount and dismount a pedal cycle, however find cycling alleviates the pain compared to walking.</p>
  <p>Fourth this section of pavement already allows cycling so why would people need to dismount to travel along it? Though it does add conflict with pedestrians.</p>
  <p>Fifth there was a sign after the roadworks to say that the cycle lane was closed. Surely by that point the cycle lane was open again to use.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_969" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1428.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-969" class="size-medium wp-image-969" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1428-300x226.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="226" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1428-300x226.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1428-768x578.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DSC_1428-1024x770.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-969" class="wp-caption-text">Cycle lane closed sign after the roadworks</p></div></p>
  <p>Finally, even back in November 2011, London had better signs saying &#8220;Narrow lanes do not overtake cyclists&#8221;, as shown below. Why can&#8217;t these signs be used here in Suffolk?</p>
  <p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/smsm1/6401007825"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/7170/6401007825_c97449de0c_c.jpg" alt="A third sign on Tooley street telling drivers not to overtake cyclists near London Bridge station" width="600" height="800" /></a></p>
  <p>P.S. When will there be signs saying &#8220;Drivers get out and push&#8221;?</p>
  <p>
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  <p>Edit: Reworded item 3 to be more encompassing about other medical issues. Added map.</p>
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  							<wfw:commentRss>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2018/02/the-horror-of-cyclists-dismount-and-use-footway-signs-at-roadworks/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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  		<item>
  		<title>An unexpected filtered permeability trial in Ipswich</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/Nr16nteAquc/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2017/07/an-unexpected-filtered-permeability-trial-in-ipswich/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Sun, 02 Jul 2017 21:51:20 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Ipswich]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Suffolk]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=944</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[On 12th May 2017 a sinkhole appeared in the street that I work on in Ipswich. The road was closed to motor vehicles for a few weeks until the repairs were completed. After the initial period while people got used to the road being closed, I noticed a significant change in the traffic patterns in [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_949" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_141845.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-949" class="wp-image-949 size-medium" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_141845-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_141845-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_141845-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-949" class="wp-caption-text">Lower Brook Street Sinkhole</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_951" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_185748.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-951" class="size-medium wp-image-951" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_185748-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_185748-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_185748-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170512_185748-1024x768.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-951" class="wp-caption-text">Lower Brook Street Road Closure</p></div></p>
  <p>On <a href="http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/sinkhole-opens-in-lower-brook-street-road-shut-and-drivers-urged-to-avoid-area-1-5015580">12th May 2017 a sinkhole appeared in the street that I work on in Ipswich</a>. The road was closed to motor vehicles for a few weeks until the repairs were completed. After the initial period while people got used to the road being closed, I noticed a significant change in the traffic patterns in the local area.</p>
  <p>The level of traffic on the closed road and several surrounding streets was significantly reduced. I&#8217;m wondering if the reduction was enough for the bus companies to notice an improvement in the running times on the core towns centre bus routes that run along Dogs Head Street, Upper Brook Street, Tacket Street, and the Cattlemarket bus station. See the map below.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_952" style="width: 535px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-952" class="size-large wp-image-952" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02-1024x837.png" alt="" width="525" height="429" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02-1024x837.png 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02-300x245.png 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02-768x628.png 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/OpenStreetMap-2017-08-30-23-22-02.png 1031w" sizes="(max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-952" class="wp-caption-text">Map showing location of the incident and streets that were quieter.</p></div></p>
  <p>The ambient noise level was lower due to the lower level of motor traffic.  People were much more likely to walk on the road than the narrow pavements.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_953" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_125919.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-953" class="size-medium wp-image-953" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_125919-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_125919-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_125919-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_125919-1024x768.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-953" class="wp-caption-text">Repairs in progress</p></div></p>
  <p>After the road was repaired and quietly reopened the traffic levels stayed low initially, slowly rising over a few weeks as the rat running and evening parking returned.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_954" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_181915.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-954" class="size-medium wp-image-954" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_181915-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_181915-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_181915-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_20170526_181915-1024x768.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-954" class="wp-caption-text">Completed repairs to the sinkhole.</p></div></p>
  <p>The Lower Brook Street, Turret Lane, Rose Lane, and Cutler Street combination seems to be used as a rat run to avoid the Star Lane gyratory, particularly when there&#8217;s problems on the A14 meaning that it&#8217;s very slow moving. I&#8217;ve seen several trucks getting stuck on the narrow Turret Lane. There&#8217;s also been several buildings around the junction of Lower Brook Street and Turret Lane damaged by vehicles. I&#8217;m of the opinion that Turret Lane should be closed to through traffic to stop the rat running.</p>
  <p>Around the time of the incident traffic speeds or counts were being collected, (based on the various black bands across various streets), so I&#8217;m also curious if Suffolk County Council have stats correlating the change in traffic levels.</p>
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  						<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">944</post-id>	<feedburner:origLink>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2017/07/an-unexpected-filtered-permeability-trial-in-ipswich/</feedburner:origLink></item>
  		<item>
  		<title>The dilemma of highway rules vs friendly drivers</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/_PBRwMYCtlg/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2017/06/the-dilemma-of-highway-rules-vs-friendly-drivers/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 30 Jun 2017 22:35:36 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[walking]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=940</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m currently teaching my 1½ year old daughter how to cross the road on various trips out, including the 5 minute walk along the road to or from our childminder. She is very good at staying on the pavement, and when it come to crossing the road will wait and look for vehicles that are [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_941" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_20170506_135957.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-941" class="size-medium wp-image-941" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_20170506_135957-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_20170506_135957-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_20170506_135957-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_20170506_135957-1024x768.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-941" class="wp-caption-text">Fiona on Infento trike.</p></div></p>
  <p>I&#8217;m currently teaching my 1½ year old daughter how to cross the road on various trips out, including the 5 minute walk along the road to or from our childminder.</p>
  <p>She is very good at staying on the pavement, and when it come to crossing the road will wait and look for vehicles that are coming. Then when there is a gap we will cross together. She&#8217;s very good at following the verbal instructions. Of course I don&#8217;t let her do it on her own yet, though it&#8217;s important when time permits to talk through all of the steps involved.</p>
  <p>The <a href="http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/rules-for-pedestrians-crossing-the-road.html">highway </a><a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-pedestrians-1-to-35">code</a> rule 7 is the <a href="http://think.direct.gov.uk/education/early-years-and-primary/parents/7-to-11s/the-green-cross-code/">Green Cross Code</a>. In summary the steps are:</p>
  <ol>
  <li>Find a safe place to cross</li>
  <li>Stop just before you get to the kerb</li>
  <li>Look all around for traffic and listen</li>
  <li>If traffic is coming, let it pass</li>
  <li>When it is safe, go straight across the road &#8211; do not run</li>
  </ol>
  <p>The dilemma comes when friendly drivers are being nice waiting and waving us across the road. However I&#8217;ve come across several occasions over the years where drivers have done that, without realising that there is another vehicle coming where the driver won&#8217;t give way. This can be exceptionally dangerous.</p>
  <p>The Green Cross Code does not mention anything about drivers waving you across the road, likely due to the above complexity of having to be extra careful about other drivers who haven&#8217;t seen you.</p>
  <p>It would be much quicker for all concerned if we followed the priorities set out in the highway code, as I will just wave people on to wait for a gap in the traffic. The gaps appear fairly frequently, especially on quieter residential roads. It&#8217;s common for a dozen vehicles to appear at the same time, and then there to be a big gap when there are no vehicles coming.</p>
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <p>I&#8217;ve had a similar situation recently when cycling home at a set of traffic signals when the driver in front of myself and another cyclist decided to slow down and wave across another oncoming driver. The oncoming driver was waving to point out that we were cycling close behind. The small uphill just after the traffic lights means that cyclists try to keep up momentum to get up the small hill easier, and avoiding stopping at the bottom of the hill at the traffic lights.</p>
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  		<item>
  		<title>The Ipswich grass verge debate</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/pBbmh7952kk/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2017/04/the-ipswich-grass-verge-debate/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 04 Apr 2017 06:41:50 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Ipswich]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=932</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[On Monday 3rd April 2017 BBC radio Suffolk had picked up on the story about grass verges being torn up by car parking, and there will be a crack down on people parking in the verges and pavements in some areas in Ipswich. The Ipswich Star covered the story at the end of the previous week, highlighting [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>On Monday 3rd April 2017 BBC radio Suffolk had picked up on the story about grass verges being torn up by car parking, and there will be a crack down on people parking in the verges and pavements in some areas in Ipswich.</p>
  <p>The <a href="http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/see_pictures_of_some_of_the_worst_places_for_pavement_parking_in_ipswich_as_council_bosses_say_they_are_taking_action_1_4955070">Ipswich Star covered the story</a> at the end of the previous week, highlighting the various problems with pavement parking.</p>
  <p>As someone who doesn&#8217;t have a motor vehicle in the household and has a toddler who is walking about,  sometimes in a buggy, pushing her buggy, walking beside me while I&#8217;m pushing my bike before or after my commute; or now starting to use her trike; I find pavement and grass verge parking particularly inconsiderate as it can be difficult to get past.</p>
  <p>One of the comments by Mark Murphy was &#8220;there&#8217;s no chance that we&#8217;ll ditch our car any time soon&#8221;. I found this highly ironic when Ipswich Star on the very same day launched their excellent <a href="http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/can_you_ditch_the_car_to_help_ease_traffic_congestion_in_ipswich_town_centre_1_4958845">Ditch the Car campaign</a>.</p>
  <p>It also prompted me to check the stats on the car or van availability from the last census in 2011 to see what proportion of people in Ipswich and Suffolk don&#8217;t have access to a car. The results table &#8220;KS404EW &#8211; Car or van availability&#8221; has the information and is available on the <a href="http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks404ew">Nomis part of the Office for National Statistics</a> site.</p>
  <p>Within Ipswich 27.8% of households have no access to a car or van, which is a rather significant proportion likely due to the closeness of various amenities such as schools, shops, and work to where people live, and the frequent local bus service.</p>
  <table class="cDat">
  <thead class="cTh">
  <tr class="cCd">
  <td class="cIl cIll"></td>
  <td class="cIl cIll">value</td>
  <td class="cIl cIll">percent</td>
  </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody class="cTb">
  <tr class="cDr">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt0">All categories: Car or van availability</td>
  <td class="cDc">57,298</td>
  <td class="cDc">100.0</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr cDro">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt1">No cars or vans in household</td>
  <td class="cDc">15,906</td>
  <td class="cDc">27.8</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt1">1 car or van in household</td>
  <td class="cDc">26,112</td>
  <td class="cDc">45.6</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr cDro">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt1">2 cars or vans in household</td>
  <td class="cDc">12,254</td>
  <td class="cDc">21.4</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt1">3 cars or vans in household</td>
  <td class="cDc">2,340</td>
  <td class="cDc">4.1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr cDro">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt1">4 or more cars or vans in household</td>
  <td class="cDc">686</td>
  <td class="cDc">1.2</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="cDr">
  <td class="cDi cDil idt0 line-above-solid">sum of all cars or vans in the area</td>
  <td class="cDc line-above-solid">60,701</td>
  <td class="cDc line-above-solid">&#8211;</td>
  </tr>
  </tbody>
  </table>
  <p>For Suffolk the percentage of households without a car is lower at 17.9%.</p>
  <p>I very much look forward to the success of the Ipswich Star&#8217;s Ditch the Car campaign and seeing the number of households without a car increasing in the next census.</p>
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  		<item>
  		<title>Football matches at Portman Road banned due to congestion</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/e4IS9cj9sDU/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2016/04/football-matches-at-portman-road-banned-due-to-congestion/#respond</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:56 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Suffolk]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=923</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Every match day or evening match at Portman Road there is significant congestion and air pollution increases in Ipswich. There have also been reports of parents getting stuck in the traffic and having to pull over to comfort their young baby until the traffic calmed down, with the town now being a no-go area on [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every match day or evening match at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portman_Road">Portman Road</a> there is significant congestion and air pollution increases in Ipswich. There have also been reports of parents getting stuck in the traffic and having to pull over to comfort their young baby until the traffic calmed down, with the town now being a no-go area on match days.</p>
  <p>Suffolk County Council as part of their <a href="http://www.greensuffolk.org/about">greenest county </a><span style="color: #21759b;"><u>strategy</u></span>, have decided that football matches at Portman Road are to be banned until such time that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipswich_Town_F.C.">Ipswich Town</a> produce and implement a <a href="http://www.greensuffolk.org/travel/travel-plan-support/">travel plan</a> to cut the amount of motor traffic coming into the centre of Ipswich on match days/evenings.</p>
  <p>Suggestions for the travel plan include:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>subsidising the <a href="http://www.ipswichbuses.co.uk/park-ride/">Park and Ride bus</a>, which already pretty much goes past the stadium, including extending it&#8217;s running times to cover evening matches;</li>
  <li>banning the use of car parks surrounding the stadium by cars and using them for <a href="http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/07/bicycles-football-in-copenhagen.html">cycle parking</a> instead; and</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.greenrailtravel.co.uk/acatalog/Ipswich-Town-Supporters-Season-Tickets.html">chartering special trains</a> so that there is enough capacity to cope with demand.</li>
  </ul>
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  		<item>
  		<title>Cycle theft advice that could hinder cycle use</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/oa_x9JudyCk/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2015/08/cycle-theft-advice-that-could-hinder-cycle-use/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Sun, 02 Aug 2015 21:28:33 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=907</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Last week I noticed a couple of tweets from Edinburgh South Police suggesting that you should remove the seat or a wheel when you store it in a shed on the grounds that many bikes are cycled away. You may not be up to yellow jersey standard but if you have a bike in your [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last week I noticed a couple of tweets from Edinburgh South Police suggesting that you should remove the seat or a wheel when you store it in a shed on the grounds that many bikes are cycled away.</p>
  <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550">
  <p lang="en" dir="ltr">You may not be up to yellow jersey standard but if you have a bike in your shed: consider alarm &amp; remove the seat or single wheel (1/2)</p>
  <p>&mdash; EdinburghSouthPolice (@EdinSouthPolice) <a href="https://twitter.com/EdinSouthPolice/status/625278742932389888">July 26, 2015</a></p></blockquote>
  <p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="550">
  <p lang="en" dir="ltr">(2/2) most our stolen cycles are cycled away. More difficult to do without a seat or wheel!</p>
  <p>&mdash; EdinburghSouthPolice (@EdinSouthPolice) <a href="https://twitter.com/EdinSouthPolice/status/625278972838944768">July 26, 2015</a></p></blockquote>
  <p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
  <p>I can see why the advice would help to reduce the probability of a theft as it would make it harder to cycle away, however I was rather annoyed with this advice. On my bicycle it&#8217;s not easy to take the saddle or wheels off. It would likely add an extra 10 to 20 minutes each day, with the additional risk of the front wheel not being connected on correctly, or the electrical connector to the hub dynamo for the lights and USB charging wearing out.</p>
  <p>Where I live, I have to go through 5 auto closing doors, and find it extremely annoying, especially when you can&#8217;t get the bike through the door unless you hold the door open. It&#8217;s something small which has discouraged me from using the bike as often as I have in the past, especially for the more spontaneous journeys, and taking the wheel off would make it even less likely.</p>
  <p>Knowing the above I fear that the advice would discourage people from choosing the bicycle for many journeys, particularly the shorter journeys.</p>
  <p>For people who have quick release wheels and/or saddles, the advice may work, however for others this is likely to discourage the owner from cycling instead.</p>
  <p>On my Dutch bike, and my wife&#8217;s Pashley, we have frame locks which stops the back wheel from moving when locked, and you must have the key in the lock to use the bike. I&#8217;d really like to see more bikes in Britain with practical wheel locks as they are a useful and discrete security device that is always there. Ideally frame locks should be supplemented with another lock to attach the cycle to an immovable object, some frame locks allow you to insert a cable lock, so you don&#8217;t need to carry a separate lock.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_909" style="width: 286px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RS-450_gross.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-909" class="size-medium wp-image-909" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RS-450_gross-276x300.jpg" alt="© Trelock: RS450 frame lock" width="276" height="300" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RS-450_gross-276x300.jpg 276w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RS-450_gross-624x679.jpg 624w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RS-450_gross.jpg 800w" sizes="(max-width: 276px) 100vw, 276px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-909" class="wp-caption-text">© Trelock: RS450 frame lock</p></div></p>
  <p>I wonder what the root causes of cycle theft are? I wonder if there&#8217;s any link to the benefit sanctions and other cuts the government are making&#8230; Hopefully some day we can revert to the good old days where you don&#8217;t need to worry about things being stolen, as is currently the case in some rural areas.</p>
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  		<item>
  		<title>Cycle Ipswich Infrastructure Tour May 2015</title>
  		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ShaunMcdonaldsBlog/~3/2BVq0xExM-U/</link>
  				<comments>https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2015/07/cycle-ipswich-infrastructure-tour-may-2015/#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2015 17:08:34 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[smsm1986]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Cycling]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Ipswich]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[Transport]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/?p=861</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[On 30th May 2015, I led a Cycle Infrastructure Tour around Ipswich. It was an excellent day where we had people from Cambridge, London, and Edinburgh, along with locals including Andrea McMillan who is writing the Cycling Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for Ipswich Borough Council. There&#8217;s a route map shown at the bottom, and photos [&#8230;]]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>On 30th May 2015, I led a <a href="http://cycleipswich.org.uk/events/ipswich-cycle-infrastructure-safari/">Cycle Infrastructure Tour around Ipswich</a>. It was an excellent day where we had people from Cambridge, London, and Edinburgh, along with locals including Andrea McMillan who is writing the Cycling Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) for Ipswich Borough Council.</p>
  <p>There&#8217;s a route map shown at the bottom, and photos are clickable to either a larger version, or through to the Mapillary page so you have the location and nearby photos too.</p>
  <p>We started at Ipswich Railway Station and had a discussion regarding the future plans, including the change to the layout inside Ipswich Station, and some of the current issues, such as the cycle parking being tucked away around the back, and not sign posted, which should hopefully be improved as part of the station redevelopment.</p>
  <p>On departing the station, a couple of police officers noted that it was the first occasion that they had seen the <a href="http://www.bikeandgo.co.uk">Bike and Go bikes</a> out in use. This isn&#8217;t surprising considering you can&#8217;t rock up at the station and hire a bike, instead you need to plan at least a week in advance to sign up online. There is no automated process at the station either, so you have to wait in the queue for a member of staff to get the key for you.</p>
  <p>On departing the station we crossed the road and headed along to the cycle path on the pavement, to the side of the Encore hotel. It was noted there is a lot of cycle parking, however it&#8217;s not sign posted, sheltered, nor in an optimal configuration as some of the stands wouldn&#8217;t be able to be used when there were bikes in some of the stands. It&#8217;s almost as though the developer was required to include some cycle parking for the site (which includes residential and shops), so placed in one corner, rather than spread around the site.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_874" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-10.41.18.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-874" class="size-medium wp-image-874" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-10.41.18-300x225.jpg" alt="Suboptimal cycle parking layout" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-10.41.18-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-10.41.18-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-10.41.18-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-874" class="wp-caption-text">Suboptimal cycle parking layout</p></div></p>
  <p>We then headed over the Sir Bobbie Robson Bridge, which is a cycle and pedestrian bridge which was put in as part of the developer to the south of the river. At times it can be a bit on the narrow side thus significantly slowing down cyclists. A wider bridge would reduce the level of cycle/pedestrian conflict. After the bridge we turned left to join NCN51 westbound.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_875" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/nEEv8BBVUIy_-bMS-ERXIA"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-875" class="wp-image-875 size-medium" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sir-bobby-robson-bridge-300x225.jpg" alt="Sir Bobby Robson bridge" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sir-bobby-robson-bridge-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sir-bobby-robson-bridge-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sir-bobby-robson-bridge-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-875" class="wp-caption-text">Sir Bobby Robson bridge</p></div></p>
  <p>At the 2 large London Road junctions we had a short discussion highlighting that the junctions are designed for large amounts of motor vehicular traffic, with pedestrians and cyclists significantly inconvenienced by having to way 2 or 3 times to cross the road. On some of the lights it was difficult to see the red and green man when standing close to the signal due to the angle they were looked at. Due to the time that pedestrians have to wait they often cross in a gap in the traffic instead of waiting.</p>
  <p>On heading up London Road, the visitors from London noted that there were already bus stop bypasses in existence as you were cycling along the pavement legally. However few people recognise them as such.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_876" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/CiLt-w3s6AZ2ngPFZaBOLw"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-876" class="wp-image-876 size-medium" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-bus-stop-bypass-300x225.jpg" alt="London Road bus stop bypass" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-bus-stop-bypass-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-bus-stop-bypass-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-bus-stop-bypass-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-876" class="wp-caption-text">London Road bus stop bypass</p></div></p>
  <p>Just past the London Road allotments there is an pedestrian access route into the residential areas, however there are some significant barriers in the way, which make it difficult to use. Enabling this for cycle use and sign posting the route would mean that people have a mostly traffic free route from Chantry via London Road and NCN51 into Ipswich town centre.</p>
  <p>At the junction of London Road and Robin Drive there was a discussion regarding the double dog leg crossing which makes it difficult for pedestrians and cyclists to cross as they have to wait 3 times to cross London Road. Also if you are on a bike with a long wheelbase or have a trailer, extreme care is required to get the corners right for the dog legs.</p>
  <p>The parallel residential part of London Road is generally nice to cycle along due to the low levels of motor traffic, and the hedge between you and the main road. This separation is a common design element that is used in The Netherlands. However the road could do with being resurfaced as it&#8217;s getting uneven, so can be tough to cycle on.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_877" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/8_P6ztL5TzhJDsg21_DSGA"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-877" class="size-medium wp-image-877" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-300x225.jpg" alt="London Road parallel residential road" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/London-Road-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-877" class="wp-caption-text">London Road parallel residential road</p></div></p>
  <p>At the next junction it was noted that the cycle path (on the pavement) that leads from Suffolk One just stops at the traffic lights, rather than there being a toucan crossing to allow people to cross the road safely. There is a significant issue where the students at Suffolk One drive there and there is no car parking for students. This was a deliberate decision to discourage driving, however due to the distances that students need to travel and little alternative transport, they just park in the local to the annoyance of the neighbours. Small things like a missing toucan crossing at the end of a cycle path contribute towards people not walking and cycling.</p>
  <p>Cycling along Scrivener Drive, Shepherd Drive, and the start of Hawthorn Drive was rather intimidating due to the narrow road width and heavy traffic, particularly coming from the A12 and A14. Something needs to be done to make friendlier alternative routes in the area for people on bikes.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_878" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/rN2YESFZ5_1nozMQyftFVg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-878" class="size-medium wp-image-878" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sheppard-Drive-300x225.jpg" alt="Shepherd Drive" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sheppard-Drive-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sheppard-Drive-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Sheppard-Drive-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-878" class="wp-caption-text">Shepherd Drive</p></div></p>
  <p>The rest of Hawthorn Drive has a significant issue which is resolvable with minimal impact on motor traffic. The road is wide with a houses on both sides, and occasionally shops, amenities, etc, with grass verges which are often parked on, even so there is space in most front gardens. There is also a problem of traffic islands, where drivers will try to squeeze past you. It&#8217;s a rather intimidating experience, especially if you are not able to cycle fast.</p>
  <p>It would be possible to remodel the road such that there is the pavement, separate cycle path, parking, traffic lanes, parking, separate cycle path, and finally the pavement on the other side of the road. There would be some points where there would only be cycle parking on one side of the road only, or not at all near junctions. This design would be typical of a Dutch distributer road, and would mean that the local school children have a safe route to walk and cycle to school. There are many schools within a small area, so this would be a big impact, especially with the current significant complaints about the school run problem.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_879" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/Iz-_iXyAROaTUfywwFhV3A"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-879" class="size-medium wp-image-879" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-300x225.jpg" alt="Hawthorn Drive" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-879" class="wp-caption-text">Hawthorn Drive</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_887" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-11.49.27.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887" class="size-medium wp-image-887" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-11.49.27-300x225.jpg" alt="Hawthorn Drive" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-11.49.27-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-11.49.27-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-11.49.27-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-887" class="wp-caption-text">Hawthorn Drive</p></div></p>
  <p>At the Hawthorn Drive/Mallard Way roundabout we had a discussion regarding the roundabout, as it&#8217;s significantly larger than many other busier roundabouts in the town, yet has very low traffic volumes, and has very wide corners so drivers can go round it with only small reduction of speed, and could easily injure a pedestrian or cyclist. Someone pointed out that the roads were probably originally designed so that the grass verges could be changed into an additional car lane instead at a later stage. Mallard Way could get a similar treatment to the suggestion for Hawthorn Drive.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_880" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/UauW5afG_VjoFzY60CPZoQ"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-880" class="size-medium wp-image-880" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-Roundabout-300x225.jpg" alt="Hawthorn Drive Roundabout" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-Roundabout-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-Roundabout-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hawthorn-Drive-Roundabout-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-880" class="wp-caption-text">Hawthorn Drive Roundabout</p></div></p>
  <p>We then heading along Stone Lodge Lane West, Birkfield Drive (which has the space for similar treat meant to Hawthorn Drive and Birkfield Drive), and into Carolbrook Road, where we followed a cycle path through Ellenbrook Open Space to reach National cycle network route 1 to head back into town. This section of NCN 1 is off road, and one of the better sections through Ipswich, however it&#8217;s very short before you are back on the road again.</p>
  <p>Heading along NCN1 on Stoke Park Drive can be rather scary, and isn&#8217;t somewhere I would be keen on taking young children due to the cycle lanes stopping for traffic islands where motor vehicle drivers regularly try to squeeze past you. I&#8217;ve seen occasions where car drivers accelerate past on the other side of the road on the wrong side of the island, or cut in just before the island. The cycle lane is less than the 1.5 metres wide, and it&#8217;s hard to fit a bike in never mind  including some passing distance. Towards the end there is a right turn into Bourne Park, which wouldn&#8217;t be easy for less experienced cyclists.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_881" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/ZMrKLfZhe572y-i015wXhQ"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-881" class="size-medium wp-image-881" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stoke-Park-Drive-300x225.jpg" alt="Stoke Park Drive" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stoke-Park-Drive-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stoke-Park-Drive-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stoke-Park-Drive-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-881" class="wp-caption-text">Stoke Park Drive</p></div></p>
  <p>The cycle path through Bourne Park is pretty rough gravel, and is tough going for adults, and extremely difficult for young children to learn to ride a bike. If there was a smooth surface through the park, and around it to make a circuit, there would be an ideal environment for children to learn to ride a bicycle, and play in the park. This is something that is really needed in this part of town, as there are few places which are safe traffic free environments for children to learn.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_883" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/lLFZR5hMzltBQyeaj1Ldpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-883" class="size-medium wp-image-883" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bourne-Park-300x225.jpg" alt="Bourne Park" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bourne-Park-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bourne-Park-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Bourne-Park-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-883" class="wp-caption-text">Bourne Park</p></div></p>
  <p>On heading out of Bourne Park the NCN route swings north just to run parallel to the rail line along a narrow path which is overgrown with vegetation, and sometimes has flytipping at the north end. It&#8217;s not a pretty sight considering it&#8217;s the flagship national cycle route 1, and non standard bikes would struggle to get along the route.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_884" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/mEpqFppb6_yKJkWcbPnrMw"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-884" class="size-medium wp-image-884" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/NCN1-by-railway-near-Bourne-Park-300x225.jpg" alt="NCN1 by railway near Bourne Park" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/NCN1-by-railway-near-Bourne-Park-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/NCN1-by-railway-near-Bourne-Park-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/NCN1-by-railway-near-Bourne-Park-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-884" class="wp-caption-text">NCN1 by railway near Bourne Park</p></div></p>
  <p>To save us going up and down a hill, and to also see another bit of cycle infrastructure, we headed off the NCN1 temporarily and headed along Wherstead Road. This is one of the main routes into town from the south, and connects with the A14. The road starts wide and gets narrower, particularly at the point where it goes under a rail bridge (for goods trains to get into the Port of Ipswich). Shortly after the rail bridge, there is a cycle access off on to the quieter residential streets and a toucan crossing. The cycle slip road requires you to come off the road at an angle which means that you either have to slow down and/or swing out in the middle of the road. Alternatively you can follow the route many in the group choose and head on to the pavement early which was a more natural route to follow. It would be a fairly cheap change to remove the railing and increase the dropped kerb, which would make it safer. The point where the cycle path joins the road is rather tight and there would be problems for people with cargo bikes or trailers.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_885" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/5pDTSOAAyuZS93asFOu14A"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-885" class="size-medium wp-image-885" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-1-300x225.jpg" alt="Wherstead Road 1" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-1-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-885" class="wp-caption-text">Wherstead Road 1</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_888" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-13.12.31.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888" class="size-medium wp-image-888" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-13.12.31-300x225.jpg" alt="Wherstead Road 2" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-13.12.31-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-13.12.31-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-13.12.31-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-888" class="wp-caption-text">Wherstead Road 2</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_886" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/RwoGcqsN8WC8oupKdclLjg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-886" class="size-medium wp-image-886" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-2-300x225.jpg" alt="Wherstead Road 2" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-2-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Wherstead-Road-2-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-886" class="wp-caption-text">Wherstead Road 3</p></div></p>
  <p>Onwards we rejoined NCN1 again briefly and headed quickly to <a href="http://thebrewerytap.org">The Brewery Tap</a> via the waterfront as we were running a little behind schedule at this point. The waterfront has some traffic free sections, and has some heavy pedestrian use. This makes is problematic at weekends and in the evenings when there are heavy pedestrian flows. I have come across a regular local cyclist who didn&#8217;t realise that it is two way for cyclists, whilst only one way for motor vehicles.</p>
  <p>&nbsp;</p>
  <p>After lunch we headed up Cliff Lane and followed National Cycle Route 51 out to Ravenswood. At the junction of Cliff Lane and the entrance to Holywells Park we stopped for a chat. There&#8217;s a significant school run problem in the area (which has been on BBC Radio Suffolk in the past). There is also a similar issue with people driving to visit the park often with children.</p>
  <p>During the cycle along NCN51 to Ravenswood, the Londoners on the ride noted how quiet the residential streets were. This is in part due to the route being filtered, and the residential roads being the furthest possible from the main access routes to the residential area. It is a much longer route, and many locals will choose shorter routes, such as Clapgate Land and Nacton Road instead, especially into town downhill, as it&#8217;s much faster and more direct. The NCN51 route is quieter, safer, and sign posted.</p>
  <p>At the point the Morland Road joins to the cycle path through to Raeburn Road there is currently a confusing NCN51 sign for people coming from the east, which suggests the route is into town only. Either that sign should be taken down, or it should be updated to show the route goes in both directions. Turning right takes you into town, and left towards Ravenswood and Felixstowe.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_889" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/lpVv1RfUYptRZ400QTma9w"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-889" class="size-medium wp-image-889" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Morland-Road-300x225.jpg" alt="Morland Road" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Morland-Road-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Morland-Road-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Morland-Road-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-889" class="wp-caption-text">Morland Road</p></div></p>
  <p>Ravenswood is a fairly new build housing estate, built on the old Ipswich Airport (final flight January 1998). The estate was designed to be environmentally friendly with many cycle and foot paths, limited car space, traffic calming measures and a frequent bus link into the town centre.</p>
  <p>Through Ravenswood the NCN51 cycle path is very good if you are passing through the area, as there is minimal interaction with motor vehicles. However if you are trying to get from the main cycle paths on to the residential streets, it is very difficult to do so, and the cycle paths are around half the width they need to be. Often you have to cycle on the road where drivers can be rather intimidating. Ravenswood has one of the highest cycle to school rates in the county.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_890" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/V9SrNQTuge4Z8d33jOhrbg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-890" class="size-medium wp-image-890" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-300x225.jpg" alt="Ravenswood" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-890" class="wp-caption-text">Ravenswood</p></div></p>
  <p>On the edge of the Ravenswood estate there have been 4 new major chain restaurants built in the past year. Sheltered cycle parking has been provided, however little consideration has been given to how you get from the cycle paths of the car park to the cycle parking. It&#8217;s as though it&#8217;s been stuck in some unused corner as a requirement of the planning permission, rather than properly planning the cycle parking in so that it is easy to get to.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_891" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/5ZlqrLV-dTvlSTiJ5kkbAA"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891" class="size-medium wp-image-891" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-restaurant-cycle-parking-300x225.jpg" alt="Ravenswood restaurant cycle parking" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-restaurant-cycle-parking-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-restaurant-cycle-parking-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ravenswood-restaurant-cycle-parking-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-891" class="wp-caption-text">Ravenswood restaurant cycle parking</p></div></p>
  <p>The staggered toucan crossing on Ravenswood Avenue by The Thrasher roundabout is quite tough to use on a bike, especially if you are in a group of people on bikes, have a trailer on the bike, or a cargo bike, the crossing becomes very difficult. Some of the tight corners at junctions within the estate are also very difficult with non-standard bikes.</p>
  <p>We then headed through Futura Park which is a new retail area built in November 2012. There were <a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/2013/02/more-cycle-parking-installed-at-ipswich-waitrosejohn-lewis/">some additional racks added by Waitrose and John Lewis shortly after they opened</a> as they were fully utilised in the first week of opening. There is legalised pavement cycling for people to get to and from the shops, however once you get to the main road, Ransomes Way, the pavements get rather narrow. Also the <a href="http://www.suffolk.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/roadworks/nacton-road/">plans for the junction outside the Sainsburys and Homebase</a> will require people to plan ahead if they want to cross with the toucan crossing. Ransoms Way is also having the 2 lanes (1 each way) turned into 3 lanes (2 towards roundabouts, and one leaving roundabouts). I&#8217;d rather a cycle track or possibly a wider pavement to be implemented instead to reduce the conflict with pedestrians, and encourage more people to cycle to the shops.</p>
  <p>Heading along Felixstowe Road back into town, cyclists start on the pavement, and around the borough boundary cyclists are taken on to the road in a cycle lane with heavy and fast (40 mph speed limit) traffic and no protection between cyclists and the motor vehicles. Just after the roundabout we stopped on Bixley Road for a quick discussion. I have seen families walking their bikes around the roundabout and then getting back on to cycle on the pavement afterwards. This roundabout is a stumbling point for encouraging more people to cycling due to the crucial link it provides with various parts of the town, including being on the main ring road route of the town.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_892" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/9eMNK1MJndDwoAi0am0U-A"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-892" class="size-medium wp-image-892" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Felixstowe-Road-300x225.jpg" alt="Felixstowe Road" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Felixstowe-Road-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Felixstowe-Road-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Felixstowe-Road-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-892" class="wp-caption-text">Felixstowe Road</p></div></p>
  <p>Due to the heavy motor traffic on Bixley Road, I chose a route that took us on to quieter back roads pretty quickly along Princethorpe Road, Temple Road, Chilton Road, Foxhole Road, and Heath Lane where you get to a cycle path, which is a back entrance to Copleston High School, and the end of the back access road to the hospital. However it looks from the signage that you can&#8217;t cycle in this direction to get to the hospital, even so it would be a useful link to the hospital avoiding the main roads.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_893" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-16.09.58.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-893" class="size-medium wp-image-893" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-16.09.58-225x300.jpg" alt="Hospital back entrance oddity" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-16.09.58-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-16.09.58-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-05-30-16.09.58-624x832.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-893" class="wp-caption-text">Hospital back entrance oddity</p></div></p>
  <p>We stopped within the hospital grounds on NCN1 to discuss the hospital cycle access. The main A&amp;E has some good quality sheltered cycle parking, however cyclists are expected to share the road with motor vehicles. Other departments have large cycle parks near their entrances, however it&#8217;s generally of the wheel bender designs, so people will try to lock their bike in a similar manner to a Sheffield stand, such that the bike is supported. Some of the cycle parking could be better sign posted for example similar to a bus stop flag post to encourage usage, and so that people can see the cycle parking from a distance. The north cycle path on to Woodbridge Road doesn&#8217;t connect with other cycle routes well, nor gives a nice transition back on to the road.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_894" style="width: 160px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-18.15.48.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-894" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-894" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-18.15.48-150x150.jpg" alt="Hospital cycle parking 1" width="150" height="150" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-894" class="wp-caption-text">Hospital cycle parking 1</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_895" style="width: 160px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-18.15.55.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-895" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-895" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-18.15.55-150x150.jpg" alt="Hospital Cycle parking 2" width="150" height="150" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-895" class="wp-caption-text">Hospital Cycle parking 2</p></div></p>
  <p><div id="attachment_896" style="width: 160px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-19.09.17.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-896" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-896" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-03-19.09.17-150x150.jpg" alt="Hospital Cycle parking 3" width="150" height="150" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-896" class="wp-caption-text">Hospital Cycle parking 3</p></div></p>
  <p>From the hospital we followed National Cycle route 1 back into town, on the way we stopped off on Rope Walk, which is seen to be one of the best cycling facilities in the town as through motor traffic stopped on this section of road, and it means there is a safe reasonably quiet route from here into town. Just beforehand, Kings Avenue and Milner Street are a significant rat run in the morning peak, and need to have the rat run closed to through traffic to make the route more pleasant and also reduce motor vehicle congestion since drivers on St Helens Street are letting drivers out which then reduces the flow of vehicles from entering the traffic lights at the bottom of Grove Lane, Spring Road, and Warwick Road.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_897" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/MTIphc2R0UotgMxmVL1PCA"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-897" class="size-medium wp-image-897" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-300x225.jpg" alt="Rope Walk" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-897" class="wp-caption-text">Rope Walk</p></div></p>
  <p>At the junction of Rope Walk, Waterworks Street and Bond Street, there is an interesting arrangement whereby cyclists just have to give way to traffic from the left and don&#8217;t need to wait for the green light. It can be a bit narrow to get through if you are on a wide cargo bike or have a bike trailer.</p>
  <p><div id="attachment_898" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://www.mapillary.com/map/im/eeHVmJETtSCpC1rIi7HMzQ"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-898" class="size-medium wp-image-898" src="http://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-Waterworks-Street-Junction-300x225.jpg" alt="Rope Walk and Waterworks Street Junction" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-Waterworks-Street-Junction-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-Waterworks-Street-Junction-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blog.shaunmcdonald.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Rope-Walk-Waterworks-Street-Junction-624x468.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-898" class="wp-caption-text">Rope Walk and Waterworks Street Junction</p></div></p>
  <p>We headed through the town centre which was quite quiet with it being the end of the day. We stopped off in Arlingtons Cafe to have a final discussion and review of the day.</p>
  <p>The was a lot to look at, and several other places I&#8217;d have liked to have gone to discuss too. I&#8217;m planning to run some more rides at a slower pace so that there can be more discussion at the stops.</p>
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              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h4>Celebrating the benefits of open data around the world</h4><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*NP7Wj5lhxY598YM04ouM_g.png" /></figure><p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/mikel-maron/"><em>Mikel Maron</em></a></p><p>Happy Open Data Day! Thousands of people at <a href="https://opendataday.org/#map">over 250 events around the globe</a> are gathering to create, build with, and promote open data in government, civil society, and business. Mapbox partnered with the Open Knowledge Foundation for a second year to sponsor mini-grants for <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2019/02/21/these-are-the-grantees-of-the-open-data-day-2019-mini-grant-scheme/">projects and events in the Open Mapping theme</a> and we can’t wait to see what everyone builds.</p><p>Last year we saw <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/16/open-mapping-in-cote-divoire-mongolia-and-the-usa/">activists in Côte d’Ivoire</a> work on geographic data for transparency mining and oil exploration, the <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/10/local-open-mapping-initiatives-in-rwanda-and-nicaragua/">students at National University of Engineering in Managua</a> mapped an inventory of informal housing construction types in OpenStreetMap, and <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/empowering-portugals-bombeiros-with-open-data-1a282e29f44f">Fogos.pt used public datasets</a> and Mapbox to build the most popular website to track fires in Portugal. And there were more amazing efforts in Tanzania, Namibia, Denver, Rwanda, Helsinki, Poland, and Washington DC.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*TgLVomHAX0Jlg1kM.jpg" /><figcaption><em>Last year, 406 events took place in </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/05/09/open-data-day-in-mwanza-tanzania/"><em>Tanzania</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/05/10/creativity-and-mobile-solutions-can-help-combat-road-accidents/"><em>Namibia</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/16/open-mapping-in-cote-divoire-mongolia-and-the-usa/"><em>Abidjan</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/16/open-mapping-in-cote-divoire-mongolia-and-the-usa/"><em>Denver</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/10/local-open-mapping-initiatives-in-rwanda-and-nicaragua/"><em>Rwanda</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/10/local-open-mapping-initiatives-in-rwanda-and-nicaragua/"><em>Nicaragua</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/03/28/open-data-day-2018-getting-the-local-communities-in-porto-and-helsinki-to-talk-about-open-mapping/"><em>Portugal</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/03/28/open-data-day-2018-getting-the-local-communities-in-porto-and-helsinki-to-talk-about-open-mapping/"><em>Helsinki</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/04/engaging-people-around-open-data-and-open-mapping-from-usa-to-poland/"><em>Poland,</em></a><em> </em><a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/04/04/engaging-people-around-open-data-and-open-mapping-from-usa-to-poland/"><em>Washington D.C</em></a><em>., and beyond. Find more about them </em><a href="http://opendataday.org/"><em>here</em></a><em>.</em></figcaption></figure><p>Here are some projects that we’re excited to follow this year:</p><ul><li>Open Knowledge Brasil will build a database of existing dams in Brasil following Brumadinho dam disaster.</li><li>OpenStreetMap Kenya will share how open data can be created and used for urban planning and architecture.</li><li>OpenStreetMap Taiwan and Wikimedia Taiwan are hosting events to improve the geographic data for hospitals, educational institutions, and infrastructure important to women.</li><li>Code for Columbus will use the city’s new open data portal and open data from the regional planning commission to investigate social problems in the city.</li></ul><p>Check out <a href="https://opendataday.org/#map">opendataday.org</a> for a full listing of events.</p><p>Close to home for us, Mapping DC is <a href="https://www.meetup.com/MappingDC/events/259020273/">hosting a mapathon</a> today to improve open data on bike lanes across Washington D.C. And Code for San Francisco is hosting a <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/code-for-san-francisco-open-data-day-2019-tickets-56291530483">full-day event on Sunday</a> with projects and workshops from <a href="https://data.sfgov.org">DataSF</a>, MUNI Challenge, <a href="https://www.lanebreach.org/">SF Bike Lane Breach</a>, and <a href="https://www.sheltertech.org/">ShelterTech</a> to tackle challenges of homelessness, transit, and bicycle infrastructure using open data. We hope to see you there!</p><p>Share your projects with #OpenDataDay and #odd19, and <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/community/">reach out to the Community team</a> for support on your open data projects.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/mikel-maron/">Mikel Maron</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=32551ed1b30" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/open-data-day-2019-32551ed1b30">Open Data Day 2019</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[How I built it: mapping every road in Washington state]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/how-i-built-it-mapping-every-road-in-washington-state-696765f3720a?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/696765f3720a</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[technology]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[community]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[open-data]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:01:11 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-08-06T22:03:22.543Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/jinal-foflia/"><em>Jinal Foflia</em></a></p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/764/1*NUpOhudk9UdQqwrU0yZDYQ.png" /></figure><p><em>Clifford Snow is on a mission to personally add the most up-to-date road data (including rural logging roads) of Washington state to OpenStreetMap. Clifford started contributing to OpenStreetMap in 2011 after seeing a presentation by Hurricane Coast at LinuxfestNW in Bellingham, Washington. I wanted to learn more about the project’s origins and the map’s technical framework, so I sat down with him to chat about his work.</em></p><h4><strong>What inspired you to develop the project?</strong></h4><p>Heavily trafficked roads in major US metropolitan areas are usually maintained regularly and in good shape in OpenStreetMap. The conditions of rural roads in the US are a different story. In Washington state, for example, some of them are still in the same condition as when they were imported into maps from <a href="https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html">TIGER</a> data. With this project I wanted to provide the OSM mapping community with more up-to-date, comprehensive, basemaps for tracing road data.</p><h4><strong>What datasets did you use to build the map?</strong></h4><p>A majority of counties in Washington State like Island County, Whatcom County, and my own Skagit County opened up their road data. This allowed me to trace roads and capture street names. As I expanded to more and more counties I ran into a roadblock: not all Washington Counties make open data available. I created a <a href="https://glassman.carto.com/viz/68d4aa30-97f0-11e5-92ce-0e3a376473ab/public_map">webmap</a> showing which counties in Washington State have open data.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*iqsvko3JmtQSwcBx.png" /><figcaption>A CARTO map shows the status of open road data across counties in Washington State.</figcaption></figure><p>At times, providing open data is cost prohibitive for a small county, while other counties choose to monetize their data. Thankfully, I found a workaround using the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) open datasets of local and state roads.</p><p>Washington State is home to thousands of miles of logging roads. I relied on <a href="https://www.fs.fed.us/">USFS</a> data to record logging roads, and it was a massive dataset. Before this project, I never used Mapbox but I knew many Mapbox-ers from my work on previous OpenStreetMap projects and thought it may be a good solution.</p><p>Mapbox made it easy for me to get the road network maps online and could scale to handle a larger load than I could from my home Geoserver.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/895/0*zQ93C7dyiLeYlouh" /></figure><h4><strong>Can you walk us through how you built the map?</strong></h4><p>I started by plotting out how to upload the large datasets onto the Mapbox server. The data I had resided in my PostGIS server. I needed to convert it to an MBTile and upload it to Mapbox. Getting it into an MBTile wasn’t hard. Uploading it because of the size was much more difficult for me. Fortunately, Mapboxer <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/sam-matthews/">Sam Mathews</a> helped out, pointing me to a script to help with the process. I built a shell script wrapper to help out.</p><iframe src="" width="0" height="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><a href="https://medium.com/media/99d4d08aa2582b5f140cb683e87c41d0/href">https://medium.com/media/99d4d08aa2582b5f140cb683e87c41d0/href</a></iframe><p>Once I figured that out, I plowed ahead and began to build the basemap layer. Here’s how I did it:</p><ol><li>First I loaded the shapefile into PostGIS, using PostGIS to filter and simplify the data. The state’s data contained many fields that were not needed since I was only looking for street and highway names.</li><li>I used QGIS to load the PostGIS data to save the data as a geojson. Loading into QGIS gave me a nice visual of the data to make sure it looks correct.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/mapbox/tippecanoe">Tippecanoe</a> helped me convert the geojson into an MBTile file for the upload to Mapbox.</li><li>The <a href="https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-upload">Mapbox-upload script</a> was used to send the data up to Mapbox.</li><li>Once the MBTiles were accepted, which takes a while with a large file size, I used the <a href="http://utm.io/ub7P2">Mapbox Studio</a> editor to create the <a href="https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/glassman/cjgigy2r6001l2rq0ozn7xp8d.html?fresh=true&amp;title=true&amp;access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiZ2xhc3NtYW4iLCJhIjoiRjk3dWdwYyJ9.Tg_fMJWxygeKBgVTrZHmGA#13.47/47.46459/-122.25322">road style</a>.</li><li>Then, I published the style in Studio. Mapbox Studio made it easy to create styles at different zoom levels.</li><li>Finally, I add the newly published basemap layer to the <a href="https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Mapshttps://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Maps">OpenStreetMap Wiki</a>. JOSM adds entries directly into the list of images available. This step involves creating (or copying in my case) the boundary of the area the data covers, adding the URL and icon to displayed in JOSM. I’m optimistic that the iD editor will allow adding custom overlays in the near-future.</li></ol><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*x2WxtH6miWZuX1Fc.png" /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*WLeE_i_0Pytzepgk.png" /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*o7XHqcxUximJePN_yNxozg.png" /><figcaption>Road custom style was built in Studio</figcaption></figure><h4><strong>What’s next for the project? Are there other Mapbox features you plan to explore?</strong></h4><p>I’d really like to see open road data from the states displayed as a basemap in our editors. That is going to require scripting to grab the data, normalizing it, convert it to MBTiles and then uploading to Mapbox. One obstacle I envision is getting updates at different times.</p><p>I plan to start working on this project this fall.</p><p><em>Learn more about how we’re supporting projects like this one on our </em><a href="http://bit.ly/2KwtuAY"><em>Community page</em></a><em>.</em> <em>Explore the full basemap layer, and start adding OSM data to your own mapping project — </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/help/overpass-turbo/?utm_campaign=community18&amp;utm_medium=Blog&amp;utm_source=medium&amp;utm_content=osm-data-documentation"><em>read our guide</em></a><em>.</em></p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/jinal-foflia/">Jinal Foflia</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=696765f3720a" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/how-i-built-it-mapping-every-road-in-washington-state-696765f3720a">How I built it: mapping every road in Washington state</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Ruby for Good 2018]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/ruby-for-good-2018-61dd45a7fdb7?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/61dd45a7fdb7</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[community]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[team]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[ruby]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2018 18:24:50 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-06-28T18:25:31.998Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h4>4 days. 9 open source projects. 80 Rubyists.</h4><p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/dom-brassey/"><em>Dom Brassey</em></a></p><blockquote><em>Participating in an event like Ruby for Good, especially if you’re new and don’t know where to begin, helps usher you into the world of open source in a friendly, non-threatening way. People are around to help you, you’re part of a team, and you can choose a cause that you believe in so all the time you spend working on a project, you’re actually working toward the greater good. — Ruby for Good Organizer, </em><a href="https://twitter.com/teresa_finn"><em>Teresa Finn</em></a></blockquote><p>The 5th Annual Ruby for Good event just wrapped. 80 Ruby developers participated in this 4-day “not-a-hackathon” in Washington, D.C. After a welcome from founder <a href="https://twitter.com/seanmarcia">Sean Marcia</a> and the team, leaders took the stage to pitch the weekend sprints they planned with nonprofit stakeholders like <a href="https://twitter.com/GlobalNamati">Namati</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/PDX_Diaper_Bank">PDX Diaper Bank</a>, <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=3/42.49/-72.86">OpenStreetMap</a>, and more.</p><p>Events like Ruby For Good help developers grow as leaders and collaborators, offer non-profits access to technology built to their custom needs, and give sponsors an opportunity to develop deep relationships with tech professionals. A huge thank you to our own <a href="https://github.com/kalimar">Kalimar</a> on the organizing team, and all the individuals who came together to build collaborative and open technology.</p><p>Here’s a deeper look at some of the projects we worked on:</p><h4>Amazon Terrastories</h4><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*DuojMtYZq5F0TPUD.jpg" /><figcaption>Read ACT’s <a href="http://www.amazonteam.org/act-partakes-in-ruby-for-good-2018-to-develop-offline-geostorytelling-app-terrastories">full post</a> on building Terrastories with Mapbox during Ruby for Good.</figcaption></figure><p>Our friends at the Amazon Conservation Team asked developers to build a geo-storytelling app that features video recordings of the<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2017/11/storytelling-empowers-indigenous-people-to-conserve-their-environments/"><strong> oral histories that these communities share about their territory</strong></a>. The teams built Terrastories as a Dockerized Rails App to help users locate content geographically on an interactive, offline-compatible map.</p><p>The <a href="https://github.com/rubyforgood/terrastories">Terrastories</a> team took the stage to demo their project:</p><style>body[data-twttr-rendered="true"] {background-color: transparent;}.twitter-tweet {margin: auto !important;}</style><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-align="center" data-dnt="true"><p>We knew the <a href="http://twitter.com/Mapbox" target="_blank" title="Twitter profile for @Mapbox">@Mapbox</a> API was going to be awesome, but also that we didn&#39;t know how to use it...&quot; team Terrastories #RubyforGood2018 <a href="http://twitter.com/RubyforGood" target="_blank" title="Twitter profile for @RubyforGood">@RubyforGood</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://t.co/t2OyYTulw7">https://t.co/t2OyYTulw7</a></p><p>&#x200a;&mdash;&#x200a;<a href="https://twitter.com/EqMapbox/status/1005865896731082752">@EqMapbox</a></p></blockquote><script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><script>function notifyResize(height) {height = height ? height : document.documentElement.offsetHeight; var resized = false; if (window.donkey && donkey.resize) {donkey.resize(height);resized = true;}if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var obj = {iframe: window.frameElement, height: height}; parent._resizeIframe(obj); resized = true;}if (window.location && window.location.hash === "#amp=1" && window.parent && window.parent.postMessage) {window.parent.postMessage({sentinel: "amp", type: "embed-size", height: height}, "*");}if (window.webkit && window.webkit.messageHandlers && window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize) {window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize.postMessage(height); resized = true;}return resized;}twttr.events.bind('rendered', function (event) {notifyResize();}); twttr.events.bind('resize', function (event) {notifyResize();});</script><script>if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var maxWidth = parseInt(window.frameElement.getAttribute("width")); if ( 500  < maxWidth) {window.frameElement.setAttribute("width", "500");}}</script><h4>OpenStreetMap</h4><p>OpenStreetMap convened a team of volunteers to improve the <a href="http://openstreetmap.org">http://openstreetmap.org</a> website. Led by <a href="https://github.com/cflipse">Chris Flipse</a> and <a href="https://github.com/benreyn">Ben Reynolds</a>, the team refactored routes to make them more resourceful and moved towards a replacement authentication system with the CanCanCan framework.</p><p>These improvements to the OpenStreetMap infrastructure will ultimately benefit the hundreds of millions of people who use OpenStreetMap data daily, including NGOs like MSF and the Red Cross, companies like Mapbox, Facebook, and Apple, and governments, educators, researchers, and mapmakers around the globe.</p><p>This is only a glimpse at the work accomplished during Ruby for Good 2018. We can’t wait to do it again next year. In the meantime, if you’re working on a project for social good our Community team wants to know about it! <a href="https://goo.gl/5F5jbU">Drop us a line</a> so we can connect.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/dom-brassey/">Dom Brassey</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=61dd45a7fdb7" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/ruby-for-good-2018-61dd45a7fdb7">Ruby for Good 2018</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[A mapathon for the environment with OSM Earth]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/a-mapathon-for-the-environment-with-osm-earth-8f0f2fd187d3?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/8f0f2fd187d3</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[environment]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[community]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[science]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:41:19 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-04-24T21:42:09.212Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/marena-brinkhurst/"><em>By: Marena Brinkhurst</em></a></p><blockquote><em>I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” - Dr. Seuss</em></blockquote><p>This Earth Day, a group of volunteers from the OSM community participated in a mapathon to “speak for the trees” as the Lorax would say — to map ecosystems and environments they care about. Together, our team, <a href="https://www.maphubs.com/">MapHubs</a>, and <a href="http://www.vulcan.com">Vulcan</a> used the event to test <a href="https://osm.earth/">OSM Earth</a>, the new public tasking manager that helps you coordinate groups of digital mappers during environmental mapping projects (built by MapHubs). <em>A note: OSM Earth is a direct fork of the open-source </em><a href="https://www.hotosm.org/"><em>Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team</em></a><em> (HOT) </em><a href="https://tasks.hotosm.org/"><em>Tasking Manager</em></a><em> (made possible by the leadership and contributions of HOT and OSM communities.)</em></p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*iVjPn_rwtxvczfWNJyywOQ.png" /><figcaption>A look at OSM Earth. Logo by Angel Kittiyachavalit.</figcaption></figure><blockquote><em>We were inspired by the incredibly active and motivated community of disaster-response mappers and humanitarian mappers that the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and partners have cultivated. We thought, let’s see if there could be a similar community that loves to map for environmental causes. — Leo Bottrill, MapHubs</em></blockquote><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*7bxe8APSBLWX5CT5." /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*yuOtDPwILWVLuB1l." /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*E924omigRENTSeRq." /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*D5QgLP8IyUkrDQ-k." /><figcaption>Team volunteers in San Francisco, Washington DC and Bangalore test out OSM Earth during the Earth Day mapathon.</figcaption></figure><blockquote><em>There hasn’t yet been a rallying point for people who are most interested in mapping land-use, landscape features, or infrastructure that is significant for environmental protection projects, like logging roads or unplanned development near protected areas. I’m excited to see OSM Earth grow as a place where OSM mappers can develop their skills for this kind of mapping, and for environmental mappers to recruit help from the wider OSM community. — Joel Masselink, Vulcan</em></blockquote><h3>Mapathon Tasks</h3><p>Volunteers from our team, MapHubs, and Vulcan worked in OSM Earth on a variety of tasks including:</p><ul><li><strong>Spotting signs of encroachment near protected areas in the DRC:</strong> OSM contributors can map signs of encroachment (new roads, new settlements, etc) near Virunga National Park in the DRC. This project supports the <a href="https://virunga.org/virunga-alliance/">Virunga Alliance</a>, which works in collaboration with local communities to prevent encroachment, poaching, and other environmental damage to this refuge of mountain gorillas.</li><li><strong>Mapping</strong> <strong>sea level rise in island communities:</strong> Volunteers can map island communities most at risk of sea level rise — from Alaska to the Maldives to Papua New Guinea. Some of these islands are very small, and some have not been mapped in OSM at all, but people live there. Up-to-date maps help local populations better understand what infrastructure is at risk as sea levels rise.</li><li><strong>Understanding indigenous land use in Kenya<em>: </em></strong>participants can contribute to<em> </em>the mapping efforts of the<em> </em><a href="http://www.nrt-kenya.org/">Northern Rangelands Trust</a>, <a href="http://www.kenyalandalliance.or.ke/">Kenya Land Alliance</a>, and the <a href="http://www.ogiekpeoples.org/">Ogiek Peoples Development Program</a>. These organizations work to help indigenous communities map their traditional lands; and have a greater say in how they are used.</li><li><strong>Mapping Himalayan glaciers<em>:</em></strong> Our Bangalore team contributed a task that was close to home, helping community members map glaciers as they change in the Himalayas.</li><li><strong>Tracking</strong> <strong>tourism infrastructure in the Philippines</strong>: Inspired by <a href="https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/04/04/asia/philippines-duterte-boracay-shutdown-intl/index.html">reports of unsustainable development and pollution</a> on the island of Boracay in the Philippines, the team challenged mapathon volunteers to add missing buildings and infrastructure to the Boracay map. With an updated map, local leaders can better understand the speed of development on the island.</li></ul><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/524/0*4B4hiAtjPuEE6bFd." /><figcaption>Locations of the mapathon’s tasks spanned the globe.</figcaption></figure><p>In all, our team’s mapathon volunteers made 1,800 road/buildings edits and 395 glacier edits.</p><h3>Help the planet — contribute to OSM</h3><blockquote><em>It was really easy to get started mapping on OSM — a 10-minute guided online tutorial, and you’re good to go. I loved the meditative nature of studying satellite imagery and identifying buildings and roads. It’s satisfying to think I can maybe help people somewhere across the world do better work to improve lives — all without having to leave my desk!” — Sofia Heisler, Mapbox</em></blockquote><p>Join the thousands mapping in <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a> every day and support organizations and communities working for environmental protection and sustainable development—contribute to the coordinated mapping projects in <a href="https://osm.earth/">osm.earth</a>. For resources on learning how to map in OSM, visit <a href="http://learnosm.org/en/">learnosm.org</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/marena-brinkhurst/">Marena Brinkhurst</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=8f0f2fd187d3" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/a-mapathon-for-the-environment-with-osm-earth-8f0f2fd187d3">A mapathon for the environment with OSM Earth</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[New imagery for Caribe Wave 2018 available]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/https-blog-mapbox-com-new-satellite-imagery-for-caribe-wave-2018-e7872d979122?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/e7872d979122</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[product]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[space]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[satellite]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[humanitarian]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Thu, 15 Mar 2018 17:33:57 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-03-15T17:33:56.868Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/vincent-sarago/"><em>Vincent Sarago</em></a></p><p><a href="https://www.tsunamizone.org/caribewave/">Caribe Wave 2018</a> is a yearly international exercise, organized by UNESCO, to increase tsunami preparedness in the Caribbean Sea…and it’s happening today. As we’ve seen over the last few decades, earthquakes and their subsequent tsunamis pose a huge risk to populated areas and it pays to be prepared. For this year’s exercise, we’ve updated our satellite imagery of some Caribbean islands to help stakeholders create better risk assessments, plan evacuation routes, and more.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*dnqgA1lX7YX_Ume6PfBWwg.png" /><figcaption>In one of the three scenarios for the Caribe Wave 2018 exercise, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake will occur at 14:00UTC near Barbados island. One hour after, a &gt;3 m wave will hit the southeast coast of Marie-Galante near the quiet village of Capesterre. (<a href="https://www.weather.gov/media/ctwp/Webinars/Webinar%201%2C2018/CW18_Web1_Eng_Jan23.pdf">source</a>)</figcaption></figure><p>About 45 million people live on islands in the Caribbean Sea, with many more along its Central and South American coastlines. Geologically, the region centers on a small tectonic plate that’s active on every side. There are frequent small earthquakes and occasional large ones, like the magnitude 7.0 near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2010 — the volunteer response to that earthquake led to the formalization of the <a href="https://www.hotosm.org">Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team</a>.</p><p>Recent location data is critical for disaster preparedness and response. With up-to-date imagery and elevation data, coastal communities can monitor infrastructure, map efficient escape routes, designate staging areas, and flag new at-risk developments. Proactive efforts like these help create geo-infrastructure that could save lives during a crisis.</p><p>The data we’ve added today is beautiful open aerial imagery from IGN, the French National Geographic Institute, under their <a href="https://www.etalab.gouv.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/ETALAB-Licence-Ouverte-v2.0.pdf">Licence Ouverte</a>. (Guadeloupe and Martinique are <em>départments</em> of France, which incidentally makes them the largest outposts of the European Union in the Americas!)</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*D9FnGbX1TAiU8YUK.jpg" /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*eMTTqH9cgk8qi3QU.jpg" /><figcaption>Left: Grande-Anse beach, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe. Right: La Grande Soufrière volcano, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe. With a summit reaching 1,467 m, La Soufrière is the highest volcano of the Lesser Antilles chain. Its last major event happened around 1580. Click images to enlarge.</figcaption></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*QW1rirGeu68lYu9l.jpg" /></figure><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*CRV2yvHg5Xl_8Zci.jpg" /><figcaption>Left: Fort Napoléon, Iles des Saintes (“Islands of the Saints”), Guadeloupe. First named Fort Louis, it’s now a museum and rumored to be haunted the spirit of a young girl. Right: Les Trois-Îlets, Martinique Island. Click images to enlarge.</figcaption></figure><p>The data is now in mapbox.satellite, available for tracing in OpenStreetMap, and ready for everyday basemap use. Check out our <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/mapping/mapping-with-josm/">guides</a> to learn more about using imagery to add data to OpenStreetMap to contribute to disaster preparedness projects like Caribe Wave.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/vincent-sarago/">Vincent Sarago</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=e7872d979122" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/https-blog-mapbox-com-new-satellite-imagery-for-caribe-wave-2018-e7872d979122">New imagery for Caribe Wave 2018 available</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Apply for an Open Data Day mini-grant]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/apply-for-an-open-data-day-mini-grant-b7dce3ad2d53?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/b7dce3ad2d53</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[open-data]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[events]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Mon, 29 Jan 2018 21:02:38 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-01-29T21:02:37.668Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h4>Host a mapping event in your community</h4><p>By: <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/mikel-maron/"><em>Mikel Maron</em></a></p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*aaNuSBrrDK-sbUI_xYc3-Q.png" /></figure><p>Celebrate Open Data Day on March 3rd, and join or organize one of the dozens of <a href="http://opendataday.org/#map">events around the world</a>. We’re proud to support the <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2018/01/22/announcing-the-open-data-day-2018-mini-grants-scheme/">mini-grants program</a> to help local communities share the benefits of open data, particularly in <a href="http://www.data4sdgs.org/resources/open-mapping-sdgs">Open Mapping</a>.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*LWAHBwWW6r_vLiHs." /></figure><p>Open Mapping mini-grants can cover events engaging local OpenStreetMap communities, as well as events in partnership with government and nonprofit organizations. The events can be hands-on like mapping parties, workshops, and mapathons that share tools and teach techniques. They can also be more inspirational, generating new ideas to apply Open Mapping to civic engagement, public health, disaster response, urban issues, environment, or any other social impact.</p><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUhwNzG_naLEwJpN0AayJRnzOIuajIPn0EtMPqP_LlgF7MZQ/viewform">Apply for a mini-grant here</a>, and share updates on your events with the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&amp;vertical=default&amp;q=%23OpenDataDay&amp;src=typd">#OpenDataDay</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&amp;q=%23OpenMapping&amp;src=typd">#OpenMapping</a> hashtags. We’re excited to see the events come together on Open Data Day.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/mikel-maron/">Mikel Maron</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=b7dce3ad2d53" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/apply-for-an-open-data-day-mini-grant-b7dce3ad2d53">Apply for an Open Data Day mini-grant</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Open mapping for disasters and development]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/open-mapping-for-disasters-and-development-891a2c1565c4?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/891a2c1565c4</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[disaster-response]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[hotosm]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[community]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[team]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Wed, 13 Sep 2017 17:42:38 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2018-01-10T01:56:53.273Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/marena-brinkhurst/"><em>Marena Brinkhurst</em></a></p><p>This week, the 2017 <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/hot-summit-2017/">Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Summit</a>, co-hosted by <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/government-and-citizens-collaborate-to-map-canada-4d24d30d477c">Statistics Canada</a> in Ottawa, comes at an incredibly timely moment. We gather to take stock of the contributions of the HOT community, look to the future, and strengthen partnerships across the open mapping community.</p><p>Maps help residents and relief workers navigate the path to recovery after a disaster and anticipate future needs. In just the last two weeks, the need for up-to-date maps after a disaster has never been more apparent. After Hurricane <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/hurricane-harvey-recovery-and-relief-maps-e0688ef3a075">Harvey</a><a href="https://www.hotosm.org/updates/2017-09-09_hot_activates_for_three_disasters_hurricane_irma_mexico_earthquake_bangladesh">, Irma, the Bangladesh floods, and the earthquake in Mexico</a>, HOT and other collaborative spaces have been working together to provide critical data and maps for first responders and affected populations. They are creating real-time updates on what has changed on the ground. This includes U-flood tracking <a href="https://map.u-flood.com/houston/#11.15/29.7741/-95.5295">inundated roads in Houston</a>, and <a href="https://ccusa.github.io/Disaster_Vulnerability_Map/#8.96/29.5523/-95.0359">Catholic Charities USA</a> using their map to identify especially vulnerable populations. Our team also dove in and built a map <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00368/#9.38/29.7616/-95.2139">pin pointing hazards</a> in hurricane affected areas (<a href="https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00371/#7/26.314/-80.112">twice</a>) — chemical plants, refineries, landfills, and other locations that pose an environmental risk in flood conditions.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1000/0*zYf36LfVejw1bJhl.gif" /></figure><p>What are the next complex global challenges for the open mapping community? HOT is already engaging with social crises beyond disaster response, such as <a href="https://www.hotosm.org/updates/2017-07-20_from_the_map_to_the_field_hot_trains_msf_and_refugees_in_field_data_collection">training refugees to contribute to maps</a>. This is a way for refugees to connect to their new communities and support their communities back home. HOT and other open communities can help people caught in conflict and poverty, locally and globally. Ottawa is a perfect setting for this year’s Summit, given the leadership of the Canadian government’s humane and progressive response to refugee crises, and efforts by Statistics Canada to build a <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/government-and-citizens-collaborate-to-map-canada-4d24d30d477c">national, crowd-sourced buildings inventory in OSM</a>.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*kNOGBsUEjwH7t3Eg.jpg" /></figure><p>We remain <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/our-commitment-to-the-humanitarian-openstreetmap-team-46d1dce1b2ad">committed to HOT</a> and the amazing collaborations that grow from it — from companies like <a href="https://www.digitalglobe.com/opendata/all-events">DigitalGlobe sharing open imagery</a> for disaster mapping, to government agencies like <a href="https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/harvey/index.html">NOAA publishing detailed imagery</a>, to MSF and the Red Cross enabling humanitarian mapping everywhere with <a href="https://www.fastcodesign.com/90138077/a-mapping-interface-that-saves-lives">MapSwipe</a>. For Mapbox, partnering with open mapping communities let us quickly plug in, sync with first responders and volunteers, and focus on the concrete ways that we can effectively contribute, such as technical support to builders and subsidized accounts for <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/humanitarian/">humanitarian organizations</a>.</p><p>Let’s talk and figure out what’s next at the <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/hot-summit-2017/">HOT Summit</a>! Don’t miss Mikel’s presentation on ‘How a Company Collaborates with HOT’ on Thursday at 11:45am EST.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/marena-brinkhurst/">Marena Brinkhurst</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=891a2c1565c4" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/open-mapping-for-disasters-and-development-891a2c1565c4">Open mapping for disasters and development</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Exploring the world with Wikidata and OpenStreetMap]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/exploring-the-world-with-wikidata-and-openstreetmap-30f1bfe954d3?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/30f1bfe954d3</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[wikipedia]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[team]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[wikidata]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Thu, 10 Aug 2017 17:32:04 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2017-08-10T17:55:26.237Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/bharata-srinivasa/"><em>Bharata Srinivasa</em></a></p><p>We are excited to be at <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/wikimania-2017/">Wikimania 2017</a> to meet this incredible community, and exchange ideas on bringing together two amazing open data projects — Wikidata and OpenStreetMap.</p><p>Currently, there are more than 750,000 map features linked to Wikidata — twice the amount of what it was in December 2016 — and 926,000 features linked to Wikipedia in the OpenStreetMap database. That number continues to grow every minute.</p><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjsfiddle.net%2Fveber1bu%2Fshow%2F&amp;src=https%3A%2F%2Fjsfiddle.net%2Fveber1bu%2Fshow%2Fembedded%2F&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;schema=jsfiddle" width="600" height="400" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><a href="https://medium.com/media/c9b46951793558eaae47f35942c8fd04/href">https://medium.com/media/c9b46951793558eaae47f35942c8fd04/href</a></iframe><p>When <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page">Wikidata</a> and <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org">OpenStreetMap</a> work together, they create a powerful wealth of knowledge. This integration can <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Kartographer#External_data">power interactive maps on Wikipedia</a> and unlock a wide range of possibilities like <a href="https://mapbox.github.io/mapbox-gl-language/">translated world maps</a> or thematic maps using information crowdsourced from Wikidata.</p><p>In the map above, <a href="https://twitter.com/planemad">Arun</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/rasagy">Rasagy</a> demonstrate the power of this collaboration with an exploration of country names in various languages of the world.</p><p>The geographic shapes of countries are rendered from crowdsourced map data in OpenStreetMap and the corresponding language translations come from live querying the Wikidata entity. This is possible because the country feature on OpenStreetMap is linked to its matching Wikidata entity as an additional property. The lookup is done dynamically and the results improve over time as more Wikidata volunteers contribute country translations.</p><h4>Start contributing open data</h4><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*xLSMP3mfuwhyYP14jBegXg.png" /><figcaption>OpenStreetMap cities with linked Wikidata entries, and without (in red). View the <a href="https://bsrinivasa.github.io/city-wiki-in-osm-coverage/">full screen demo</a> here.</figcaption></figure><p>Take a look at this mapping guide to start linking more <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/PlaneMad/diary/40537">OpenStreetMap features to Wikidata</a> or <a href="https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjZuqb5oMrVAhXIto8KHVJdCQ8QFgglMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fwiki%2FWikidata%3ATours&amp;usg=AFQjCNErbn7WlpzaI-TG6laDvOz-RMrfyw">contribute a missing Wikidata translation</a>.</p><p>If you are attending <a href="https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania">Wikimania 2017</a>, join <a href="https://twitter.com/mikel">Mikel Maron</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/1ec5">Minh Nguyễn</a> for the hands on <a href="https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Mapathon!_Contribute_and_connect_OpenStreetMap_and_Wikipedia_using_Wikidata">mapathon</a> to connect OpenStreetMap and Wikidata, and interact with us during our lightning talk and poster presentations.</p><p>To learn more, read about our efforts to <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/scaling-openstreetmap-with-wikidata-knowledge-675d4495815f">scale OpenStreetMap with Wikidata knowledge</a> that brings the two amazing knowledge projects together and how Mapbox is using Wikidata to power various products and tools. Feel free to get in touch with me on <a href="https://twitter.com/bharatahs">Twitter</a> if you have ideas and suggestions for improving this process.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/bharata-srinivasa/">Bharata Srinivasa</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=30f1bfe954d3" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/exploring-the-world-with-wikidata-and-openstreetmap-30f1bfe954d3">Exploring the world with Wikidata and OpenStreetMap</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Fast traffic sign mapping with OpenStreetMap and Mapillary]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/fast-traffic-sign-mapping-with-openstreetmap-and-mapillary-9914943460fc?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/9914943460fc</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[product]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[id-editor]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Mon, 31 Jul 2017 13:16:00 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2017-07-31T13:38:30.736Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/bryan-housel/"><em>Bryan Housel</em></a></p><p>Mapping traffic signs on OpenStreetMap just got a lot faster. The latest version of OpenStreetMap’s iD map editor highlights features detected in Mapillary imagery directly in the map view, vastly speeding up the mapping process. This work is courtesy of my colleague <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/kushan-joshi/">Kushan Joshi</a> and leverages <a href="http://blog.mapillary.com/update/2016/09/27/semantic-segmentation-object-recognition.html">Mapillary’s machine learning based sign detection</a>.</p><p>This new functionality particularly aids mapping traffic signs like stop signs, turn restrictions, exit numbers, and destination signs — all data that means more accurate ETAs, better instructions, and ultimately less time waiting in traffic.</p><p>To get started, open the Map Data panel and click the checkboxes to show the “Photo Overlay” and “Traffic Sign” layers in iD.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*4GCQ0lBzU-DVRT_J.gif" /><figcaption>Mapillary detects more traffic signs in images now than ever before.</figcaption></figure><p>The latest version of iD released last week includes a feature built by my colleague <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/kushan-joshi/">Kushan Joshi</a>. Traffic sign “detections” are now highlighted on the image in the Mapillary viewer.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*GFnFD0RUdBclMU_I.gif" /><figcaption>New! Traffic signs are now highlighted in the Mapillary viewer.</figcaption></figure><h3>Stop Signs</h3><p>To add a stop sign, place a point along the road at the stop position, then choose the Stop Sign feature type. You should also check the direction of the road, as indicated by small triangles that are drawn along the road. Fill in the “Direction” field — “Forward” if the sign is for traffic driving in the same direction that the road is drawn, or “Backward” if the sign is for traffic driving in the opposite direction.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*7OYgfDe2qk5Wd84m.gif" /><figcaption>Add a point along a road and choose the “Stop Sign” feature type.</figcaption></figure><h3>Turn Restrictions</h3><p>To map a turn restriction, click on the junction point between the two roads. A turn restriction editor will appear in the sidebar. Select the road entering the intersection and then choose which turns are allowed or restricted.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*EyvNMBc6Ebk47ue9.gif" /><figcaption>iD’s built in turn restrictions editor makes adding this “No Left Turn” easy.</figcaption></figure><h3>Highway Exits</h3><p>To map a highway exit, select the junction node where the “link road” splits off from the main highway. Make sure the node is tagged as a “Motorway Junction / Exit” and add the exit number to the “Junction Number” field.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*E8lACDwNHBEuYhgC.gif" /><figcaption>Adding exit numbers to OpenStreetMap is important for navigation apps.</figcaption></figure><h3>Highway Destinations</h3><p>To map highway destinations, select the “link road” that splits off from the main highway. You will need to open the “All Tags” section in the sidebar and add the tags that describe the destinations that this link road leads to. When multiple destinations appear on a sign, you can separate them with a semicolon.</p><p>In the example below:<br>destination=Morristown;Sommervile— Destinations as they appear on the highway sign.<br>destination:ref=I 287 — Route numbers or shields that appear on the highway sign.<br>destination:ref:to=US 202;US 206— Use the :to suffix for routes where the sign says “To”. These routes are secondary destinations for the highway exit.</p><p>Check out the <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/mapping/mapping-for-navigation/adding-exit-and-destination-signs/">Mapbox mapping guide</a> to learn more about the tags used in highway exit and destination mapping.</p><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/976/0*OyJf7RGDazDFTj6I.gif" /></figure><p>Try editing OpenStreetMap in your town, and see how many traffic signs you can find. <a href="https://twitter.com/bhousel">Follow me on Twitter</a> for more tips on using street level imagery to improve OpenStreetMap.</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/bryan-housel/">Bryan Housel</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=9914943460fc" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/fast-traffic-sign-mapping-with-openstreetmap-and-mapillary-9914943460fc">Fast traffic sign mapping with OpenStreetMap and Mapillary</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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              <title><![CDATA[Maps, Mapbox, and State of the Map!]]></title>
              <link>https://blog.mapbox.com/maps-mapbox-and-state-of-the-map-7e7a6f196962?source=rss----c5e029442--openstreetmap</link>
              <guid isPermaLink="false">https://medium.com/p/7e7a6f196962</guid>
              <category><![CDATA[team]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[maps]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[community]]></category>
              <category><![CDATA[state-of-the-map]]></category>
              <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mapbox]]></dc:creator>
              <pubDate>Fri, 07 Jul 2017 21:36:02 GMT</pubDate>
              <atom:updated>2017-10-17T17:03:10.770Z</atom:updated>
              <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By: </em><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/jinal-foflia/"><em>Jinal Foflia</em></a></p><p>The strength of OpenStreetMap is in the relationships — both online and in person. State of the Map conferences celebrate the essence of these communities that are so integral to OpenStreetMap. We love being a part of this community and cannot wait to connect with new and familiar friends around the globe at the many OpenStreetMap events happening this year.</p><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjsfiddle.net%2Fdsd1wg2v%2Fshow%2F&amp;src=https%3A%2F%2Fjsfiddle.net%2Fdsd1wg2v%2Fshow%2Fembedded%2F&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;schema=jsfiddle" width="600" height="400" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><a href="https://medium.com/media/ea22ea929a81f6209ced1c2b5864bee1/href">https://medium.com/media/ea22ea929a81f6209ced1c2b5864bee1/href</a></iframe><p><strong>Take a look at the very full calendar for this year:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>State of the Map France</strong>, happened in Avignon, France from <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_France_2017">June 2nd — June 4th</a>. The <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/OSMFrance">videos</a> from the conference are online!</li><li><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/sotm-africa-2017/"><strong>State of the Map, Africa</strong></a><strong>,</strong> the first event for all African mappers and OpenStreetMap users, happens in Kampala, Uganda from <a href="https://sotmafrica.org/">July 8th — July 10th</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/sotm-2017/"><strong>State of the Map</strong></a>, the global OpenStreetMap gathering in Fukushima, Japan from <a href="http://2017.stateofthemap.org/">August 18th — August 20th</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/hot-summit-2017/"><strong>Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Summit</strong></a> takes place in Ottawa, Canada on <a href="http://summit.hotosm.org/">September 14 &amp; 15</a>. Proposals for talks are accepted until <a href="https://humanitarian-openstreetmap-team.forms.fm/hot-summit-2017">July 14</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/sotm-asia-2017/"><strong>State of the Map Asia</strong></a> is in Kathmandu, Nepal from <a href="http://stateofthemap.asia/">September 23rd — September 24th</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/sotm-us-2017/"><strong>State of the Map US</strong></a>, the annual US community conference in Boulder, Colorado from <a href="https://www.openstreetmap.us/2017/01/sotmus-2017-announcement/">October 19th — October 22nd</a>. Get your talk proposals in before <a href="https://2017.stateofthemap.us/">July 31</a>!</li><li><strong>FOSS4G and State of the Map Argentina</strong>, in Buenos Aires, Argentina from <a href="http://www.osgeo.org/node/1747">October 23rd — October 28th</a></li><li><strong>State of the Map Latin America</strong>, regional conference in Lima, Peru from <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_Latam_2017">November 29th to December 2nd</a></li></ul><p>Follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/mapbox">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mapbox">Facebook</a>, or keep an eye out on our <a href="https://www.mapbox.com/events/">events page</a> to connect with our team at these conferences. Happy mapping!</p><p><a href="https://www.mapbox.com/about/team/jinal-foflia/">Jinal Foflia</a></p><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=7e7a6f196962" width="1" height="1"><hr><p><a href="https://blog.mapbox.com/maps-mapbox-and-state-of-the-map-7e7a6f196962">Maps, Mapbox, and State of the Map!</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.mapbox.com">Points of interest</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>]]></content:encoded>
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title: Richard Fairhurst
url: http://blog.systemed.net/
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  Blog of Richard Fairhurst: editor, http://cycle.travel; cartographer, writer, developer and canal person.

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      <title>Système D</title>
      <link>http://blog.systemed.net/</link>
      <description>Blog of Richard Fairhurst: editor, http://cycle.travel; cartographer, writer, developer and canal person.</description>
      <item>
        <title>What OpenStreetMap can be.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/15</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;Over the past two years, the biggest buzz among the geo chatterati has been Justin O’Beirne’s meticulously argued (albeit bizarrely formatted) feature-by-feature comparisons of Google and Apple Maps: their design choices, their data, their production processes.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What fascinates me is how the comparison is implicitly phrased. Apple Maps is fighting on Google Maps’ turf, and Justin O’Beirne never questions that. He asks “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/&quot;&gt;How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps?&lt;/a&gt;”. It implies the same direction of travel. They’re going the same place, but Google is getting there quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, OpenStreetMap goes its own way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most OSM commentary focuses on unimportant minutiae (&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/&quot;&gt;layers, for goodness’ sake&lt;/a&gt;, as if it’s still 2004) without seeking to examine what makes OSM unique—and whether that’s still relevant in a rapidly changing market. Could OSM become a dead-end curio while Google, Apple, and an increasingly self-sufficient Mapbox hare off in another, common direction?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSM’s continuing differentiation from Google/Apple boils down to two points.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;strong&gt;a non-commercial imperative&lt;/strong&gt;. Google and Apple (and Mapbox, TomTom, HERE) are beholden to their shareholders and investors. They do what makes them money, which means car navigation. (Once human-controlled, now, increasingly, self-guided. When people ask “How far ahead of Apple is Google Maps?”, what they usually mean is “Who will get to self-driving cars first?”)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSM, however, isn’t ruled by shareholder value, but by the preoccupations of its contributor base. (We’ll come onto that demographic later.) Whether that’s a good thing depends on what you want from a map. But it’s clearly a point of differentation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, &lt;strong&gt;ground truthed local knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;. Surveying by locals is the gold standard of OSM, building a rich, intricate compilation of contributors’ preoccupations. The painstaking human curation of areas and topics remains unique to OSM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Neither of these are under threat from Google/Apple. Outsourced quick-fire digitisation of Street View-type imagery in cheap labour countries doesn’t give you this. Nor does image recognition. OSM’s points of differentation remain clear. In OSM’s early days, commentators used the phrase “democratising mapmaking”, and it remains true. You choose what to map; and you choose how to use the map. You &lt;em&gt;participate&lt;/em&gt;. Other maps are a one-way street: sure, you can contribute (actively through map corrections, or passively through using a mobile app that phones home), but the provider chooses what you get back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So OSM becomes &lt;strong&gt;a fractal of local maps&lt;/strong&gt;. The closer you look, the more hidden detail unfolds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Rethink the map on openstreetmap.org&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;We always say OSM is about the data, not the map. But that’s because we already &lt;em&gt;get it&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any pro-OSM thread on Reddit, Hacker News or elsewhere quickly descends into “but openstreetmap.org looks pig-ugly” / “but when I type my street address into openstreetmap.org it’s not found” / “but openstreetmap.org doesn’t have live traffic”. We know that’s missing the point, that osm.org is just a testbed for OpenStreetMap proper, the data that lets you solve these problems. We understand OSM’s direction of travel. Neophytes don’t. They see a single eccentric-looking (albeit lovely), purplish map they can edit. (That’s why everyone’s first edit is adding a footpath with  &lt;em&gt;name=Footpath&lt;/em&gt; or somesuch, thinking only about how it appears on osm.org.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look back to the inflection points for OSM’s growth. Sometimes they come when it gets easier to contribute to OSM: Potlatch 1, Potlatch 2, iD, maps.me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But, more often, they come when contributors’ work becomes more immediately visible. The first was when we went from weekly Mapnik updates to near-instant changes. Later, getting OSM on your handheld Garmin, or after that on your smartphone. Increasingly, it’s high-profile sites switching to OSM; both Strava and Pokemon Go resulted in massive bumps in contributor numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The feedback loop is important. Visualisation is important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enter vector tiles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vector tiles are &lt;strong&gt;the ‘fractal of local maps’ made flesh&lt;/strong&gt;. One dataset, a thousand visualisations. The server sends the rich, raw data; the client slices and dices and presents it any way you choose. Bike map, walking map, skiing map? Kids’ map, salesman’s map, retired globe-trotter’s map? Art deco map, pop art map, antique map? All those; and a thousand you and I have never imagined.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moving to restylable vector tiles on openstreetmap.org would explain OSM’s direction of travel more than a year of Reddit and HN comments could ever do. In the words of &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.osm.org/&quot;&gt;OSM’s mission statement since 2004&lt;/a&gt;, “maps you can use in creative, productive or unexpected ways”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What might this look like? Think of a ‘style explorer’. Think of a new Design tab. Think of designing a style by starting with a bare-bones template then adding ‘playground’ and ‘park’ and ‘zoo’ and ‘railway’ and ‘dinosaur museum’ (to enumerate my two year old’s current obsessions). Think of storing styles against your user account and forking others’. By exposing OSM’s local, human data, we create a thousand new inflection points for the project to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let’s explore this a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Meeting people where they are&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;People contribute to OpenStreetMap when it’s relevant to them. Outside pure geekdom, cyclists were the first group to embrace OSM. It started with two speculative punts on creating maps relevant to cyclists (OpenCycleMap, of course, and mkgmap which makes Garmin maps), plus a small amount of seed data: I still grin recalling OpenCycleMap’s creator, Andy Allan, &lt;a href=&quot;https://vimeo.com/6623643&quot;&gt;commentating&lt;/a&gt; (at the second OSM conference) on an animation of OpenCycleMap’s first year “and here you can see where Richard Fairhurst decided to cycle across Wales”. Now, in 2018, every cyclist uses OSM: Strava, Garmin themselves (...and may I mention &lt;a href=&quot;https://cycle.travel/map&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt;?).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The humanitarian cause is the other stand-out. Thousands of people have attended mapathons or slaved over remotely assigned ‘tasks’ in the cause of humanitarian mapping. Most of them will never visit Haiti or Kibera. But they believe in the cause, and they gain intrinsic reward from helping. Again, it’s relevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can do all the outreach you want and agonise over conduct and tone. It’s all good, necessary even, and it’s all worthwhile. But if the map isn’t relevant, no-one will stay. The path to diversity in OSM is by building more OpenCycleMaps.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which is exactly what vector tiles give us.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You know what I’d like as the father of a toddler? A map of playgrounds. Every family would. The answer is already there, hidden in OSM’s data. Maybe one day someone will build a Playground Finder app. But we can shortcut the “maybe” by baking that into openstreetmap.org.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And then families start adding missing playgrounds; and OSM’s contributor base becomes that little bit more diverse. I started by describing OSM’s fractal of local maps as “an intricate compilation of contributors’ preoccupations”. A restylable vector map makes space for more preoccupations, not just those sanctioned by the maintainers of one stylesheet; and by welcoming more preoccupations, we welcome more, diverse contributors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Eliminating the drudge work&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no glory in clicking a mouse. OSM’s strength is ground-truthed local knowledge. It’s not magically better because each point has been positioned by hand. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Technology moves on. In 2004 we didn’t have high-res global imagery nor anything but the most rudimentary handheld surveying devices. Now we do, and no-one would seek to go back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In five years’ time, iD (or its successor) will trace the geometry for you. Mobile apps which recognise shapes from the camera will see a sign and suggest that a speed limit should be tagged at this point. Sensor data or imagery diffing will suggest you might want to go and survey the new road a mile from your house.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This isn’t the boring old “survey vs import” argument. This is about using technology to make contributing local knowledge easier and faster. And, again, by doing that we encourage a more diverse contributor base—broadening beyond people with lots of spare time and computer skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All of this circles back to the same vision. A fractal of local maps; a map for every human, not just those who drive cars; a map that anyone can contribute to, and then visualise in the way they choose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Getting underway&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;This vision, and this article, have been brewing for a year now. I’ve jotted down disconnected paragraphs in spare moments on trains, in cafes and pubs, occasionally dropping comments on Github issues, forums, Twitter. But now is the time to move forward.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There’s a wide understanding that vector rendering is the next challenge for openstreetmap.org. I’m anxious we should get it right, just as Steve Coast got the concept of OpenStreetMap right, I got the UI of Potlatch (mostly) right, Tom Hughes and Grant Slater have consistently got OSM’s scalability right. This will be another of those decisions which will determine OSM’s direction of travel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Treating it as simply a back-end change for the existing (lovely, eccentric, purplish) &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto&quot;&gt;openstreetmap-carto style&lt;/a&gt; would be a business-as-usual solution. The maps would be a bit sharper, a bit faster to load. We might manage a few worthy side-wins around internationalised placenames. But it won’t move the needle for OSM. This will.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This weekend (28-30 July 2018) is the State of the Map conference in Milan. I’ll be hosting an informal Birds of a Feather session on moving openstreetmap.org towards vector tiles at 16.00 on Sunday afternoon in room S.1.6 - come along!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2018 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2018-07-27T08:00:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Adventures with the LG 360 Cam.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/14</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;I’ve recently purchased an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lg.com/uk/lg-friends/lg-LGR105&quot;&gt;LG 360 Cam&lt;/a&gt;, a cute little 360° camera that fits in your pocket and takes serviceable spherical panoramas. I’m hoping to use it for occasional&amp;#160;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openstreetview.org/map/&quot;&gt;OpenStreetView&lt;/a&gt; surveying, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt; photography, and a couple of other projects. This post is a placeholder for notes and observations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Using the LG 360 Cam with an iPhone 5C&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a display of WTFery that will only be a surprise to those who have never tried to use an Apple product with the output of any major consumer electronics manufacturer, the 360 Cam has one little gotcha that they don’t tell you about.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since the camera has no internal display, GPS, or really anything other than two lenses and a trigger button, it’s really only useful in conjunction with the accompanying LG app. In theory this is available for iOS and Android. In practice… it’s only available for &lt;em&gt;64-bit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#160;iOS. The app won’t install on an iPhone 5C or 5. Because downloading and viewing photos requires 64-bit &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_55&quot;&gt;Monster Power&lt;/a&gt;, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Happily, there is a solution, even though it sticks in my open craw a little.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, you need to tell the camera to turn the Wi-Fi on. You can do this (when the device is already on) by double-clicking the shutter and power buttons &lt;em&gt;at the same time&lt;/em&gt;. A little blue light will flash. (The LG app does this by connecting through Bluetooth Low Energy, and you can simulate this using the&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lightblue-bluetooth-low-energy/id557428110?mt=8&quot;&gt;LightBlue Explorer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&amp;#160;iPhone app.)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;Second, connect to the camera via Settings &amp;gt; Wi-Fi. The wifi network name ends ‘.OSC’ (for Open Spherical Camera) and the password is ‘00’ followed by the last 6 digits of the network name… which are also the last 6 digits of the serial number. This, obviously, disconnects your usual Internet connection.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;Then use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/google-street-view/id904418768?mt=8&quot;&gt;Google Street View&lt;/a&gt; iOS app. Yeah, I know, I know. But you don’t have to upload your photos to Google.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Tue, 02 Aug 2016 09:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2016-08-02T09:00:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Introducing Tilemaker: vector tiles without the stack</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/13</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Vector tiles are the breakthrough technology for OpenStreetMap right now – enabling in-device rendering, fast style prototyping, full interactivity, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://mapzen.com/projects/tangram&quot;&gt;really&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-gl-js/&quot;&gt;awesome&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-gl/&quot;&gt;tech&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-gl-js-0-8-1/&quot;&gt;demos&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;The manifesto was set out compellingly &lt;a href=&quot;http://mike.teczno.com/notes/postgreslessness-mapnik-vectiles.html&quot;&gt;by Michal Migurski in 2013&lt;/a&gt;, who wrote of “the liberty of postgreslessness”:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“Data is one of OpenStreetMap’s biggest pain points. The latest planet file is 27GB, and getting OSM into the Postgres database can be a long and winding road… [vector tiles] offer a compelling way to use Mapnik or TileMill with no local datastore.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two years down the line, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mike.teczno.com/notes/sotmus-2015-new-york.html&quot;&gt;he reviews the state of the art&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“It feels a bit like OSM raster rendering in 2006/07, when Mapnik was still impossible to install but a growing group of people like Dane were nudging it forward into general accessibility. I give vector tiles and vector rendering another 1-2 years before it tips from weird research and supervised, commercial deployment into wide use and hacking.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can we fast forward those “1-2 years”?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Today, most vector tile implementations are backed up by a Postgres database, because the vector tiles have to get their source data from somewhere. They are typically connected via a maze of twisty little NodeJS modules, all alike, and it's fair to say that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoLJHgqDCzc&amp;amp;t=10m18s&quot;&gt;NodeJS isn’t everyone's cup of tea&lt;/a&gt;. Between them, they conspire to make vector tiles less hackable for the independent cartographer or developer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So I've written &lt;a href=&quot;http://github.com/systemed/tilemaker&quot;&gt;Tilemaker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tilemaker aims to make creating vector tiles as easy as “&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/push-button-receive-bacon&quot;&gt;push button, receive bacon&lt;/a&gt;”. It's a command-line tool which takes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.geofabrik.de/&quot;&gt;.pbf planet extract&lt;/a&gt; and makes vector tiles from it. There's no database, no stack.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You write your tile recipe in Lua, the same scripting language used by OSRM and osm2pgsql. For each OSM node or way, your script &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker/blob/master/process.lua&quot;&gt;looks at its tags&lt;/a&gt; and says &quot;put it in the railway layer&quot; or &quot;put it in the cycleway layer&quot;. Add a short &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker/blob/master/config.json&quot;&gt;JSON config file&lt;/a&gt;, and you're done:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;tilemaker --output=test.mbtiles liechtenstein.osm.pbf&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;That’s all there is to it. One command line, instant vector tiles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Liechtenstein, OpenStreetMap's canonical small country, tiles are generated in around three seconds using the default recipe on a 2010 Mac mini. For London, it takes around two minutes, for Switzerland, 10 minutes (so I’m told!). RAM requirements mean it won't scale to whole continents or the full planet, but that's not the aim – for continually-updated worldwide data in production, you should choose a friendly &lt;a href=&quot;http://thunderforest.com/lightning/&quot;&gt;vector tiles provider&lt;/a&gt;. Tilemaker simply allows you to create tiles to your own recipe, to hack and build community projects on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker&quot;&gt;download Tilemaker from GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. It'll build on OS X, Ubuntu and Fedora. &lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2015 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2015-06-29T14:00:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Realpolitik and the OpenStreetMap licence.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/12</link>
        <description>&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The licence will stay as ODbL.&lt;/strong&gt; Moving to a different licence requires a two-thirds majority of active OSM contributors. Active OSM contributors do not want to change the licence. Even a cursory reading of any comments section shows this.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To achieve change, you need skin in the game.&lt;/strong&gt; For 10 years the “geo industry” has been telling OSM that what it does is impossible/misguided/wrong. For 10 years OSM has been disproving them. OSM contributors are consequently very sceptical when others tell them what’s best for them. Change comes from within. If you want people to listen, burnish your OSM credentials first.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don’t hyperbolise.&lt;/strong&gt; “Drop ODbL” is not achievable, see 1. “Make ODbL work for geocoding” may be achievable. If you mean the latter but say the former, you’ll get nowhere. (Incidentally, if you really mean “drop share-alike” not “drop ODbL”, say so. You’ll still get nowhere.)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ODbL is a young licence.&lt;/strong&gt; ODbL is on version 1.0. Creative Commons are on 4.0 right now. No-one expected 1.0 to be perfectly future-proofed, but an ODbL 1.1 or 1.5 or 2.0 might fix your issue. Propose good legalese and a rationale that applies beyond OSM, and work openly. It’s very doable.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Make it so” doesn’t work for licences.&lt;/strong&gt; Your “good legalese” needs to be more sophisticated than “we declare that geocoding is magically not subject to share-alike”. I mean, come on.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OSM might just not be for you.&lt;/strong&gt; OSM has always intended to reshape the geo industry. It expects the industry to fit around it, not the other way round. There are plenty of businesses, from one-woman cartography shops up to Apple, who are making money from OSM. If you can’t, maybe you need to change your business model rather than expecting OSM to change for you.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further reading.&lt;/strong&gt; Gary Gale &lt;a href=&quot;http://geohipster.com/2015/04/27/gary-gale-dear-osm-its-time-to-get-your-finger-out/&quot;&gt;marvellously introduces British slang&lt;/a&gt; to the Americans. Alex Barth on “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221&quot;&gt;let’s drop share-alike&lt;/a&gt;”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Footnote.&lt;/strong&gt; As is reasonably well attested I’m a supporter of permissive, non-share-alike licences, and have been consistently so throughout the lifetime of OSM. This posting isn’t about my personal opinion: it’s intended as factual observations on what’s required to achieve change. It’s not intended as a direct response to Gary or Alex’s posts (and indeed not all the points are applicable to them), or any other posts in particular, but to the wider conversation.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2015 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2015-04-28T10:30:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>OpenStreetMap ten years on, and why it's time for a fresh slate.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/11</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;I've been involved in OpenStreetMap for almost ten years now. &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2004-November/000111.html&quot;&gt;22nd November is my OSM birthday&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Message 000111. Right now talk@ is up to 71235, never mind the other lists. I should have a birthday (mapping) party with &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cake&quot;&gt;cake&lt;/a&gt; and we can all go to the Rose &amp;amp; Crown, get drunk, come back and write intemperate mailing list postings. Maybe not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSM has changed my life, and my outlook, in several ways. One is realising that a small number of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, without any hope of a fast buck - which is a noble idea we all have in our 20s but this was the first real-life proof, to me, that it really does work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The other, perhaps more important, is: it's down to you. If you want change, change things. In 2005 we expressed this by demanding action, not words, from anyone who said 'OSM should do it like this' on the lists. The word 'should' was a red rag to us back then.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In time the word 'do-ocracy' was coined. But the other half of the do-ocracy equation has never received enough credit. It's not just that &quot;actions speak louder than words&quot;; it's that &quot;we trust you to carry out the actions&quot;. OSM doesn't have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/mapmaker/intl/en_ALL/mapfiles/s/guidelines.html&quot;&gt;moderation system&lt;/a&gt; for edits. Site improvements don't have to go through five board committees. It's OSM. You're a contributor. You've given us your time. We trust you. Do great things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That, more than anything, is why OSM works. We value, and trust, our contributors. Every one of them. OSM is 'do great things' multiplied by ten thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The slight wrinkle is that this only gets you 95% of the way there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 95% is astonishing. The 95% is mapping large parts of the world to ridiculous levels of detail. We are by most metrics the best available map of Germany, the UK, increasingly France, Russia and the urban US, and a hundred places I don't even know about. (I made this comment elsewhere. I was immediately picked up by a Belgian mapper, Marc, saying &quot;hey, what about us?&quot;. He was right. I didn't know. That's how far we have come.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 95% is running the most crazily lean, efficient hardware setup, constantly reinventing: our API went from plain-old-Ruby to Rails to C++, our tile servers from monolithic to distributed, our database from MySQL to Postgres, our UI from entirely serverside to largely clientside. The 95% is an ecosystem of renderers and routers and, dare I admit it, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://josm.openstreetmap.de/&quot;&gt;sleekest desktop map data editor&lt;/a&gt; there is and its universe of amazing plugins. (It begins with J. Don't make me say the name.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So if I talk about the 5% that do-ocracy doesn't accomplish, that's no slur on the OSM community. Our 5% is Wikipedia's 30% and Google's 95%. We do more, ourselves, better, than anyone else. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rewind to 2012. It was pretty clear we needed a new default editor on osm.org. Potlatch 2 still worked, but Flash Player was already (rightly) on the way out, and the six-year-old Potlatch user interface - initially designed for moderately clued-up users working on a blank canvas back in 2006 - was confusing for the newbies attracted by the explosion of public interest in OSM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was a 5% problem. We needed a new beginners' editor, but no-one was clamouring to write it. The 95% of experienced OSMers, understandably, wanted to work on JOSM plugins for experienced OSMers. I &lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2012-July/025230.html&quot;&gt;tentatively started work&lt;/a&gt; on a newbie-friendly JavaScript editor called iD (I'm terrible at naming software) but I was pretty burned out on OSM development at the time and only got so far.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Happily, in this case, there was a Fairy Godmother in the shape of the Knight Foundation and Mapbox. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/knight-invests-openstreetmap/&quot;&gt;Knight Foundation funded Mapbox&lt;/a&gt; to, among others, rebuild and complete iD. As part of this some incredibly skilled JavaScript developers and designers got to work on it. I don't think the outcome could have been any better, and it continues to delight me right now: while we're pointlessly beating seven shades out of each other on the mailing lists, &quot;osmbot: [osm-website|master|John Firebaugh] Update to iD v1.6.1&quot; has just flashed up on IRC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;iD is how it ought to work. iD isn't telling the 95% how to map or what to map. It isn't saying &quot;Mapbox want turn restrictions, therefore the osm.org default will be devoted to mapping turn restrictions&quot;. It's simply a 5% intervention, a new tool which no-one else was writing, to increase the 95% of do-ers, to bring us more contributors. The effort in building it will benefit us many times over.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But we can't always expect a Fairy Godmother to appear. We struck lucky in this one case. There are plenty of places where we haven't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can recite a few of them. We have &lt;a href=&quot;https://fnd.io/#/us/search?mediaType=all&amp;amp;term=official%20openstreetmap&quot;&gt;very little mobile presence&lt;/a&gt;, even though smartphones are ideal surveying devices; a 5% intervention here would bring so many more people to our 95%. Diversity is almost becoming a hackneyed word in OSM but let's restate the truth of it; a 5% intervention would make sure that our 95% of do-ers grows to include people from poorer, less white, less educated backgrounds, with a real, practical effect for OSM. As well as having the best map of the beautiful &lt;a href=&quot;http://opencyclemap.org/?zoom=13&amp;amp;lat=51.87973&amp;amp;lon=-3.44302&amp;amp;layers=00B00&quot;&gt;Brecon Beacons&lt;/a&gt;, we can have the best map of the deprived &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.7599/-3.3746&amp;amp;layers=Q&quot;&gt;Gurnos Estate&lt;/a&gt; 10 miles to the south. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is what the OpenStreetMap Foundation is here for: to do the 5% that contributors can't, the 5% that magnifies all our efforts. To be the Fairy Godmother.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was once described as &quot;supporting but not controlling the project&quot;. Sometimes that gets interpreted as &quot;doing the minimum&quot;, just providing the legal and financial framework. It's much more than that. OSMF's job is to grow and help our amazing community so it can do more amazing things... things that it couldn't otherwise do. OSMF is here to facilitate what isn't happening, and get the hell out of the way of the community for everything else.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Never go back&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;With my 10th OSM birthday coming up, I've been involved in OSM almost as long as the founder Steve Coast. Like Steve, I've messed up countless times over those 10 years and have learned a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the things I've learned is: never go back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no point in me writing Potlatch 3. Nor in scanning a second set of historic maps. Nor in incessantly arguing for another licence change, nor returning to the board, nor running the Communications Working Group again. Was I the best placed person to do those things then? Maybe yes; more likely I was the one who just happened to have that bee in my bonnet at the time. Does that make me better qualified to do them today than all the new contributors? Absolutely not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Never revisit the past, that's dangerous. You know, move on.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSMF is currently going through one of its periodic bouts of blood-letting. To Steve, Henk, Frederik, all still involved in one way or another, I would say: our time on the Foundation is past. We have been there, seen it, done it. We think we know what needs to happen; we might be right in our own little ways; but that doesn't matter. We are repeating our old wisdoms rather than trusting in the next generation. We are bed-blockers when Martijn and Christian and Kathleen and Ilya and Alex - and many others I don't know about - should be given the chance to take OSM forward rather than simply slaving away on local chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Let's have a fresh slate in three months, with every vacancy up for election. Give people the time to properly articulate their vision for OSM rather than this frenzied, melodramatic shouting match. Give people a chance to commit to being part of the Foundation that takes OSM on to still greater things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Postscript&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I'd like to say a word in praise of Simon Poole and Frederik Ramm. There have been a lot of words spilled on keyboards in recent days. It's easy to get hung up on tone or perception and, conversely, it's easy to speak our minds without thinking how it'll be perceived. But over the past few years, what Simon and Frederik have done, in a time of great change for OSM, is kept us anchored to the 95%. I really hope the next board will do a better job of providing the 5% than previous boards have done. But I also hope it has people like Simon and Frederik on it to ensure we recognise and support the 95%, the contributors who make OSM amazing.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:43:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2014-10-24T09:43:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>An ingenious vintage German cycle map.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/10</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;We cycled the Swiss part of the Rhine Cycleway last week, with our &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bikefriday.com/bicycles/touring/1248&quot;&gt;folding&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://airnimal.eu/products/chameleon/performance-sport/&quot;&gt;bikes&lt;/a&gt; neatly stowed in suitcases for the flight. A combination of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (natch), the Cicerone guide, and the excellent &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/mapout/id477094081?l=en&amp;amp;mt=8&quot;&gt;MapOut&lt;/a&gt; app guided us safely along the way: a very modern combination of mapping styles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wandering around Zürich, waiting for our flight home, I was intrigued by this cycle map in the window of a (closed) antiquarian bookstore:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/strassenprofilkarte_1.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And if that isn’t clear enough from the pic snatched through a window, here’s a better excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ak-ansichtskarten.de/shop/ak/46/back4684588/Rueckseite-Deutsche-Strassenprofilkarte-fuer-Radfahrer-Strassburg-und-Umgebung-Naumann-s-Fahrraeder-Seidel-Naumann-Dresden.jpg&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; I found online:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/strassenprofilkarte_2.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On major climbs, rather than strictly following the two-dimensional curves of the route as a conventional map would do, the map shows a miniature gradient profile for that particular hill.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bending geometry to show a subjective view of space is nothing unusual. The Tube map (and its many imitators) famously do it, as do the one-dimensional strip maps that Laurence Penney has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/blog/misc/one-dimensional-maps/&quot;&gt;lovingly curated&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#160;(and, indeed, one of Laurence’s maps has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youshouldliketypetoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/one-dimensional-maps-14.jpg&quot;&gt;passing resemblance&lt;/a&gt; to these German sheets). But I’ve never seen quite this approach taken before. It’s a recognition that – just as distance is immaterial to the Tube passenger – to the cyclist, hills are as much part of the ‘distance travelled’ as are the ticking miles on the cycle computer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not that the Radfahrer in question would have had cycle computers, of course. There appear to have been 80 of these sheets, published by&amp;#160;Mittelbach's Verlag of Leipzig with the co-operation and support of the national German cycling organisations &lt;em&gt;(unter Mitwirkung der Gauverbände des Deutschen Radfahrerbundes und der Konsulate der Allgemeinen Radfahrer-Union)&lt;/em&gt;. They seem to date from the beginning of the 20th century, and are not yet collectable, if the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Deutsche-Strassenprofilkarte-Radfahrer-Mitwirkung-Gauverb%C3%A4nde-Deutschen/6461038791/bd&quot;&gt;prices on Abebooks&lt;/a&gt; are anything to go by.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And in one of those curious coincidences…&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I originally finished this post with “&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;I don’t expect to see a revival any day soon”, but the day after I posted this, Sustrans Midlands retweeted a link to &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Lunto_Sustrans/status/496934542880833536&quot;&gt;exactly such a map&lt;/a&gt;. This ‘Accessible Map’ of Queenstown, New Zealand, was particularly intended for wheelchair users and other people who find steep slopes challenging:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/modern_elevation_map.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;You can download the full map as a PDF from drcqueenstown.co.nz. The cartographer, Toby Eglesfield, has also written an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tobyeglesfield.com/a-map-showing-the-steepness-of-streets/&quot;&gt;extensive, well-illustrated blog post&lt;/a&gt; explaining the design choices he made – and&amp;#160;in the comments, two people raise the idea of generating such a map from OpenStreetMap data. Now wouldn’t that be an interesting challenge…&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2014 21:37:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2014-08-05T21:37:00+02:00</dc:date>
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        <title>Normalising OpenStreetMap tag ambiguities by location.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/9</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the most interesting questions posed by a talk at today’s State of the Map EU was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sotm-eu.org/en/slots/26&quot;&gt;“Is OpenStreetMap a world map or a set of regional maps?”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regional (and sub-regional) differences in tagging are one of the challenges I’ve faced while building out &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;’s coverage to Western Europe. As a simple example, &lt;em&gt;highway=track&lt;/em&gt; (on its own) on the European mainland generally means somewhere you can cycle; in Britain, it’s usually a private farm track.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To fix this, I use a two-stage approach. First, while importing with osm2pgsql, I use a &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/blob/master/README_lua.md&quot;&gt;Lua tag transform script&lt;/a&gt; to mark that this is an ambiguous tag. For example, if &lt;em&gt;highway=track&lt;/em&gt; and there’s no conclusive bike access tags, the Lua script sets a special &lt;em&gt;bicycle=unsure&lt;/em&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then, after import is complete, I run a series of PostGIS UPDATEs to resolve these tags by location:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;UPDATE planet_osm_line SET highway='footway'&lt;br /&gt;   WHERE bicycle='unsure'&lt;br /&gt;     AND ST_Contains(ST_Transform(ST_GeomFromText('POLYGON((2.7905 51.7542, 
           -0.0659 50.1768, -11.4697 48.8213, -10.9204 61.1432, 2.3950 61.2596, 
           2.7905 51.7542))',4326),900913),way)&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other words, resolve ‘unsure’ tags within the UK as ‘footway, no bike access’. Strictly speaking the Lua step isn’t necessary: you could just run a PostGIS query for a particular combination of tags, especially if you’ve imported the full tag set with hstore. However, Lua gives us a convenient way to unify equivalent values (for example, &lt;em&gt;bicycle=yes/permissive/true/1/designated&lt;/em&gt;), and in practice it’s easier to parse the many possibilities here than in a WHERE clause.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Country polygons, as with so much OSM-based goodness, are available from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.geofabrik.de/&quot;&gt;Geofabrik download site&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This can also be used to make a best guess for ambiguous tag values. For example, if a cycleway is tagged &lt;em&gt;highway=path, bicycle=yes&lt;/em&gt; and nothing else, what surface might it have?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a rule of thumb, I say “if it’s in a town, it’s probably asphalt; if it’s in the countryside, it’s probably unsurfaced”. This, again, can be resolved with a post-import PostGIS update, by comparing against a set of built-up area polygons. First of all, because I’ll be using this information to resolve several ambiguities, I set an “in town?” boolean for any ways within these polygons:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;UPDATE planet_osm_line SET in_town=true FROM dlua 
   WHERE ST_Contains(built_up.the_geom,way) AND built_up.large=true&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;(where &lt;em&gt;built_up.large&lt;/em&gt; is a boolean for built-up areas of a certain size)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then an update for any ambiguous ways based on this:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;UPDATE planet_osm_line SET highway='cycleway' WHERE highway='cycle_unsure' AND in_town&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you can’t fix every single ambiguity in three queries. For every ambiguity and every regional difference, you need a new query, a few new lines of Lua. But it’s a reasonably fast and efficient method of moving 95% of the way from chaotic source data towards a understandable, normalised map.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Doing this with a diff-updated database is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I’m available for OpenStreetMap consulting and development; &lt;a href=&quot;http://systemed.net/openstreetmap/&quot;&gt;find out more and contact me&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2014-06-14T16:40:00+02:00</dc:date>
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        <title>Building cycle.travel’s bike directions with OSRM.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/8</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;Last month, I took the wraps off &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the everyday cycling website I’ve been working on since leaving &lt;em&gt;Waterways World&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/cycle_travel.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the major features is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/map&quot;&gt;bike-friendly journey planner&lt;/a&gt;. That’s not a new thing, of course: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyclestreets.net/&quot;&gt;CycleStreets&lt;/a&gt; has blazed a trail for many years and does a superb job of finding good, reliable routes from OpenStreetMap data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt; takes a different approach. Rather than CycleStreets’ three journey options, it provides only one, but allows you to drag the route (Google-style) until it meets your needs. In that way, it offers a mix between a detailed bike-friendly journey planner and a route drawing tool like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapmyride.com/&quot;&gt;MapMyRide&lt;/a&gt;. And this is all good: just as there are many different types of cyclist, so should there be many journey planners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The alchemy behind this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://project-osrm.org/&quot;&gt;OSRM&lt;/a&gt; – the Open Source Routing Machine. Largely written by Dennis Luxen, it’s been proven for heavy-duty bike use by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibikecph.dk/&quot;&gt;IBikeCPH&lt;/a&gt;. But finding bike directions in Copenhagen, with its abundance of high-quality infrastructure, is a very different challenge to finding directions in Britain, with its abundance of cycle-wats.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/cyclewat_rachel_coleman_finch_ccbysa_2.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cycle-wat, noun: a cycleway that merits only one response, ‘&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/wat&quot;&gt;WAT&lt;/a&gt;’. Like ‘farcility’ but without the sneery taint of vehicular cycling. (Picture by Rachel Coleman-Finch, CC-BY-SA.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Parsing OSM data&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first challenge is to make sense of OSM cycle data, which is an unholy mess.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shortcomings in OSM coverage, by region (e.g. rural North America) or topic (e.g. addresses), are well known. Shortcomings in data standards, less so. Broadly, OSM only has sensible, commonly agreed tagging for a few base concepts, principally roads and addresses. Anything else? It’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features&quot;&gt;like the Wild West, but with more bureaucracy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/bicycle_values.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This makes extracting meaningful information about cycle routes much harder than it need be. There are two competing standards for mapping paths, one with a forest of trivial differences (&lt;em&gt;bicycle=yes&lt;/em&gt; vs &lt;em&gt;bicycle=designated&lt;/em&gt; – no, me neither). There are three competing standards for mapping surface quality, one descriptive, one generalised, one...&amp;#160;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:smoothness%3Dvery_horrible&quot;&gt;wat&lt;/a&gt;. And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSRM’s stroke of genius is to embed the Lua scripting engine. Rather than a simple lookup table (“give highway=cycleway a score of 10, highway=tertiary a score of 5, etc.”), you can write code in Lua to parse tags programmatically, unifying all these different standards. In &lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;’s case, the logic for scoring way types is over 300 lines of code, backed with five separate lookup tables. It’s not pretty, but it’s very effective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As yet, OSRM doesn’t support route relations off the shelf. Cycle route relations are important, not just for instructions (“follow cycle route 5 for two miles”), but also as an indicator of quality. No, not all cycle routes are good, but on average, inclusion in the National Cycle Network demonstrates (for example) that traffic levels are more likely to be low. Fortunately, Emil Tin from IBikeCPH has patched route relation support into OSRM, and I’m using his fork as the basis for cycle.travel’s instance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Turn-by-turn directions&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSRM provides a simple API: send start/end points (and any via points along the way), get route back as JSON. As standard, the turn-by-turn directions simply list the names or road numbers – ‘Market Street’ or ‘A44’ – of the route chosen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But we can do much more than that. Is the road part of a numbered cycle route? What’s the surface? Is it a road, a cycleway, a footpath or a ferry?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once again, the name of each ‘segment’ is chosen by the Lua profile, based on the tags of the underlying OSM way. We can use this to pack more information into the name field. For example, Park Street in Charlbury is stored as &lt;em&gt;“ncn 442|||u|Park Street||CHARLBURY”:&lt;/em&gt; not just the name, but also the cycle route (NCN 442), the type of road (u=unclassified), and the village it’s in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/directions.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;’s clientside JavaScript takes this and presents clear turn-by-turn directions from it. The village name is particularly useful for rural cycle route planning. For a countryside ride, you’d rarely say “turn left onto Forest Road, then right onto Catsham Lane, continue on Horseshoe Lane, then left onto Chapel Road”. Instead, you’d name the villages you cycle through.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Elevation and external data&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elevation is crucial to cycle route-planning. A quiet ten-mile country lane is no fun at all if those ten miles finish at the summit of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/good-to-share/10522881/Why-ride-a-Boris-bike-up-the-Mont-Ventoux.html&quot;&gt;Mont Ventoux&lt;/a&gt;. OSRM doesn’t have explicit elevation support built in, but there are ways to add it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/DennisOSRM/Project-OSRM/issues/271&quot;&gt;long&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/DennisOSRM/Project-OSRM/issues/546&quot;&gt;discussions&lt;/a&gt; on the OSRM Github issue tracker about the best approach. I chose to load compressed tiles of SRTM data (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, the most frequently used elevation source) into a Redis data store, which gives an elevation grid for the whole of Britain. Then, when OSRM calculates the weighting for each segment, it looks up the start and end elevation, and computes a penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/images/original/elevation.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This isn’t the fastest approach. The overhead of communicating with Redis, and the SRTM lookup code (which is, once again, in Lua), make it slower than a pure C++ mmaped solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it’s achievable within my limited C++ skills, and can be applied to other external data sources loaded into Redis. So as well as getting elevation data this way, I use this in the Lua profile’s &lt;em&gt;way_function&lt;/em&gt; (which scores and names each way) to find what village each road is in.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dennis Luxen explained a similar way of accessing external data in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/osrm-using-external-data/&quot;&gt;Mapbox blog post&lt;/a&gt;, and the feature powers Mapbox’s new &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/launching-smart-directions/&quot;&gt;Smart Directions product&lt;/a&gt;. PostGIS queries have an even greater overhead than Redis commands, so should be used sparingly. Nonetheless, if you’re working at city scale (as IBikeCPH does), it’s a very practical solution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Circular routes&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt; has a fun circular route function: ask it for a route from Charlbury to Oxford and click ‘Circular route’, and you’ll get a route that’s different on the outbound and return journeys.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is very simple, a hack in true &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_D&quot;&gt;Systeme D&lt;/a&gt; fashion. It just asks OSRM for an alternative route, and uses this as the return journey. There are two disadvantages: the route is no longer draggable (because any via point would be applied to both legs), and one-way directions will be wrong. Both of these are surmountable at some future point, but for now it’s a fun feature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Why routing?&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;For OpenStreetMap, there’s a pressing reason to popularise high-quality routing software such as OSRM, CycleStreets and &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphhopper.com/&quot;&gt;GraphHopper&lt;/a&gt;. It’s only by using these route planners that mappers discover ‘routing bugs’: broken connections, missing surface or speed limit information, and so on. And conversely, end-users who find routing bugs are more likely to sign up as mappers to fix them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a mapper, I’ve been driven to fix dozens of routing bugs by encountering them while testing &lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;. That’s why I’ve coded up &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/systemed/openstreetmap-website/commits/routing&quot;&gt;a routing interface for openstreetmap.org&lt;/a&gt; which will hopefully go live shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;An OSRM wishlist&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;OSRM is a superb piece of software, and one which I greatly enjoy working with. There’s so much it does right, but the Lua profiles are the clincher. Mapbox have done a lot of smart things: hiring Dennis Luxen and adding OSRM to their product offering is one of the smartest yet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Its development is going in the right direction, too: for example, although it’s undeniable that OSRM has heavy memory requirements, recent work should see that reduced by ~30%.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So what else would I like to see it do? In approximate order:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Route relation support in trunk.&lt;/strong&gt; As yet I’ve not been able to take advantage of the latest and greatest OSRM improvements because I’m using Emil’s (fairly old) route relations fork, and route relation support is essential for &lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Multiple datasets, one host&lt;/strong&gt;. There are many reasons that you might want to generate more than one OSRM routing graph. You could have different styles, for example, like CycleStreets (fastest/quietest/balanced). Or you could provide directions for several unconnected cities or countries: after all, you can’t actually cycle from England to France. At present, you need to run several instances of osrm-routed and set up an arcane Apache config. It would be much better if osrm-routed could handle several datasets/profiles.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Circular routes by length, not destination.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://i11www.iti.uni-karlsruhe.de/extra/publications/gpwz-ecjr-13.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; considers how to calculate circular routes from a given start point, with length specified but not destination: for example, “give me a 10-mile circuit from home”. Similar features are offered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://walks.io/&quot;&gt;walks.io&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plotaroute.com/&quot;&gt;plotaroute.com&lt;/a&gt;. OSRM already has most of the logic to do this: it would make a natural addition.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Node tags in turn-by-turn directions.&lt;/strong&gt; The use case described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/DennisOSRM/Project-OSRM/issues/228&quot;&gt;this OSRM issue&lt;/a&gt; is motorway junctions: “turn off at junction 8”. For cyclists, this is, of course, “turn left at the Rose &amp;amp; Crown”. (After a judiciously chosen break.)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;span style=&quot;background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Improve processing times for external data.&lt;/strong&gt; It takes three hours for my well-specced Hetzner box to generate &lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;’s routing graph, largely due to the elevation overhead. Native (C++) mmapped elevation support would be wonderful, but addresses one use case only. Providing Redis support via a Unix socket may be more generally useful.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;There’s lots more I’m planning to add to the &lt;em&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#160;route planner, with two big new features set to land in the next few months. I’ve been delighted with the feedback received so far – comments such as “best routing I've seen so far”, “what a great route planner”, and “I&amp;#160;put in a circular route for an area I know well and it came up with a lovely route, part of which would never have occurred to me”. All this, of course, is thanks to OpenStreetMap’s armies of mappers and to OSRM. Cycling on the shoulders of giants, perhaps?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you’d like to talk cycle routing, or you’re interested in working with cycle.travel’s technology, I’m both available for freelance work and am interested in expanding cycle.travel’s scope:&amp;#160;&lt;a href=&quot;mailto:richard@systemeD.net&quot;&gt;drop me a line&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Tue, 22 Apr 2014 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2014-04-22T22:00:00+02:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Why you should credit OpenStreetMap.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/7</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;OpenStreetMap attribution has bubbled to the surface lately – the matter of if, and how, you credit OSM in a map that uses its data. OSM itself is &lt;a href=&quot;http://openstreetmap.org/copyright&quot;&gt;clear about how it wants to be credited&lt;/a&gt;, but it doesn’t always happen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Often this is simply because map users don’t know how to, or their chosen library doesn’t make it obvious. Sometimes it’s deliberate. Whichever, it’s guaranteed to exercise the community, such that there are now at least two community-run Twitter accounts dedicated to the topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/osm_attribution&quot;&gt;one friendly&lt;/a&gt; (“Thanks for using OpenStreetMap! Please add a credit”), &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/mapviolations&quot;&gt;another not so much&lt;/a&gt; (“Cracking down on license abusers”). And behind the scenes, there have been many furrowed-brow conversations on how we fix this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Amid all this drama, Serge Wroclawski’s excellent article on “&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/01/04/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap/&quot;&gt;Why the world needs OpenStreetMap&lt;/a&gt;” has unwittingly provided the best demonstration of why you should attribute OpenStreetMap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Serge’s article was picked up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap-1495412839&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/14/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap&quot;&gt;the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, and in turn by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1v6tv6/why_the_world_needs_openstreetmap_as_more_private/&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;. At which point it became painfully obvious that Redditors – and, by extension, the population at large – simply don’t get that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/about&quot;&gt;OSM is more than openstreetmap.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“The world doesn't need yet another mapping provider. What's OSM got? Some raw mapping data, which quite frankly is useless without a top notch front end to put it to use.” “It really needs a travel route feature, or if there is one it needs to be more obvious. Most of my Google Maps use is looking at times and distances between cities using various routes.” “Google Maps is incredibly easy to use and is useful. I'd love to use OSM if it was as nice of an experience.” “So basically if I want directions from point A to point B, I should continue using Google Maps, and there's no reason for me to be interested in either using or helping OSM.”&amp;#160;“I just noticed Google Map Maker is finally available in my area. I don't see changing stuff in OSM to be any useful to me.”  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;And so on for 905 comments. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;People genuinely don’t see that editing OpenStreetMap has any value beyond openstreetmap.org. &lt;/strong&gt;Since osm.org is intentionally not a consumer-facing site in the way that Google Maps is, they’re not going to use it; so they won’t edit OSM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways out of this. Make osm.org a consumer-facing site, with an aerial layer, multi-modal routing, mass-market cartography, a paid-for API, and a staff of 100… thereby squashing the businesses and motivation of everyone who provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://thunderforest.com/&quot;&gt;cartography&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mapbox.com/blog/osrm-shared-memory/&quot;&gt;routing&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geofabrik.de/&quot;&gt;paid-for APIs&lt;/a&gt; on OSM.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or attribute.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reddit demonstrates that people will only contribute to OSM if they see a reason. For the majority who aren’t cartographers (like me) or Free Software evangelists (like Serge), that reason will be: it’s used in the sites, apps and devices that make their life better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But the feedback loop is only complete if these sites, apps and devices make it immediately obvious that they’re using OpenStreetMap data. That’s why clear, prominent attribution is so important to OSM. Right now, Reddit shows we’re failing at this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attribute. Do it creatively. Do it generously. Explain why. A link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://openstreetmap.org/copyright&quot;&gt;osm.org/copyright&lt;/a&gt; is the mandated minimum, but you can do much more. Sell OSM. Tell your users why contributing to OSM benefits them. Because if it benefits your users, it benefits your business. If OSM withers because people see a better reason to contribute to Google Map Maker, so does your OSM-based site, app or business.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here’s what I’ve done at &lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/map&quot;&gt;cycle.travel&lt;/a&gt;. The click-through from the attribution &lt;a href=&quot;http://cycle.travel/about/maps&quot;&gt;goes to a page&lt;/a&gt; which does the legal bit (describing the licences) but then goes on to explain why and how. I’m sure smarter minds than me can do better still. Go to it.&lt;/p&gt;</description>
        <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jan 2014 08:06:16 +0100</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2014-01-16T08:06:16+01:00</dc:date>
      </item>
      <item>
        <title>Starting renderd with upstart.</title>
        <link>http://blog.systemeD.net//post/6</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/manually-building-a-tile-server-12-04/&quot;&gt;canonical instructions for setting up an OpenStreetMap tileserver&lt;/a&gt; suggest that you use init.d to start renderd on boot.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;init.d is a bit gnarly and antiquated, however. &lt;a href=&quot;http://upstart.ubuntu.com/&quot;&gt;upstart&lt;/a&gt; is much more pleasant; the config files are simpler and it's easier to chain one event off another. Which, as it happens, is what we want to do here; we want renderd to fire up once Postgres is running. Except that Postgres is started by an init.d script, not an upstart one. Gah.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;So here's how to get it running:&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Firstly, edit the Postgres startup script to emit init events on starting. You do this by adding &lt;code&gt;initctl emit&lt;/code&gt; lines to &lt;code&gt;/usr/share/postgresql-common/init.d-functions&lt;/code&gt;. For our purposes we only need to add&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;initctl emit postgresql-started
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;immediately after&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;do_ctl_all start &quot;$1&quot; &quot;Starting PostgreSQL $1 database server&quot;
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;But if you want to add the whole suite, &lt;a href=&quot;http://atorian.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/automating-phusion-passenger-with.html&quot;&gt;this posting&lt;/a&gt; shows how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Next, we create &lt;code&gt;/etc/init/renderd.conf&lt;/code&gt; as an upstart job:&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# renderd

  description &quot;renderd&quot;

  start on postgresql-started
  stop on runlevel [016]
  respawn

  setuid osm
  setgid staff

  script
    renderd -f -c /usr/local/etc/renderd.conf 1&amp;gt;&amp;gt;/var/log/renderd.log 2&amp;gt;&amp;gt;/var/log/renderd.log
  end script
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;This will start renderd only after Postgres has started.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;However, renderd needs to have a socket sitting within &lt;code&gt;/var/run/renderd&lt;/code&gt;. We could in theory create that in renderd.conf, but I prefer that to run as the osm user, and not to allow the latter to create directories. So we add a second upstart job as &lt;code&gt;/etc/init/renderd_socket.conf&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;# renderd socket

  description &quot;Create renderd socket folder&quot;

  start on starting renderd

  script
    mkdir /var/run/renderd
    chown osm /var/run/renderd
  end script
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Obviously, change &lt;code&gt;osm&lt;/code&gt; if your user is called something else.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Reboot, and renderd should be up and running using upstart.&lt;/p&gt;
  </description>
        <pubDate>Tue, 27 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <dc:date>2013-08-27T00:00:00+02:00</dc:date>
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  		<title>Kenyan Election Open Data</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/12/05/1790</link>
  				<pubDate>Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:22:42 +0000</pubDate>
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  				<description><![CDATA[Election boundary and polling station geo data for Kenya can now be downloaded. Kenyans are gearing up for the presidential election in March, including the tech community projects like Uchaguzi and Map Kibera. One limiting factor is availability of data. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) finalized new constituency boundaries earlier this year, but &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/12/05/1790" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Kenyan Election Open Data"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://github.com/mikelmaron/kenya-election-data">Election boundary and polling station geo data for Kenya can now be downloaded.</a></p>
  <p>Kenyans are gearing up for the presidential election in March, including the tech community projects like <a href="http://uchaguzi.co.ke/">Uchaguzi</a> and <a href="http://www.mapkibera.org/blog/2012/11/23/opinion-leaders-nominated-to-lead-election-monitoring/">Map Kibera</a>. One limiting factor is availability of data. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) finalized new constituency boundaries earlier this year, but have only <a href="http://iebc.or.ke/index.php/resources/downloads/category/bou-ndaries">released non-machine readable pdf maps</a>. That&#8217;s led Map Kibera to resurvey on the ground the new boundaries and polling places, in Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru. But outside that excellent work, open data on the most primary geographies of democracy are not available for Kenya. Election boundaries should be the number one data available on <a href="https://opendata.go.ke/">OpenDataKE</a>.</p>
  <p>The IEBC released a nice site to <a href="http://vote.iebc.or.ke/">look up Kenyan polling places</a>. It doesn&#8217;t directly offer download, but quickly looking at network requests for the app revealed simple endpoints to request json versions of constituency and county boundaries, and the locations of polling places. I wrote a script which iterates through every ward in Kenya, caches the data, and produces outputs. There are <a href="https://github.com/mikelmaron/kenya-election-data/tree/master/output">shapefiles for download here</a>. If you need something tweaked, let me know, and I&#8217;ll see what I can do.</p>
  <p><iframe width='500' height='300' frameBorder='0' src='http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/groundtruth.map-t5fddslr.html#6/0.05320294496605108/37.47436523437501'></iframe></p>
  <p>This map displays approximately 16000 polling places across Kenya. In total, there are 26447, but a significant number are not mapped. Also, there are no ward boundaries available. This is a big opportunity for Kenyans to contribute back to their government&#8217;s data. For instance, Lindi Mosque has no location in the government data set, but is <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/612007074">present in OpenStreetMap</a>. Would be possible to repurpose some OpenStreetMap microtasking tools to quickly map these places (<a href="http://tasks.hotosm.org/">HOT Tasking Server</a>, <a href="http://sandy.hotosm.org/">MapMill</a> or <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapRoulette">MapRoulette</a>).</p>
  <p>Why make this data open? So we can build things like<br />
  * Send an SMS to get a list of polling places in your ward<br />
  * Geocoder and custom base maps to make it easier to locate reports to Uchaguzi<br />
  * Print map services, so you can easily distribute polling place locations in your area<br />
  * Analysis, such as distribution of polling places according to population density<br />
  and plenty of creative things I haven&#8217;t imagined yet.</p>
  <p>I hope this step of action, then begging forgiveness rather than asking permission (in I hope the best tradition of mySociety) will spark curiosity and consideration by the IEBC to more fully embrace openness, not only by releasing data, but inviting conversation and feedback from the citizens it serves, and becoming more transparent in how decisions are made and how the complicated and incredibly important business of running an election is being carried out.</p>
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  		<title>Moabi and Big Important Challenges for the GeoWeb</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/04/24/1781</link>
  				<comments>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/04/24/1781#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[unfiled]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1781</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Recently finished a technical review of WWF&#8217;s Moabi platform, their geodata sharing platform to track deforestation, and came out with some important technical challenges for the GeoWeb I want to share with the mapping nerds. Just following TAI&#8217;s bridging session on natural resource governance, I met Charles Huang of the World Wildlife Fund at a &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/04/24/1781" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Moabi and Big Important Challenges for the GeoWeb"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Recently finished a technical review of <a href="http://drc.moabi.org/">WWF&#8217;s Moabi platform</a>, their geodata sharing platform to track deforestation, and came out with some important technical challenges for the GeoWeb I want to share with the mapping nerds.</p>
  <p>Just following <a href="http://groundtruth.in/2011/11/29/revealing-transparency-and-its-relation-to-community-empowerment/">TAI&#8217;s bridging session on natural resource governance</a>, I met <a href="http://www.worldwildlife.org/science/staff/charles-huang.html">Charles Huang</a> of the World Wildlife Fund at a <a href="http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/event/mapping-and-technology-improve-governance-natural-resources">similarly styled event at the World Bank</a>. After self-identifying as a developer, Charles asked if I&#8217;d like to talk more about Moabi &#8230; they needed a developer&#8217;s eye on the platform as they considered how to move to their 2.0. This isn&#8217;t GroundTruth&#8217;s usual sort of work, but considering the TAI Bridge effort to connect technologists with sector experts, our <a href="http://groundtruth.in/2012/04/16/welcome-to-grassroots-al-quds-network/">other work with Drupal and mapping</a>, and my own deep interest in conservation, I dove in.</p>
  <p>Moabi is ambitious. In its current expression with DRC and deforestation, the platform is meant to collect geographic data and detailed profiles from all sorts of courses, including the &#8220;crowd&#8221;, on everything from mining concessions, informal logging, road construction, to REDD projects, and enable conversation and coordination among everyone conservation workers on the ground, government officials, and the interested public on the other side of the world. And in the long run, this platform is intended to apply to other places and focus areas of WWF. This is such an ambitious, wide mandate, and I think touches on 3 key technical developments for the GeoWeb.</p>
  <p><b>Features as Full Social Objects</b></p>
  <p>In Moabi, every single feature, such as an individual mine or road, has a profile page, which should be shareable, pivotable, a focus point for social interaction among people and groups organizing to prevent deforestation. Most often in GIS and web mapping, we talk about layers of information, and while individual features often have expression in various forms on a site, there is no open source software package that deals with feature-level data in this way out of the box. And there&#8217;s not really that many examples to draw on. Every feature in OpenStreetMap has an individual url, with details on its tags, last editor, etc. But it&#8217;s not quite used as a social object, excepting maybe <a href="http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/09/28/thats-maybe-a-bit-too-dorky-even-for-us/">the awesome machine tag integration with flickr</a>. Foursquare has some elements of this, every venue primarily being a place, and users able to connect to that place. But besides these sorta examples, a geographic feature is generally treated as a property of social objects, rather than social objects in themselves.</p>
  <p><b>Multi-master sync and flexible schemas</b></p>
  <p>Data is Moabi is sourced from both government, civil society, and interactions on the site. Those source databases are very likely to update over time, and very possibly they will receive updates on Moabi as well. Given a foreign key, or even a clever lookup, at least identifying which features have updated is possible. But this inevitably leads to thorny issues of handling conflicts during synchronization. This is commonly experienced in the simple situation of editing in OSM during a mapping party, where two editors independently modify the same feature. The OSM API can detect the potential conflict, but once detected the interface and process to resolve the conflict in JOSM is not intuitive or easy at all. When writing code, this situation happens all the time, and simply being text, it&#8217;s simple enough to throw the problem to the programmer to resolve. But we&#8217;re talking about geographic features here, and that&#8217;s going to take very well designed interfaces to solve properly.</p>
  <p>A related issue is that a single feature may contain pieces of information from several different masters. Take roads. Yes, common enough is the geometry, maybe the name (or names) of the road, the surface. But with Moabi, they may also want to know if the road has a regular anti-poaching patrol, or if it&#8217;s commonly used to transport lumber. OSM deals with this unpredictability of attributes through tags, arbitrary key-value pairs, with no predetermined mandated structure, with conventions of use worked out over time. In contrast, traditional GIS requires pre-decided database schema, leading to long running discussions which often never resolve to the point of actually collecting and sharing data. So why not just use OSM? Well I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s best to keep every single thing interesting to Moabi about roads in OSM, and some features, like say mining concessions or REDD projects, may simply not be appropriate for OSM (this is up for discussion of course). So assuming that something else is needed, what are the options for a tagging based system that&#8217;s not OSM? The closest I&#8217;ve seen is Matt Berg&#8217;s work at Earth Institute on <a href="https://github.com/mangroveorg/georegistry#readme">georegistery</a>, an open source db with RESTful API for sharing and versioning geographic objects in GeoJSON, with arbitrary attributes. </p>
  <p><b>Complex interactive experiences without a lot of fuss</b></p>
  <p>Moabi has a lot of data, two dozen layers, thousands of features. Currently the only way to work through the data is via query, which can be a little slow both in usability and response time. Interactive exploration is best accomplished through Tiles and Grids, as enabled so well in TileMill and MapBox. And there&#8217;s been a <a href="https://github.com/openlayers/openlayers/pull/244">lot of activity in OpenLayers with Grids</a>, including support for interaction in multiple layers.</p>
  <p>The issue comes with how to make this architecture efficiently queryable. Say you wanted to show only to show mines operated by Chinese companies in the DRC, which are not located in mining concessions. The most obvious way is to send this query to the server, and render the result on the client side. But perhaps there are other ways, utilising the same approach <a href="http://mapbox.com/blog/custom-styles-mapbox-streets/">MapBox Streets takes to customize styles on the fly</a>, by manipulating the color table of tile images. If a tile set handled just a single layer, then the color table could someohow be used to encode other properties. This would essentially pre-can a set of interesting queries during tile generation, with the query results rendered by the server. If that&#8217;s too limiting, perhaps we need to start thinking further in the future, where something like SVG based tiles could be efficiently rendered and queried in the browser.</p>
  <p><b>Thoughts?</b></p>
  <p>Would love to hear feedback on whether these are actually interesting challenges in your opinion, and what are some other ways of moving forward with them.</p>
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  		<title>All I Want for OpenStreetMap is &#8230; Social and Attention</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/03/30/1773</link>
  				<comments>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/03/30/1773#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:18:25 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1773</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Kate posted her wishlist for OpenStreetMap and I second everything she wrote &#8230; OSM can be fine tuned to be even easier. In my wishlist post, I want to cover improving connections between mappers, and focusing mappers attention. In short, OSM should be more like Facebook. Seriously. A news feed should show you the most &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/03/30/1773" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "All I Want for OpenStreetMap is &#8230; Social and Attention"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.maploser.com/2012/03/29/all-i-want-for-openstreetmap-is-simple/">Kate posted her wishlist for OpenStreetMap</a> and I second everything she wrote &#8230; OSM can be fine tuned to be even easier. In my wishlist post, I want to cover improving connections between mappers, and focusing mappers attention.</p>
  <p>In short, OSM should be more like Facebook. Seriously. A news feed should show you the most relevant activity and news for you personally, and the profile page should show what you&#8217;re about in OSM in a more approachable way.</p>
  <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisfleming/4784567751/" title="State of the Map Group Photo by Chris Fleming, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4120/4784567751_6aaf2bc04f.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="State of the Map Group Photo"></a></p>
  <p>The sociality of OSM is its biggest strength. The intricacies of maps, tags, places are discussed in minute detail, and are ultimately the result of conversation, not top down dictate. The result are maps that are more expressive for more situations than any other platform. And we even meet in person! At the pub, the hack weekend, the LogCluster meeting. Anyone who&#8217;s ever been to a State of the Map conference can attest, it&#8217;s a vibrant, fun, exciting <i>movement</i>.</p>
  <p>OSM has hundreds of thousands of users, and hundreds of millions of map features. Yet the tools to connect to mappers and monitor an area are still the same as 5 years ago. Changing this is my wishlist &#8230; and yes, I know that most all of OSM features are coded voluntarily, and its something I could do myself rather than list out &#8230; I appreciate all the time and energy that goes into OSM coding, this is my *wish* list.</p>
  <p><b>Finding the Local Community</b></p>
  <p>If I&#8217;m travelling some place new for an event, I want to connect to the local OSM community, and the process is complicated and not obvious. First, browse to the area in OSM and click the &#8220;History&#8221; tab, which should show recent edits in the area. Problem is, this often includes large, global edits which overlap this local area and aren&#8217;t relevant. And if you page through in a somewhat mind-numbing fashion, the OSM rails app starts to have performance problems past page 5. <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OWL_(OpenStreetMap_Watch_List)">OWL</a> is potentially a solution to this, but it has <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Tasks#OWL-powered_activity.2Fhistory_tab">already been a priority development item for years</a>.</p>
  <p>And what the history tab won&#8217;t do in either form is tell you who the most active, prominent mappers in the community are. For that, I usually jump over to ITO&#8217;s excellent <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Mapper">OSM Mapper</a>, which present and visualizes summary statistics for an arbitrary area. Excellent, but you have to know it&#8217;s there, and it takes a separate authentication, and is a little counter intuitive to use. But from there, I have a list of 5-10 top mappers, with links to the OSM profile pages, from which I can send them a message. And wait, and hope they respond.</p>
  <p>Next, I&#8217;ll jump into the wiki, and look through the relevant <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_territory_based_projects">Wiki Projects</a>. Sometimes this will have listing of Users in an area, or links to their website, or mailing lists. The User profile pages sometimes have a way to contact that user, but just as often not. If there&#8217;s a <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mailing_list">mailing list</a>, then it&#8217;s about subscribing to yet another mailing list, perhaps one in a foreign language, and posting. If there&#8217;s a project website, that&#8217;s usually golden and a sign of an active local community that will be responsive.</p>
  <p><b>Focusing Attention</b></p>
  <p>And that&#8217;s just for a one time connection. Most mappers have been involved in mapping many areas. How do you keep informed? You basically need to have a ton of RSS feeds, poke around the <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance#Monitoring_Tools">monitoring tools</a>, read a lot of lists. </p>
  <p>A lot of activity, most of the time, you only need to be dimly aware of. If a user with a good reputation is editing in a familiar area, there&#8217;s little need to check into it further. If a new user has just signed up and is editing, it would be good to take a close look at their edits, and reach out and welcome them to OSM and offer to support their work. Reputation needs to be calculated, and used to filter.</p>
  <p>And not just edits. There&#8217;s so much going on in the community. The <a href="http://opengeodata.org/weekly-osm-summary-39">Weekly OSM Summary</a> is super useful, but is only the cream of the global activity. There are OSM events all the time,  but it seems <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Current_events">mostly German mappers are adding their events to the wiki</a>. Expand User Diaries so these posts are accessible in all sorts of ways, for all kinds of notifications.</p>
  <p><b>Being Social Should Be Simpler</b></p>
  <p>Maybe the general concept is around &#8220;Interest&#8221;. There are places you might be interested in. There are particular mappers and communities you might be interested in &#8230; either because they&#8217;re active in an area, or perhaps because they make suspicious edits. Directly in the OSM website, you should be able to manually indicate this interest (by friending a user, set a list of locations); or it can be automatically calculated through analysis and stats of where you&#8217;ve been active before. </p>
  <p>I started on this idea by adding <a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2012-January/024168.html">friend and home location filtering to Diary Entries and Changesets</a>. An ok start, but not everyone uses Diary entries to communicate, and the changesets still include everything &#8230; it&#8217;s both too much information and not enough. A lot is happening in OSM at any time, and you have limited attention. </p>
  <p>There&#8217;s definitely a need for some system to do processing and analysis, from the planet diffs. Make these stats visually intriguing, and directly a part of a user or groups activity streams. There&#8217;s great experiments visualizing group stats with <a href="http://osmranking.altogetherlost.com/">rankings on altogetherlost</a>, and <a href="http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/">overall stats</a>. And the <a href="http://hdyc.neis-one.org/
  ">personal statistics on neis-one</a>, and <a href="http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/">heat map</a> are excellent. Bring this directly into osm.org.</p>
  <p><b>Social Design</b></p>
  <p>Currently the user profile page on OSM has two functions &#8230; one to view other people, and another as a dashboard for yourself. I think these should start to diverge into two different pages. The User Profile should be grown to give a better idea of what a mapper is up to. The Dashboard would be a focus point for a mapper to stay on top of everything they care about in OSM. So in one page, give a summary of what friends and nearby users are up to, but also what&#8217;s happening in places you care about. For many users, myself included, there are many areas you&#8217;ve mapped, and would like to keep track of. Right now, you explicitly express interest by declaring your home location. This could be expanded to multiple, manually specified locations (my top 10 areas); or by analysis, a list of your top areas for editing could be automatically compiled.</p>
  <p>It&#8217;s not only a design challenge, but it&#8217;s going to be an architected challenge as well. More social takes a lot more servers.</p>
  <p>And don&#8217;t require mappers to visit OSM.org to get this. Yes, send emails out with weekly summaries of activity.</p>
  <p>Some summary ideas for an activity stream:</p>
  <p>* Recent mapping activity in multiple areas you&#8217;re interested in. Should be higher level than individual changesets (SteveCoast has made 12 edits over the last week in Seattle), but allow you to dig in further if you want.<br />
  * Some visual distinction between trusted vs non-trusted<br />
  * Also deal better with &#8220;big&#8221; edits, bots, etc. Filter these, or make them visually distinct.<br />
  * New mappers in these areas, and their activity. Highlight these, it&#8217;s a good opportunity to reach out.<br />
  * Highly trusted or experienced mappers in these areas, and their activity. Again, sometimes highlight, sometimes filter, depending on the need.<br />
  * Non-mapping activity in the area &#8230; upcoming mapping parties, other local news.</p>
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  		<title>When it comes to politics, crowds can be manipulated, but not communities</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/17/1767</link>
  				<comments>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/17/1767#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:41:40 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[unfiled]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1767</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The women and children in the photo are suffering, and the story tells of hidden revolutionaries challenging brutal rule in all arenas, and victorious on the maps of the most powerful company on the planet. They&#8217;re renaming the infrastructure after revolutionary heroes. You can&#8217;t help but cheer on such clever efforts for freedom. Google supports &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/17/1767" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "When it comes to politics, crowds can be manipulated, but not communities"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tn.jpg"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tn.jpg" alt="" title="tn" width="496" height="600" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1768" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tn.jpg 496w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tn-248x300.jpg 248w" sizes="(max-width: 496px) 85vw, 496px" /></a></p>
  <p>The women and children in the photo are suffering, and the story tells of hidden revolutionaries challenging brutal rule in all arenas, and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syrian-opposition-seeks-to-wipe-the-assad-name-off-the-map--via-google/2012/02/14/gIQAad5aER_story.html?hpid=z4">victorious on the maps of the most powerful company on the planet</a>. They&#8217;re renaming the infrastructure after revolutionary heroes. You can&#8217;t help but cheer on such clever efforts for freedom.</p>
  <p>Google supports liberation! Another front in American online diplomacy?! How far from the truth. Another lame attempt to boost American companies sales with puff pieces about their support for the Arab Spring. Let&#8217;s watch and see how long before Google scrambles to show its commitments to national governments (i.e. customers) and their maps switch back to their Assad era names. </p>
  <p>The real story here is the nature of &#8220;crowdsourcing&#8221; (a term I&#8217;m increasingly despising), and power over and control of our geographic reality. Stefen Geens says that such false information, that politically motivated editing is a risk of crowdsourcing; it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s rather the result of a false community and opaque processes. <a href="http://ogleearth.com/2012/01/google-conspiring-for-regime-change-in-syria-through-maps-hardly/">This write-up (&#8220;regime change, hardly&#8221;)</a> is an excellent blow by blow, but there is absolutely no way to full penetrate this proprietary system.</p>
  <p>Could this have happened on OpenStreetMap? Sort of. Anyone can edit anytime, I could change these names right now. The difference is that the change would be spotted soon by the community which cares for this data, all past changes by the user easily identifiable, discussion and questions posed in public, and reverts applied if necessary. In the event that the inaccurate edits ontinue, the case can be escalated to mediation, and the <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Data_working_group">DWG</a> can finally take actions like warning and blocks. It&#8217;s happened before, in Northern Cyprus, and OSM dealt well. </p>
  <p>OpenStreetMap does not support the Assad regime, nor does it support the rebellion. It supports everyone&#8217;s access to the facts, and the equal ability for those common facts to respond to reality. OSM was the first map to display <a href="http://ogleearth.com/2011/07/south-sudan-arrives/">the world&#8217;s newest country of South Sudan</a>. And in the event the brutality in Syria ends, and the streets are renamed on the ground, you know where to edit.</p>
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  		<title>Only Possible With Open Data</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/02/1756</link>
  				<comments>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/02/1756#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:35:43 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[opengeodata]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1756</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Arguments about the importance of Open Data often come down to a principled stance, or a licensing discussion &#8230; that kind of argument doesn&#8217;t make much impression on folks who aren&#8217;t way in the weeds. And it&#8217;s more than just licensing &#8230; there are equal parts issues of legality, technical freedom, and community. Clear examples &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/02/02/1756" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Only Possible With Open Data"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Arguments about the importance of Open Data often come down to a principled stance, or a licensing discussion &#8230; that kind of argument doesn&#8217;t make much impression on folks who aren&#8217;t way in the weeds. And it&#8217;s more than just licensing &#8230; there are equal parts issues of legality, technical freedom, and community. Clear examples of what you can do only with OpenStreetMap, and not with say, <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2010/03/16/1541">Google Map Maker</a>, makes this stuff real. Here are just a few, among many.</p>
  <p><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6208/6075723839_da72067ab2_z.jpg"/ width="320" height="241"/></p>
  <p>Mapping of Jalabad and surrounding countryside is unique to OSM. They collect data with GPS and Smart Phones and Walking Papers. With GMM, you can only trace imagery on your laptop computer. With OSM you can go into the field to actually talk with people about what to put on the map. Afghanistan is not an option at all on MapMaker, for political reasons. And the Jalalagood guys are organized as a company, but do mapping largely in their free time, voluntarily &#8230; so they get nixed for being &#8220;commercial&#8221;.</p>
  <p><a href="http://kabulinnovationlab.com/2012/01/24/hamid-tasal-jalalagood/">Great video on Jalalagood</a> and <a href="http://www.jalalagood.com/2011/08/surkhrod-trip-of-osm/">a detailed mapping trip report.</p>
  <p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/foPJg.jpg"></p>
  <p>In Haiti, <a href="http://taptapmap.org/">TapTapMap</a> maps local bus routes, free to add any sort of data in OSM. In GMM, users are not allowed to add bus routes, only Google does that, and only by getting data from transit agencies. Haiti&#8217;s system, like many places in the developing world, does not have a single authority which maps and controls the routes. You can only get these routes by riding with your GPS.</p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gaza.png"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gaza.png" alt="" title="gaza" width="500" height="398" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1758" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gaza.png 500w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gaza-300x238.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px" /></a></p>
  <p>Another project that certainly couldn&#8217;t happen without Open Data. This is a <a href="igaza.ps">Tourist Map of the Gaza Strip</a>. Produced by a spin-off company from a university that took part in OpenStreetMap mapping in Gaza. This is not an area that can even be mapped in Google because of a political decision, it&#8217;s mostly blank on the map. While the map is free, it&#8217;s produced by a commercial entity and contains ads for local restaurants, hotels and sites.</p>
  <p><img src="http://hot.openstreetmap.org/sites/default/files/ph_mw.jpg" width="380" height="272" /></p>
  <p>In the Phillippines, <a href="http://hot.openstreetmap.org/updates/2012-01-25_hot_mapping_for_flash_flood_affected_areas_in_northern_mindanao_philippines
  ">recent humanitarian response to flooding relied on open source tools</a> to process and make available satellite imagery to create OSM data. The GMM toolset would not permit integration of any other data sources except those controlled by Google. So it would stifle local ability to respond to disasters that don&#8217;t make huge media splashes (G Crisis Response has not been active at all in the Philippines).</p>
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  		<title>A Week for the Record Books</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/01/24/1741</link>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:09:12 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[unfiled]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1741</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[That was a week where I really was truly and completely welcomed to DC. Some great things, some other things, and some things I can&#8217;t talk about yet. Social Technologies at the GWU Humanitarian Mapping Workshop View more presentations from mikel_maron Was invited to fill for Kate Chapman at the Mapping the World of Humanitarianism &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2012/01/24/1741" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "A Week for the Record Books"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>That was a week where I really was truly and completely welcomed to DC. Some great things, some other things, and some things I can&#8217;t talk about yet.</p>
  <div style="width:425px" id="__ss_11233382"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mikel_maron/mikelmaron-humanitarianworkshop" title="Social Technologies at the GWU Humanitarian Mapping Workshop" target="_blank">Social Technologies at the GWU Humanitarian Mapping Workshop</a></strong> <object id="__sse11233382" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mikelmaron-humanitarian-workshop-120124061703-phpapp02&#038;startSlide=2&#038;stripped_title=mikelmaron-humanitarianworkshop&#038;userName=mikel_maron" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><embed name="__sse11233382" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=mikelmaron-humanitarian-workshop-120124061703-phpapp02&#038;startSlide=2&#038;stripped_title=mikelmaron-humanitarianworkshop&#038;userName=mikel_maron" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object> </p>
  <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/" target="_blank">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mikel_maron" target="_blank">mikel_maron</a> </div>
  </p></div>
  <p>Was invited to fill for Kate Chapman at the <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/worldofhumanitarianism/2012-workshop/agenda">Mapping the World of Humanitarianism</a> workshop (not the geo kind of mapping). Talked about the challenges with community centered social technologies, within the humanitarian system. Most difficult question &#8220;Do you consider yourself a humanitarian?&#8221;</p>
  <div style="width:425px" id="__ss_11089852"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mikel_maron/open-mapping-and-community-journalism" title="Open Mapping and Community Journalism" target="_blank">Open Mapping and Community Journalism</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/11089852" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> </p>
  <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/" target="_blank">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/mikel_maron" target="_blank">mikel_maron</a> </div>
  </p></div>
  <p><a href="https://twitter.com/sedamur">Seda Muradyan</a> invited me to present within a multi-day workshop with Armenia journalists. Was via Skype, with translation (the translator did an amazing job. Spoke about OpenStreetMap and how we&#8217;ve applied it within community-centered journalism projects. Just missed saying hi to <a href="http://tortureinegypt.net/english">Noha Atef</a> who had been in Armenia for this. Still amazed that the Internet makes this kind of thing possible. </p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screenshot-at-2012-01-24-075613.png"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screenshot-at-2012-01-24-075613.png" alt="" title="Screenshot at 2012-01-24 07:56:13" width="556" height="314" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1752" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screenshot-at-2012-01-24-075613.png 556w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Screenshot-at-2012-01-24-075613-300x169.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 556px) 85vw, 556px" /></a></p>
  <p><a href="http://tc103.techchange-courses.org/">TC103, Tech Tools for Emergency Management</a> is an online course led by TechChange. I&#8217;ve been moderating, and the quality of the discussion and participants is phenomenal. Rob Baker and I sat down for a chat in front of the camera, good fun &#8230; may be released at the end of the course.</p>
  <p><b>World Bank and Google</b></p>
  <p>* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/opinion/empowering-citizen-cartographers.html?_r=2<br />
  * http://www.globalintegrity.org/blog/bank-responds-to-google-maps-deal<br />
  * http://irevolution.net/2012/01/20/google-inc-world-bank-empowering-citizen-cartographers/#comment-11284</p>
  <p>How many beers, coffees and phone calls discussing this boggling move last week? I&#8217;m still thinking about how to respond and where to go from here.</p>
  <p><b>OpenStreetMap and Google</b></p>
  <p><a href="http://opengeodata.org/google-ip-vandalizing-openstreetmap">Google contractors were caught vandalizing OpenStreetMap</a>. Oy vey.</p>
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  		<title>Thanks to the 2012 OpenStreetMap Foundation Board. This is going to be the year.</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/11/12/1723</link>
  				<pubDate>Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:32:46 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[openstreetmap]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1723</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[Last weekend in Seattle, the OSM Foundation Board met &#8220;face-to-face&#8221;. We get together because no matter how much you try otherwise, there&#8217;s way more done in person in a couple intensive days. It cost about 4 or 5k USD this time, and it&#8217;s worth the cost. But, I think we&#8217;ve always done a terrible job &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/11/12/1723" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Thanks to the 2012 OpenStreetMap Foundation Board. This is going to be the year."</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last weekend in Seattle, the OSM Foundation Board met &#8220;face-to-face&#8221;. We get together because no matter how much you try otherwise, there&#8217;s way more done in person in a couple intensive days. It cost about 4 or 5k USD this time, and it&#8217;s worth the cost. But, I think we&#8217;ve always done a terrible job explaining what happens at the Board meetings, and a middling job following up, and those two things are totally related. </p>
  <p>I want this meeting to be different. It must be different. This is my fifth year on the Board and final year on the Board (I was elected again this year, but will stand down at the next AGM), and to me, and the entire Board, this is a crucial year for OSM. The face-to-face was the most productive yet, and the most difficult yet. I&#8217;m very satisfied. In year&#8217;s past, the minutes get published, and various announcements go out through working groups, and that will happen.  But it&#8217;s insufficient, maybe distilling too far the atmosphere and the messiness of these get togethers.</p>
  <p><b>The Stage</b><br />
  <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6046.jpg"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6046-678x1024.jpg" alt="" title="DSC_6046" width="338" height="512" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1736" /></a></p>
  <p>Steve is based in Redmond, and expecting a child any day, so he offered to host and avoid travel. I wasn&#8217;t far, relatively, in Chicago. The rest of the Board (excepting RichardF who couldn&#8217;t make it) flew in from Europe. I found a <a href="http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/116528">cabin near a lake on airbnb</a>, quiet, cosy, and cheap. Henk hired a car, and drove everyone around. We had a <a href="http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Seattle/events/39513972/">meetup Friday night</a>, made some burritos and played Kinect at Steve and Hurricane&#8217;s place (and tried to forget we watched <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1121931/">Crank 2</a>), and enjoyed the Seattle sunshine (no joke). Sunday Hurricane gave us horse riding lessons!</p>
  <p>A regular <a href="http://fakestevec.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-already-blogged-about-how-awful.html">vacation</a>! Except for the part where we spent 18 hours of our weekend discussing/arguing about OSM in windowless meeting rooms at Microsoft (which we very much appreciate btw!). And the rest of the weekend continuing to talk about it, or even dream about it. Being on the Board is a sacrifice of time, because we all feel deeply responsible to the project and our position.</p>
  <p><b>Presentations</b></p>
  <p>The Board meeting proper started with presentations by Steve and Oliver. Steve hit many of the same themes from his SOTM and SOTM-EU talks, except he left out all the stuff about how awesome OSM is doing. We looked and discussed several graphs of recent statistics. OSM&#8217;s growth to date has been beyond imagination, but there&#8217;s no shortage of projects that changed the world and then met reality, hard. Looking at some of these, the factors in decline included insular community, lack of direction, and no innovation. That&#8217;s what we have to avoid.</p>
  <p>Oliver made the point that &#8220;We are the Board! Shape the project!&#8221;. The Board, and the Foundation, needs to be a functional team, with clear goals and activities, all within the limited volunteer time we have to contribute. Fact at this point is, the Foundation doesn&#8217;t have clear objectives, beyond the mission to support but not control the OSM project. To meet goals, we can take action, we can guide and steer, we can spend money. At the end of workshop, there should be a target that guides all our activities towards achievement. Some of the slides were beyond funny management clip art (a guy looking forlorn into the mirror, facing reality) but the point was important. &#8220;We are the Board! Shape the project!&#8221;</p>
  <p>At this point, I thought it would be useful to look at some of the management lessons and differences from HOT. While we are by no means perfect, I do feel there&#8217;s good alignment between the organizational side of HOT and the community, largely the same community as OSM. Contrast to OSMF, HOT is very focused in what it does, with clear guidance and priorities and steering. We aren&#8217;t afraid of spending money when it&#8217;s necessary. We value marketing by the organization (though could be better). There are clear technical needs, and we pay for it. There&#8217;s a key attention to the consumption side of map data collection, seeking strategic partnerships with other organizations. We&#8217;ve been selective and directive with responsibility, and when necessary, have taken it away. We try to be as transparent as possible, publishing very detailed board minutes. </p>
  <p><b>Goals</b></p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6018.jpg"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6018-678x1024.jpg" alt="" title="DSC_6018" width="339" height="512" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1733" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6018-678x1024.jpg 678w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6018-198x300.jpg 198w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6018.jpg 1356w" sizes="(max-width: 339px) 85vw, 339px" /></a></p>
  <p>We took Oliver&#8217;s point and started strategic planning.</p>
  <p>OSMF Board meeting traditionally use a simple technique to come to consensus on a topic, whether it&#8217;s the agenda of the meeting, or in the case of Seattle, the objectives and activities of the OSMF this year. We brainstorm all our choices on the subject, write them on the whiteboard. Each person gets some number of votes, say 5, and distributes them among the topics. If topics can be grouped together, their count is added together. There&#8217;s discussion about the meaning of terms, sometimes a lot of discussion. Iteration to insure that we all have a common understanding. At the end, there&#8217;s a list of priorities. I always squirm in this process, because somehow I don&#8217;t believe it can work, but inevitably does a pretty good job, and if we need to override, we&#8217;re not strict about the methodology.</p>
  <p>In less than an hour, we had these goals for 2012.</p>
  <p><b>The World&#8217;s Most Used Map</b> OSM is clearly the world&#8217;s most used open map, and most open map, and the best map. We want as many people of possible contributing and using OSM, and to do that, the experience of using OSM needs to improve, and where you use OSM can improve.</p>
  <p><b>More Than Just Streets</b> Do you know everything OSM is capable of mapping? Does your neighbor? Does your mayor? OSM is relatively well known in some circles, but it&#8217;s full potentially is still opaque to many. We want everyone to know what OSM is about.</p>
  <p><b>Cultivating Leadership of Mappers. Shared Goals Between the Community &#038; OSMF</b> Mapping is driven by mappers, with a clear goal (make the map!), and there&#8217;s every reason that with clear goals and empowered members, the OSMF can act strongly. We now have clear goals, and clear expectations of what the management team and working groups can do and achieve, without much prescription on how things happen. This all frees the Board to provide the direction, and the management team and working groups to make the operational decisions.</p>
  <p><b>Easier Contribution for Non-Geeks</b> We debated how this differed from the Most Used Map, and decided it was important enough focus to stand on its own. Usability is certainly related, but more broadly, there&#8217;s much to do to improve all kinds of involvement in OSM.</p>
  <p><b>And Again</b></p>
  <p>The bulk of our time was spent translating these goals into actions, and this really was the most difficult part. Some things were quick to decide, like the final switch over to ODbL, but others became very drawn out and very detailed, like the process for site redesign. We touched on every standing issue, and aligned clearly to the goals. PR, list moderation, license change, the management team, working group budgets, SOTM, PR, site redesign, the articles of association. </p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/short-long1.png"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/short-long1.png" alt="" title="short-long" width="500" height="302" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1735" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/short-long1.png 500w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/short-long1-300x181.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 85vw, 500px" /></a></p>
  <p>We all agreed that short term action was needed on almost everything, with mind to how things should play out in the longer term. This meant drawing the above diagram, a lot, to remind ourselves of the urgency. We set big, audacious goals for all parts of the Foundation, with clear deadlines.</p>
  <p>With so much on the table, we decided to stay in the room until we had decided on everything, which ended up meaning staying hours late, til there was little sunshine outside (or metaphorically sunshine inside the room) and tension rising. At one point, I was so fed up, I almost walked out, really seeing that if we didn&#8217;t resolve the issue at the Board, it wouldn&#8217;t resolve in the Foundation and the project, the goals wouldn&#8217;t be met, and decline was inevitable. And for me personally, that would mean a slow turning away from a project ingrained in almost everything I do in the world. We had to push through.</p>
  <p>And we did. Despite looking over the brink, we had resolve. I felt tense, but knew I&#8217;d be happy with what we accomplished.</p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6183.jpg"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6183-1024x678.jpg" alt="" title="DSC_6183" width="512" height="339" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1728" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6183-1024x678.jpg 1024w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC_6183-300x198.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 85vw, 512px" /></a></p>
  <p>And after it was all done, we had some beers. The next day we rode horses. Group hug.</p>
  <p>Thanks to the 2012 Board. This is going to be the year.</p>
  <p><i>And thanks to Oliver Kuhn for the photos!</i></p>
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  		<title>Opening Data in Kenya. My Method is to Hack.</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/08/09/1718</link>
  				<pubDate>Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:03:21 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[mapkibera]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/08/09/1718</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s good reason to join the excitement about Open Data in Kenya. As Tariq says on the World Bank blog Open data in Kenya is special: it comes at a time of national change; itâ€™s got a head start on tools and expertise from the global open data community and itâ€™s happening in a country &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/08/09/1718" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Opening Data in Kenya. My Method is to Hack."</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There&#8217;s good reason to join the excitement about <a href="http://opendata.go.ke/">Open Data in Kenya</a>. As <a href="http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/whats-special-about-open-data-in-kenya">Tariq says on the World Bank blog</a></p>
  <blockquote><p>
  Open data in Kenya is special: it comes at a time of national change; itâ€<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11.2.0/72x72/2122.png" alt="™" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />s got a head start on tools and expertise from the global open data community and itâ€<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11.2.0/72x72/2122.png" alt="™" class="wp-smiley" style="height: 1em; max-height: 1em;" />s happening in a country where the information ecosystem is still maturing.
  </p></blockquote>
  <p> I&#8217;m proud that our work with Map Kibera has any relation to this at all. And it&#8217;s certainly due to the hard work of passionate people, in a tough environment, especially Dr. Bitange Ndemo (if you have the time, <a href="http://www.livestream.com/worldbankafrica/video?clipId=pla_8dc3cbce-cf6e-4345-91bb-ffeda3a2720f&#038;utm_source=lslibrary&#038;utm_medium=ui-thumb">Dr. Ndemo&#8217;s talk at the World Bank is recommended</a>).</p>
  <p>Now that the launch has subsided, and I have a spare moment in the air from Tanzania, I want to look in depth at what data and how data has been released on OpenDataKE, the means of working with the data and collaborating on the data, and how this resource can relate to other open data sets in Kenyan society. Now that the government has made a bold move, I think it&#8217;s the responsibility of the software development community and civil society to really step up and test out the data, and suggest how this can become a really vibrant and social resource. Again, Tariq says this succinctly</p>
  <blockquote><p>
  the call for open data should go hand in hand with a call for better quality data: data that might be collected by official government agencies or in this age, by citizens themselves.
  </p></blockquote>
  <p><b>Transect across data</b></p>
  <p>My &#8220;method&#8221; is to hack. I want to make an interesting simple visualization with some data from OpenDataKE, focusing on Nairobi, using openly available tools. Browsing data sets, the <a href="https://opendata.go.ke/Population/Vol-1b-Table-1-Constituency-Population-and-Density/2uhj-8n5h">Population Density per Constiuency</a>, derived from the 2009 census, seemed promising. The difference in density across the urban landscape Nairobi is extreme. For a sense of it, just look at the density of features in OpenStreetMap in the <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-1.25856&#038;lon=36.86552&#038;zoom=16&#038;layers=M">map of the slum of Mathare</a> compared to nearby <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-1.25337&#038;lon=36.83449&#038;zoom=16&#038;layers=M">leafy Mathaiga</a>. And to help the hack, the population density data set even has a handy location column. </p>
  <p>Or maybe not. The usual practice in tabular data is to split the latitude and longitude into two columns, but here both values are formatted along with the unnecessary name of the province in which the constituency is located. Anyone who has had to work with data is used to little problems like this, and it&#8217;s easy enough (for a programmer) to write a quick script to clean this up. So I selected Export to CSV (side note, the other options presented by the platform seem hardly useful), filtered just the constituencies in Nairobi, and cleaned it up just by hand (I was too lazy to script this for just a handful of values). </p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/106.jpg"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/106.jpg" alt="" title="106" width="640" height="447" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1700" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/106.jpg 640w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/106-300x209.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px" /></a></p>
  <p><b>Gaps and Errors</b></p>
  <p>I uploaded the CSV to <a href="http://geocommons.com/">GeoCommons</a>, which has facility to deal with many formats of data and easily layer together interactive maps, and was surprised to see that several points weren&#8217;t placed in Nairobi at all. Turns out there&#8217;s several errors in the location column, at least in Nairobi, and possibly in the rest of the country (I didn&#8217;t check). I&#8217;d have to correct these by hand. My knowledge of the location and extent of the constituencies is limited, so I needed another source, and that is not something you can find on OpenDataKE. It took some searching until I found <a href="http://constituencies.marsgroupkenya.org/?constID=1&#038;task=about&#038;page=1">scanned maps of contituencies on the Mars Group site</a>. An overview map of all the constituencies was missing, so I used the adjacent constituency names in order to place the mistaken ones. </p>
  <p>This worked well, but I&#8217;m left with questions. Why isn&#8217;t constituency boundary data available on OpenDataKE? How did Mars Group get these maps? And now that I&#8217;ve gone to the bother of correcting this data set, how can I contribute the changes back, or at least alert the holders of the data to the errors? There is a <a href="http://kenya.socrata.com/nominate">nomination section on OpenDataKE</a>, which was wonderfully active until July 9, and then went quiet (did Socrata&#8217;s support contract expire then?). Anyway, I&#8217;m hopeful these will start getting attention again, so I&#8217;ve submitted two requests (pending approval to post), one for <a >constiuency boundaries</a>, and another for <a>a way to correct the location column in the population density data set</a>.</p>
  <p>My second surprise was that when I made the annotation size relative to the population density, I didn&#8217;t see a big difference among the constituencies. The area where Kibera is located, Langata, is about the same density as Westlands, and both are less than CBD and Eastlands. What&#8217;s happening here is that constituencies aren&#8217;t aligned to uniform urban settlement patterns. Langata, the home constiuency of the Prime Minister, includes both the slum of Kibera and the wealthy and sparse suburb of Karen. A more useful and telling metric would be population density per Ward, the sub-unit of constituency which does have fairly good alignment to settlement patterns. The census can and has been aggregated to this level, because there was a large promotion of the census count of <a href="http://www.mapkibera.org/blog/2010/09/05/kiberas-census-population-politics-precision/">population in Kibera</a>.</p>
  <p>So again I&#8217;ve nominated a data set, for the <a>population density aggregated at ward level</a>. And I&#8217;ve also made a request for <a>meta-information on the methodology of the census in Kibera and other informal settlements</a>. While the 170,000 figure is surely more close to reality than the wild 1 million figures of the past, by comparing that number with estimates derived from other methods there is a discripency; the others agree on an average closer to 250,000. Additionally, and admittedly anecdotedly, many people in Kibera say they and their neighbors were never counted. Now this happens in any census, and it does not deligitimize the census, but in order to interpret data, openness on the methodology of data collection and analysis is also necessary.</p>
  <p><a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-23.png"><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-23.png" alt="" title="Screenshot-23" width="640" height="413" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1695" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-23.png 968w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-23-300x193.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px" /></a></p>
  <p><b>The Civil Society of Data</b></p>
  <p>Open government data exists in a wider ecosystem. Just a few months ago, Columbia University released amazing <a href="http://nairobigismaps.wikischolars.columbia.edu/">data sets of Nairobi, including high detail land use</a> under <a href="http://nairobigismaps.wikischolars.columbia.edu/Copyright">open knowledge licenses</a>. A truly beautiful and informative data set. Another place to find many a Kenyan civil society data set is <a href="http://www.virtualkenya.org/">Virtual Kenya</a>. I thought the population density dataset would be interesting to layer with land use.</p>
  <p>This data is distributed as Shapefiles, and I need tiles to use a base map. This is the purpose of <a href="http://mapbox.com/">MapBox</a>, a rapidly developing tool set to make it easy to build beautiful map tiles. I loaded the Shapefiles in my locally running <a href="http://tilemill.com/">TileMill</a>, styled the landuse categories based on Columbia&#8217;s pdf using carto, assigned interaction, and exported as mbtiles. These were dropbox&#8217;d, and posted to TileStream, as <a href="http://tiles.mapbox.com/groundtruth/#!/map/NairobiLandUse">this map</a>.</p>
  <p>Mouseover or click on the map to get more detail about each parcel. This interaction technique is really interesting (as a geek), it&#8217;s entirely javascript and lightweight in the browser; it still has a few rough edges, but overall, a nice experience. There are limits, like TileMill doesn&#8217;t work with CSV, or permit multiple interactive layers, but it&#8217;s a great work in progress. Thanks to DevSeed for the TileStream account, and Dane Springmeyer, who spent some time with me hacking and bug hunting the interaction features of mapnik.</p>
  <p>Like the OpenDataKE data set, and actually all data sets, there are errors &#8230; there is no such thing as a perfect map. The <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/30210329">Ethiopian Church</a>, across from YaYa, is not indicated nor is its land zoned as &#8220;public use&#8221; as other church lands in Nairobi are. And the <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/968555114">Sarakasi Dome</a>, home of our <a href="http://www.africayogaproject.org/">yoga practice in Nairobi</a>, is not shown a unified plot at all. Now Columbia makes their contact information known on the site, and I&#8217;ve met them personally, so feedback here is direct over email, but I wonder from here &#8230; what is the method and intention to continually correct, update and discuss these data sets? Does it need to?</p>
  <p><img src="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-22-1024x525.png" alt="" title="Screenshot-22" width="640" height="328" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1694" srcset="http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-22-1024x525.png 1024w, http://brainoff.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Screenshot-22-300x153.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px" /></a></p>
  <p>Of course, that is the primary approach of OpenStreetMap &#8230; geographic data in a wiki, that gets constantly examined, updated, and discussed, completely openly. OpenStreetMap can provide another overlay, so we can have some roads and points of reference for the final map. So on GeoCommons, I configured the tiles from the land use data on TileMill (<a href="http://developer.geoiq.com/blog/2011/02/01/wms-and-tiles/#comment-498">this required some hidden configuration of the tile scheme</a>), composited over semi-transparent OSM data (provided by GeoCommons through Acetate), and then finally, the population density points. This is the <a href="http://geocommons.com/maps/86214">result for now of the data transect</a>.</p>
  <p>I hope I can improve this. You&#8217;ll see that the OSM streets don&#8217;t overlay precisely with land use. This I believe, but haven&#8217;t confirmed, to be the result of a project error in the Land Use data set. And an even better representation of the population density would have been a geo-join with area boundaries, had they been available. This would clearly show a thematic variation of population density. And of course, finer grained detail will be required to fulfill the original intention to show Nairobi&#8217;s vast differences in population density.</p>
  <p><b>Where have we gone</b></p>
  <p>Government data sets, authoratative civil society data sets, and completely crowd sourced data sets, layerd together in a single map, revealing a little more about Nairobi, and about the data itself. Each is collected, distributed, and updated in different methods. In some ways, I feel OSM leads the wild edge here of what&#8217;s possible, and what we want: a truly social environment for data. Data without community is data dry and unimportant. Of course, I&#8217;m not saying OSM is the final repository for all data: OSM doesn&#8217;t deal with demographic and private data of a census, and the <a href="http://mike.teczno.com/notes/gosm.html">methods to authoritatively certify versions of OSM data are just starting</a>. But this hasn&#8217;t stopped several kinds of OSM and government interaction already beyond the <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import">&#8220;traditional&#8221; import</a>, with the likes of <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenTripPlanner">Portland</a> and the <a href="http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1136/">USGS</a> interacting with the OSM community. </p>
  <p>The ultimate promise of all this OpenDataKE is not necessarily in the data itself, but in the deep and wide serving conversations openness triggers. My own personal metric for this will be when government officials from OpenDataKE and slum dwellers from Kibera and Mathare (and <a href="http://www.mapkibera.org/blog/2011/08/01/its-time-to-map-mukuru/">Mukuru</a>) openly collaborate and work together. Can&#8217;t wait to see this happen. <b><i>To get there, I challenge you too &#8230; get geeky with some data and write about it!</i></b></p>
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  		<title>Jerusalem, Moving the Ladder</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/07/31/1691</link>
  				<pubDate>Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:19:11 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[groundtruth]]></category>
  		<category><![CDATA[jerusalem]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1691</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[(x-posted from GroundTruth Initiative) After 4 weeks, we&#8217;re leaving Jerusalem. The finest puzzle of human passion, and passion beyond, resting solidly and unsteadily on 5000 years or so of accumulated white stone and dirt. The most complicated and absurd and somehow, sometimes wonderful city. Our host Micha Kurz of Grassroots Jerusalem warned us that 4 &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/07/31/1691" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Jerusalem, Moving the Ladder"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i>(x-posted from <a href="http://groundtruthinitiative.org/2011/07/31/jerusalem-moving-the-ladder/">GroundTruth Initiative</a>)</i></p>
  <p>After 4 weeks, we&#8217;re leaving Jerusalem.  The finest puzzle of human passion, and passion beyond, resting solidly and unsteadily on 5000 years or so of accumulated white stone and dirt. The most complicated and absurd and somehow, sometimes wonderful city. Our host Micha Kurz of Grassroots Jerusalem warned us that 4 weeks would be just enough to just begin understanding Jerusalem. In fact, it&#8217;s only enough time for the city to get a healthy grip on you so that you really don&#8217;t want to leave. And it&#8217;s definitely not enough time to come up for air for any writing and reflection &#8230; hopefully now I have a little space, on my trip back down to Dar es Salaam, the other end from here of the Great Rift Valley, where in complete contrast, the biggest conflict is that there might, maybe, be another political party in a couple years.</p>
  <p>There is a ladder resting on the front balcony of the <a href="http://atlasobscura.com/place/immovable-ladder-church-holy-sepulchre">Chuch of the Holy Sepluchure</a>. Centuries of delicate negotiation guide how priests and monks of various sects of Christianity move throughout the twisting bizarre space that might possibly be the site of the crucifixion of Jesus. No set of rules for behavior are comprehensive enough to cover every situation, and you hope you have good faith enough for dialogue when the loopholes come up. Not so here, where no one knows which sect originally placed the ladder, so they all refuse to move it. In the middle of all this, hoards of Russian pilgrims take pouty glamour shots in front of what might possibly be the site of a great suffering of Jesus. Thank you for the absurdity and the warning, that ladder should be the symbol of the city.</p>
  <p>Remember this is also the country where there is meticulous debate on <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat_in_Jewish_law#Automated_milking_of_cows">automated milking of cows on Shabbat</a>.</p>
  <p>Jerusalem is a place where they play excellent music in the streets on Friday, and no one notices a soldier dancing with a machine gun. In Silwan, down the slopes of the Old City, young men ride horses through streets defiantly kept 2-way as it has been for thousands of years, and gallop against slowly trudging tourist buses making their way to the City of David, where archeological diggings expose Biblical history, and expose too much of the present day, with houses and mosques collapsing above the excavations. Kites flew above all of this, capturing the view from cameras. In one day, you can rave off Jaffa Street, visit the birthplace of Jesus (grottos!), have a lovely fish dinner in the shadow of the security wall (thankfully <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/1343194542">just mapped</a>, else we would&#8217;ve missed it), be told &#8220;have a nice day!&#8221; by a teenage soldier at an eerily deserted checkpoint, share a taxi with two Ethiopian priests in town from Dublin, and night cap it with a bottle of Brooklyn Lager. And check which beer your drink, cause drinking Taybeh vs Goldstar might be partisan (or wearing your hair a certain way, or the length of your skirt). Weekends are so confusing in Jerusalem! With 3 religions and 3 different holy days, it depends what side of town you&#8217;re on. Not recommended to go back and forth more than once between East and West Jerusalem in the course of one day, your mind will not be able to take such different worlds living in one city. You can hear Rock the Casbah performed in Arabic, and have multiple two hour discussions on the name of Jerusalem in OpenStreetMap.</p>
  <p>Through it all, there has been such a strong reaffirmation of the mission of GroundTruth. With layers apon layers of history, of too much subtlety of meaning, of confusion, of deadly conflict, seems like the only possible response is coming to some reckoning and witness to it all, to see the change over time, to let everyone speak up about the reality of their lives. Let&#8217;s map Jerusalem. Let&#8217;s let people expose their regular humaness, carefully pace ourselves through the bullshit and maybe just find some small piece of reason. On <a href="http://rockburger.com/jerusalem/20110705.html">Micha&#8217;s tour around Jerusalem</a>, we saw an ancient city transformed yet again at the founding of Israel in 1948, and after 1967, the Green Line is now the smoothest highway through town. The municipal boundary of Jerusalem slices through old villages, envelopes completely new ones, and the security wall takes yet another course, and pressing close is the Areas ABC of the Oslo Accords. It hardly makes sense even if you understand it, and by showing what it&#8217;s like right on a piece of ground you may never visit otherwise, perhaps finally some understanding will happen.</p>
  <p>We have at least 3 more posts to talk about the experience with the amazing Grassroots Jerusalem, who cut their chops mapping <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=31.78665&#038;lon=35.23293&#038;zoom=17&#038;layers=M">the Salah ad Din shopping district</a>, and passed it on to <a href="http://geocommons.com/maps/90237">al Walaja</a> a small and inspiring village, which has a piece of just about everything complicated in Israel and Palestine including a completely encircling section of the wall, and it&#8217;s all being wrapped up in a potent brew of technology and training inspired by a slum in East Africa.</p>
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  		<title>Doing</title>
  		<link>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/05/05/1674</link>
  				<comments>http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/05/05/1674#comments</comments>
  				<pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 21:41:17 +0000</pubDate>
  		<dc:creator><![CDATA[mikel]]></dc:creator>
  				<category><![CDATA[Did It]]></category>

  		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://brainoff.com/weblog/?p=1674</guid>
  				<description><![CDATA[The past few months have most entirely been about discussing, strategizing, arguing, planning. Really missing actually doing stuff. So I decided to ignore the emails, concepts notes, budgets, design documents. Build something. Just small things, but cool things. Makes me happy. On the OpenStreetMap site, the history tab is super important for keeping tabs on &#8230; <a href="http://brainoff.com/weblog/2011/05/05/1674" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Doing"</span></a>]]></description>
  								<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The past few months have most entirely been about discussing, strategizing, arguing, planning. Really missing actually doing stuff.</p>
  <p>So I decided to ignore the emails, concepts notes, budgets, design documents. Build something. Just small things, but cool things. Makes me happy. </p>
  <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikel_maron/5690947925/" title="osm-changesets by mikel_maron, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5229/5690947925_4da29dc744.jpg" width="500" height="419" alt="osm-changesets"></a></p>
  <p>On the OpenStreetMap site, the <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/history?bbox=-11.091%2C6.029%2C-10.394%2C6.587">history tab</a> is super important for keeping tabs on changes, but visually dull and hard to immediately parse. I added a map, with highlighting between the list and map views. <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/TomH">TomH</a> cleaned up the code and improved the layout. Basically, <a href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/commit/48929e8781f9c136a142400a7a2ef1cf994f74fd">just some javascript and view changes</a>, and I had to get my OSM installation up to date. Needs some tweaking, but a good start.</p>
  <p>I was pushed to do this by the <a href="http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/SWG_2011-04-29">Strategic Working Group</a>. We&#8217;re discussing the OSM front page and usability, going in circles, and realzing the only way forward was to just do some things, however minor, to iterate our discussion.</p>
  <p>Looking at the history tab, I realize there&#8217;s many ways to go in the realm of monitoring change. Make monitoring more interactive, customized to the places your care about, and the mappers you trust. There are a whole set of <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_Assurance#Monitoring_Tools">external monitoring tools</a> and perhaps some of the tools, or the ideas, could be integrated. </p>
  <p><a name="kibera-1961"/><br />
  <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikel_maron/5690947919/" title="Kibera-1961 by mikel_maron, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5186/5690947919_a455af7e71.jpg" width="500" height="404" alt="Kibera-1961"></a></p>
  <p>That is Kibera in 1961. <a href="http://cube.telascience.org/kibera/aerial/">Choose &#8220;Nairobi 1961&#8221; from this map</a>. Really, just a preview, it&#8217;s going to blow people&#8217;s minds, especially with <a href="http://www.brianekdale.com/?p=230">Brian Ekdale&#8217;s concise history of Kibera</a>.</p>
  <p>Last year in Nairobi, I became aware of an amazing <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/33361176/Aagw2010-June-10-Paolo-Paron-Access-Hapa">archive of historic aerial imagery</a>, flown by the RAF, acquired over all the British Colonial possessions, several times over decades. The images were used for creating ordnance survey maps &#8230; but since then the original images have been sitting in various dusty basements, most recently Oxford. Paolo Paron has a plan to get it all openly online. But in the mean time, you have to go to Oxford, sort through boxes of square images, and request photographic copies. I had the chance to do this back in December, and it was wonderful. 1961 is 50 years ago, meaning these images are out of copyright!</p>
  <p>I receieved from Oxford eight largish tiff images. Seeking first to rectify them, I tried various incarnations of <a href="http://mapwarper.net/">map warper</a> (including a local version) but with 30 MB images, it was choking. Next I tried to find a desktop option, and found good results with <a href="http://qgis.org/">QGIS</a> georectification plugin. I stitched together 6 of the images, roughly (if I spent more time, would&#8217;ve adjusted the different brightness levels and try to align better the two North-South runs that covered Nairobi, one at a slight angle to another). Then loaded a shapefile of Kenya OSM into QGIS, set control points, and warped. Took the resulting GeoTiff onto the generous resource of <a href="http://cube.telascience.org/">hypercube</a>, warped the image to spherical mercator using gdalwarp, and after some hints from winkey and crschmidt on #telascience, &#8220;gdal_translate -expand rgb&#8221;, to take this single band image into RGB, which TileLayers seems to prefer.</p>
  <p>There&#8217;s a lot more to say about this image, and that&#8217;ll be built up in the upcoming new mapkibera.org site. And of course, there&#8217;s those 1.5 million time capsule images sitting in an Oxford basement to open up.</p>
  <p><a name="flow-liberia" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikel_maron/5690947911/" title="Flow-Liberia by mikel_maron, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5103/5690947911_085ba05b16.jpg" width="500" height="341" alt="Flow-Liberia"></a></p>
  <p>Friends of my mine from Nairobi, working for the World Bank, undertook a substantial data collection of all water distribution points in Liberia. Pretty interesting compare and contrast with community mapping. I was pinged about this on twitter by Ned of Water for People, who helped develop the Android/Appspot application for this data collection, called <a href="http://www.mobileactive.org/flow-where-mobile-tech-and-water-meet">FLOW</a>. My immediate response was that this should be open source and open data, so other people can do cool stuff with it. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mikel.maron/posts/879075099358">Max took up the conversation and obliged</a> (as much as he could, the data license is still under discussion). So I had to respond and <a href="http://rockburger.com/flowliberia/">do something cool with the data</a>.</p>
  <p>The <a href="http://flowliberia.appspot.com/">flow web app</a> is ok, but a little clunky. It uses the Google Maps API, and with nearly 1000 markers, it loads slowly and interaction is tricky. So I wanted to try a <i>tile-based approach</i>, to improve the speed and visualization, and this seemed like the best opportunity to get into <a href="http://tilemill.com/">TileMill</a>, part of the <a href="http://mapbox.com/">MapBox toolset by Development Seed</a>. After going through the tools, I am extremely impressed with what DevSeed is building, and hope I can help out by finding good uses, digging up bugs, and contributing here and there.</p>
  <p>So I installed TileMill, updating mapnik in the process. Really nicely designed app, with laser focus on building nice tiles. One of the amazing features is <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/developmentseed/5640168265/in/photostream/">map interactivity</a>, which easily and efficiently turns input data sets into mouseover and infowindow bubbles. The trick it uses is <a href="http://trac.mapnik.org/wiki/MapnikRenderers#grid_renderer">grid renderer</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/springmeyer">Dane&#8217;s</a> extension to mapnik which builds tiled json files, used by the <a href="https://github.com/mapbox/wax">wax library</a> for OpenLayers (and ModestMaps, and GMaps) to define hit areas. Basically, much more efficient than creating markers.</p>
  <p>Finally, Dane showed me <a href="https://github.com/springmeyer/gridsforkids">gridsforkids</a>, a simple sandbox for building image and json tile sets for standalone, offline map apps. I had to grab the &#8220;.mml&#8221; file created by TileMill, have carto convert that to mapnik xml, and then use the custom generate_tiles.py to build everything. Found a small bug in how TMS is handled there, and had to hack in a few things for my data set, but it basically works (a few problems with the hit areas, still investigating). One way this could go is streamlining the process, where one of the outputs from TileMill was a tar ball bundling all the tools to run the map offline.</p>
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