Manhattan. That's what we really need. An OSM group that meets regularly in Manhattan. I think it probably has a better chance of happening in Manhattan, Kansas before the "other one" but I'll be happy to be wrong on that.
And what about Springfield? Surely we have motivated OSMers / Simpsons fans in one of the Springfield, USAs. Don't you deserve a Mappy Hour? After the Toronto Mappy hour this week, I had a thought about who attends these things. The Regulars: These are the folks who attend 50% or more of the events. I guess we have about 8 or ten regulars in Toronto. Some of our Toronto regulars actually live in other cities and come to Toronto for the Mappy Hour and other OSM events. I really appreciate that! Your OSM group can be a magnet for surrounding locations too. The Usual Suspects: These are the folks who attend once or more per year. We have another dozen or so of this type of attendee. Both of the groups above make it really easy to keep hosting Mappy Hour. I look forward to seeing them, and presume that they also look forward to attending the events. Often, conversation picks right up with that interesting this we were discussing last time, whether last time was last month or last year. New Mappers: They show up with a question about editing. We see these folks every other meeting or so. An OSM contributor has a question about tagging or editing or best practices and suddenly appears at Mappy Hour. Usually they are pleased to hear about the mailing lists and help.osm.org and wiki.osm.org sites because they didn't know about them. Community: These folks aren't mappers but have heard about OSM through work or another interest. We usually have one person from the wider GIS community at Mappy Hour. They might have a question about consuming OSM data, or how OSM fits into their workflow or business plan. Sometimes these folks from these two groups turn into Usual Suspects or Regulars. Other: We had one guy show up and talk about space aliens and his invisible friend. He was nice enough I guess, but he got bored with all the talk about verifiable data. :-) If you want to start a local OSM group, you can. And it is easy and fun. Some details and tips are on the wiki, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_group It really boils down to: - Select a place that you want to meet like a coffee shop or pub - Select a convenient time and date - Tell everybody about it - Show up and enjoy it - Repeat. :-) _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
