On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 4:12 PM, SteveC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But you're sort of giving up before you started. OSM didn't start by > having universal member density throughout Europe or something.
I agree, however, you need to entice people into the concept before you can put them to work. You are talking about putting on events when there are no members to attend these events. We need to spread the word and build the membership base around here currently. > > You run a mapping party in I don't know, Calgary. Someone there gets > really interested and his brother is a Geography teacher in, I don't > know, Ft. McMurray and he emails him about it, he runs a class and it > gets mapped. > > See? Networks effect is everything and you have to start somewhere. Yup, enticing people into the OSM community, building a membership base, then getting things done. >> That's going to be the way that the majority of Canadian roads get >> added to the OSM map. There's simply not enough user density to be >> able to effectively map Canada any other way within my lifetime. > > That kind of ignores the better than exponential user take up and is > being super negative. Putting on a mapping party in an area where there are no members for 400 kms is a fairly frivolous activity, and that's a close major center. There's a lot more out there where it is 500 km to the nearest dwelling. I'm not attempting to be negative, but rather pragmatic. With a base map in place, it would be easier to entice people to participate. I'm sure a lot of people look at the OSM project, and have a look at their local area, see not much data and wander away. Not everyone is as enthusiastic about taking a blank slate, and filling it with roads, parks, lakes, and streams. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Canada:Alberta:Strathcona_County I have mapped out the >350 km of urban roads, and plotted most of the nearly 1300 km of rural roads. Those roads need to be traced out with a GPS, to get accurate locations for each of the intersections, and tracks for the meandering roads in the subdivisions. I'm not sure how to go about doing that on a Saturday without incurring any costs. I know the concept that you are trying to promote, it's just that we are not there yet. It's like when I took up geocaching. There were a limited number of geocachers in the area, and I found every geocache available within a hundred miles within a short time. There were only so many of us placing new caches, and only so much time available to plan and place those caches. Now, 4 years later as I look into geocaching again, the user base has increased substantially, and I can probably geocache like crazy for a year or so, and not run out. Perhaps I simply need to shelve the OSM project for 5 years and then come back and set up a mapping party. Nope, let me guess that's a bad attitude too! 8) We need to find and enlist GPS enabled users currently... I found out about OSM from the Geocaching community, if I recall correctly. Hmm, I need to create a geocache that makes people wander around the areas that I want to map, and then make them upload their GPS track to the OSM project to be able to log it as "found". James _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk-ca
