The market is a place I may not have discovered had it not been a plea from Pete Gravell for someone with OpenStreetMap experience to host a small stall to promote the project. Pete was organising an Open Sourcery event as part of Spacemakers organisation that is trying to re-invigorate the market. Spacemakers are allowed to use some of the empty units to host weird, wonderful, arty things that encourage people to come and see what's going on. Which has the hopeful knock-on effect of businesses wanting to rent units in the market because of the increased foot-fall.
Along with Simon, I went along to try and get more out about OSM and crucially more geo-information for OSM.
Brixton like most of London is well mapped however as this was likely done from aerial imagery, and a few people on the ground there is not much local information about playgrounds, pubs restaurants and local businesses. Even the Market itself was not on the map! Which Simon quickly sorted out.
To get local POIs we had the idea of having a large map that people could write on (similar to Walking Papers) and me or Simon could add the data into the database ourselves. This morphed into using pins and wool, and extra blank pieces of paper either side because there wasn't much space on the map for writing descriptions
Starting at 10:00 I was worried that people would walk past and not be confident enough to add their local knowledge to the map, however the free-minded/spirited people of the market seemed to be used to being asked to do slightly crazy things in Brixton Village Market. Once people clicked that their favourite park, cafe or restaurant was going to be on a public map they were very enthusiastic although I'm not quite sure I got across to everybody what OSM was about.
Halfway through the day - Me in my OSM Surveyors Hi-Vis jacket trying to explain OSM to general public. Image courtesy of Pete Gravell©.
Once a few things were added the visual attraction of pins and coloured wool meant that more people stopped to have a look and then got caught to adding more information. One woman even came back 5 times (probably more) trying to add information and only on the 5th time did she have a cafe that had not already been added!
The map at the end of the day.
By the end of the day we had at least an extra 30 POIs on the map and with all the which has been left in the Market because I couldn't bear to tear it apart to take home. Now that the market has been added to the map I'd like to go back and add in all the little businesses in the units. The market changes from week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year and OSM is probably the only project that could even come close to coming up to date.
I've never taken part in an OSM event like this before. I have been to mapping parties but they are always with people who understand the project and we usually map a place that is already blank. So we are trying to add in the roads and road names, and hoping someone else will add in POIs. Seeing as it didn't cost much to make the map, and it's a very intuitive way of adding information I think it should become a part of OSM outreach activities.
The map was using Mapgen.pl (originally designed to be a quick and easy way to generate maps for emergency response in Haiti) and sent it to the printers. Total time between thinking of the idea and having a map was less than 24hrs! The map also "only" cost ~£16, which for a 4 hour print time, one off colour printing on very high quality A1 paper I thought was quite reasonable.
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The 3rd and final day of the Birmingham Bug Jam, and it was much quieter this time around. Myself, Quentin, John Pinner and Chris "Baggers" were the only ones here to start. Chris was hardcore and actually spent the night in Linux Emporium though I don't know if he actually got any bugs triaged. Hellocatfood, from IRC, joined us later in the afternoon and got he managed to get a few hours of bug triaging in.
We set up the webcam stream so that the bug hunters in London could interact with us, and kudos to them (and Tim Williams) for setting up another webcam stream from London. We had two-way communication which really added to the atmosphere, and made it feel more of a global event. Having comments being shouted from London, and us laughing back made us really feel that we were part of a larger group, working together to the same ends. There were also others that joined in from home via the webcam and IRC.
Food wise, we had more tasty food this time a huge pizza that had to be halved so it fitted in the oven, burgers, and chocolate cake. Washed down by beers provided by Chris.
Chris got distracted again and started to juggle some penguins.
I felt that I got more bug triaging done today then yesterday. I felt more confident posting comments and changing status'.
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It's Saturday and we're hunting bugs in Birmingham! The day kicked off around 10 O'Clock at Linux Emporium (facilities kindly provided by John Pinner) with everyone getting stuck into bugs on Launchpad. Mez gave a quick how-to on bug triaging to a few of us. Unfortunately it seemed that everyone else on the interest was being just as enthusiastic and the Launchpad servers couldn't handle the load. The Canonical monkeys got it sorted eventually so we got back to bug zapping.
Tim Williams of Autotrain and SBLug set up the room with a streaming webcam, so that the whole world can watch - and listen! - to our bug hunting. This essentially meant we spent a good while irritating the London Bug Jammers by eating tasty lasagne, chocolate cake, drinking beer and juggling penguins.
I only managed to triage about 9 bugs today, it's still very much early days for me but I still think I helped. Most of the triaging I did was to file the bugs against what I thought was the correct package, and changing the status, asking for more info. Quentin and Nick were able to actually have a more in-depth stab at the bugs, because we had a wide variety available in the Linux Emporiums office, reporting back more specific information that should hopefully help developers when they come to fix the bugs.
Mez and Zeth also spent a bit of time interviewing the bug jammers for a podcast they are preparing to release.
Later in the day we had a surprise visit from Henrik Omma who helped me understand a little more about Launchpad, and helped me by setting a few bugs to "wishlist".
Hopefully tomorrow I will be more confident with setting bug status, and asking for more information.
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OpenStreetMap is for geographic data what the Linux kernel is for operating systems. The aim is to eventually have a complete map of the world, this is a monumental effort and one that I believe is worthwhile. For in the UK the only mapping authority available is Ordnance Survey, a government funded body, who own copyright to the maps they produce and charge a fortune to those who wish to use them.
This situation is morally wrong, as this prevents academics and individuals using the data in new and possibly very beneficial ways. Or even the more mundane ways such as publishing a map to your business, without incurring a huge license fee.
The volunteers of OpenStreetMap are very enthusiastic about what they do, and gain a great enjoyment from wandering and discovering places they have never been, or better yet finding nooks and crannies of places they have!
Most data seems to come from individual volunteers working independently, but last weekend (12/13th April) there was a "Mapping Party" for the south Birmingham area. It was organised by Andy Robinson as OSM data for the south of Birmingham city centre consists of only main roads and vast void areas.
This was my first time doing actual mapping for OSM, I had before spent a good hour figuring out how to name some roads in Selly Oak and that's where it ended. The mapping party was due to start around 9:00 at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, and the majority had arrived by 10:00.
As soon as Andy Robinson arrived the event was kick started, with projectors and maps being set up around the small office that had been hired out for our use. Soon we had huge A0 posters of the area on the walls, so that people could mark the area they would like to map.
The OpenStreetMap foundation had even brought around a dozen, compact Gecko 201 Garmins for the volunteers, like me, who did not posses their own GPS equipment. But more importantly they had people who were willing to show me the ropes. So I spent the morning mapping with Brian, whose advice was invaluable. He gave me some basic lessons in mapping, what the do's and don't do's were etc.
The afternoon I took out to Kings Heath by myself, with a Garmin GPS gaffa taped to the handle bars of my bike. It is the common consensus that the best way to map is by bicycle. A bike had the advantage of being allowed pretty much anywhere unlike a car, and you can cover large distances, unlike just walking. It was great fun exploring all the back roads and pathways, but it gets you a few strange looks stopping and writing down road names.
The standard method for collecting road names and other features is to carry a GPS device that logs your position every second, and a pad and pen. That's it! The simple joy of OSM is the very low level of entry. The easy bit is getting the GPS trace, the hard part is making decent notes as later on you will be referring to them to construct the map data. As this is a grassroots project how many notes you make is up to you. Nearly everyone will record roads, but then there are foot paths, canals, and cycle lanes which you could record. Or you could go into more detail such as bus stops, hospitals, crossings, traffic lights, post codes! The list is almost endless.
As you can imagine this can make note taking slow and very messy. Even my simple mapping got complicated very quickly.
But the OSM mappers are an inventive bunch. This is a group of people so dedicated that they wrote their own software to map the planet, and some of the features and plugins for it are very clever. You can carry along a digital camera with you, and take pictures of road names, etc, and then use that as your reference when you return. This is done by taking a photograph of the GPS device showing the current time. Then later the JOSM software will calculate the difference between the first photograph's time stamp and the given GPS time, and then overlay all the subsequent photos on top of your GPS data! There is even a plugin to do the same with audio recordings. Truly an example of "Necessity being the mother of invention"!
There were a few hic-cups during the day, rain being one of them, but also the police and bemused members of the public. To a cynic it was of little surprise that the only asian member of our group was stopped by the police in what appears to be an "Statutory Power or Street Encounter", but the general feeling of the group was to laugh it off. In fact others seems slightly jealous that they had not got one!
All in all a very enjoyable day, and it was unfortunate that I could not attend the second day. And the product of our work can now be seen on the OSM website, in the form of a much more feature rich South Birmingham!
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Yesterday was Software Freedom Day and it was great! I stepped out into Birmingham City Centre to hand out CDs along with Suntish and Richard, just down from the Floozy in the Jacuzzi. Overall we've handed out over 200 CDs. A mix of Ubuntu Fiesty and The Open CD.
It was heartening to speak to people that already new about Open Source software or Linux, and it was great to talk to people who had no idea but were enthusiastic to try it out. One nice surprise was a IT/PHP volunteer for Friends of the Earth, apparently the Birmingham Office of FOTE have a few of Ubuntu machines, and are planning to use a LAMP server!
Here are some gratuitous publicity shots.
This year I tried to organise the event by myself, and to be honest it was more than I could handle. Without help from the people beblow I wouldn't have been able to pull it off
I'd like to thank,
Suntish Narain - Helping hand out CDs
Richard Rothwell - Helping Hand out CDs and giving tips.
John Pinner and The Linux Emporium - For printing CDs
Mary Mooney - Printing the CD wallets
Housemates - For helping to fold the CD cases and pack the CDs
Girlfriend - For being really quick at folding CD cases.
Zeth Green - For saying hello
Sophie @ Shared Earth - For letting us stash our Swag
Alan Pope - Letting me use the Lug Masters mailing list
I hope to do this again next year, but its far too much for one person to organise. This year it was only basic, just handing out CDs. Next year I'd like a table, with leaflets, a laptop demonstrating Ubuntu, and open source Windows Software, the ability to burn off CDs when we run out and anything else I can think of. If you'd like to take part in Software Freedom Day 2008 please contact me, I'll be glad for the help.
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