Author: Noclip; Source: Wikimedia Commons

MappingDC is planning the next mapping party for January 10th (tentatively 10 am – 3pm), focusing on the National Mall area and East/West Potomac Park areas. We are still working on setting a specific meeting place.

Although we are doing GIS data imports in DC (we aim to have buildings in by Jan 10th), there remains plenty of details to collect around the National Mall area.

Some things to do during the mapping party:

• Adding various statues and smaller monuments, verifying existing data (much comes from the GNIS dataset, with substantial inaccuracies), and we can also add description information.
• Food, souvenir and information kiosks, paddle boats, benches, trash cans (the DC GIS data does not include them for the Mall), bike racks, water fountains, and other POIs.
• Mark where there are steps and ramps to provide accessibility information
• Collect data about the walkways and bike paths (e.g. type and quality of pavement), which would be useful for determining where one can go rollerblading or cycling.
• Other ideas and whatever interests you.

Surrounding the National Mall, in the Penn Quarter/Metro Center, there are numerous restaurants, shops, and other amenities that need to be added.

To take part in the mapping party, you do not need a GPS. We will have some to lend out, and GPS is only one way of collection. We also use walking papers, which are simply low-tech printouts of the OSM map that we mark up with details when out walking around.  After collecting some data, we will spend time uploading the data to OSM, with more experienced mappers demonstrating how it’s done.

A planning page for the mapping party is on the OpenStreetMap wiki. 

We will be meeting at the Cosi cafe at the corner of 10th & E St NW, across the street from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building and a block north of Pennsylvania Avenue. The closest metro stations to Cosi are Metro Center (the 12th & F St exit) or Gallery Pl-Chinatown (the 9th St exit or the 7th & F St exit), if coming on the Green, or Yellow lines.

RSVP: http://mapthemalldc.eventbrite.com/ (to help us to know how many to expect)

Lots of POI/Addresses/Paths/etc to collect in Courthouse Arlington. Let’s meet 12 noon November 29th and start mapping. We’ll map for a couple hours and then re-converge to upload our data.

Corner Bakery
2111 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA

Please RSVP Here

If you have a GPS and/or Laptop please bring them but they aren’t required. We will have loner GPS units and can teach you how to edit as well on laptops.

See you Sunday!

If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP.

We’ll be working on the DC GIS data which has been automatically converted to OSM.

Newbies and experienced mappers welcome!
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2009-11-07
End Time: 17:00

We’re holding our first import sprint on October 24th.

When: October 24th, 12 noon until approximately 6pm
Where: HacDC at 1525 Newton Street NW, DC
What: Our first data import, working on building footprints, addresses and street data

The longer form agenda for this sprint will be:

1. To coordinate the effort that’s already going on in getting the data imported programatically
2. To execute the automatic import against the current data set
3. Do to a manual verification and correction of the data
4. To complete the import

We’ll be primarily looking at the building footprints, but potentially at other data sets.

Coincidentally at 4pm we’ll be participating in the OSM-US call-in, an effort to create a national OpenStreetMap organization.

If you’d like to help out, please have an existing account on OpenStreetMap, a current copy of JOSM, and also a current copy of Quantum GIS (qgis), which you can get here.

Lastly, if the side door is locked, you can call HacDC’s number (located on their web site) and someone will bring you up to the lab.

This temporary map shows what we can do with OSM to not only have a temporary means of navating, but also of preserving historical events.

We will continue to discuss bulk importing of local government data, planning of mapping parties and the data we’ve contributed over the previous month.

For more information stay tuned on our google group.

Even after all the major features of DC are mapped, there will be an ongoing mission to keep this information accurate over time. To that end mappers should assist local groups with education on not only data entry but maintenance. Community groups should be empowered to maintain the data themselves.