OpenStreetMap Mapping Party - Black Country April 3, 2009

On the weekend of 4th & 5th April 2009, the OpenStreetMap team of volunteers will be adding Sandwell to the global mapping revolution. Contributors to the OpenStreetMap project are meeting at "The Public" in West Bromwich with the aim of completely mapping the streets and other major features of the borough.

Anyone wishing to take part in the mapping weekend are asked to come along to The Public, New Street, West Bromwich, West Midlands, B70 7PG at 10:00am on Saturday 4th (and/or Sunday 5th) to collect GPS mapping units before going their separate ways to map the borough for a couple of hours or the rest of the day.

The OSM project was started in 2004 to enable anyone to use maps in creative, productive or unexpected ways. The use of traditional maps is hampered by legal and technical restrictions that severely curtail their use. The OpenStreetMap project aims to create free geographical data, like street maps, that can be used anywhere by anyone. OpenStreetMap contributors, will be driving, cycling, and wandering Sandwell with GPS (Global Positioning System) units recording the routes of as many streets, cycleways and footpaths as possible. The tracks recorded over the weekend will be added to the online OpenStreetMap.org database where anyone in the world with access to the internet can browse, annotate, reference, edit and use the data in any way they want.

Collaborative mapping is a rapidly growing activity and is being driven in part by technology (cheap GPS equipment and online collaboration tools such as OpenStreetMap.org). Our project now has over 100,000 registered users worldwide. What makes such projects stand out is their knowledge production and ownership ethos. Under such open-source models the rights of authorship are decentralised and the knowledge gathered is seen as a common resource that can be distributed and re-used without restriction or licence. This approach has real potential to empower people to create their own knowledge and encourages re-use of cartographic resources in novel and creative ways.

The map data produced over the weekend will contribute to OpenStreetMap.org, the leading project in the open-source mapping field and a major player in the Linked Data arena. Currently, OpenStreetMap has mapped large portions of the country, including the whole of Birmingham which was completed last year. Now it’s the turn of the Black Country!

We hope that an intensive effort to build a map of the whole of the borough in a weekend will inspire others and help to build momentum across the rest of the region and beyond. As an open organisation with no membership requirements, we welcome the participation of anyone, young or old, who will be in West Bromwich on the 4th and/or 5th April. Anyone interested in taking part should contact Andy Robinson (andy at osmfoundation.org)

To view the current map or find further information about the OpenStreetMap project please visit our website, http://www.openstreetmap.org

Official Website: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mappa_Mercia/Black_Country