Hi everyone,
today I’m very happy to share a special guest post from Tushar V, who last weekend attended his first ever OpenStreetMap mapping party in Bangalore, India. Tushar is the son of a long-time former colleague / friend / advisor of OpenCage who lives in Bangalore, this was Tushar’s first mapping party. We thought it would be interesting for everyone to read and see how a mapping party works, but also why OpenStreetMap is such an interesting hobby for young and old.
Many thanks to the organizers of the party, everyone who attended and mapped. We are very pleased to welcome Tushar to the OpenStreetMap community!
Now over to Tushar …
OSM Mapping Party Bangalore - It’s fun!
On 12th May 2023, I attended an OpenStreetMap “Mapping Party” in Bangalore. What is a mapping party? A mapping party is an event hosted by OSM enthusiasts who come together to contribute to the vast data of OSM by mapping all surrounding areas near a fixed location. This was my first time attending a mapping party and I had no experience in mapping but I still went anyway to see what I could learn.
The party started at one corner of Sankey Tank in Malleshwaram, Bangalore, and participants had to proceed south and map areas mainly along the two parallel roads running almost a kilometre: “Sampige Road” and “Margosa Road” (see on OpenStreetMap) which also have multiple roads intersecting them. The state of the map in the area was fairly good. There were hardly any roads or residential areas missing, but there was a large number of shops, banks, ATMs, temples and other structures that were yet to be mapped.
The event was organised by two OSM enthusiasts: Vivek and Arjun. There were ten mappers and most of them were from software, data and geospatial backgrounds, but I soon learned that you don’t have to be a software engineer or cartographer to map the area (at least as long as you are only concerned about field mapping). The first-timers were introduced and given a quick training in an app called “Every Door” which is so simple that it can be used by a 13-year-old; the app lets you map anything from a tree to a bank to even a road using your smartphone.
For the next twp hours, all mappers spent the time mapping important features that were missing on the map. Once I got the hang of it, I mapped some popular shops like Nandini milk booth, a few ATMs and even some major banks. At the end of the day, the group mapped over 350 features which can be seen on the map given below.
Reflecting, it was a pretty fun experience. I got to explore something new. I also got to meet some really friendly people and discover a whole new community of mappers I didn’t know existed.
A few recommendations from my side to anyone thinking of organizing a mapping party would be to communicate more details about the event and what is going to happen in it on social media instead of keeping the participants in the dark until the actual event.
To any first-timer who has never mapped before, my advice would be to just chill out, it will be fun and you just might learn something new.
Well done, Tushar. Great to read that you enjoyed the mapping. Keep going! But beware - OpenStreetMap can be addictive.
Happy mapping,
BTW - anyone who wants to learm more about the Every Door app will enjoy this interview with its maker, Ilya Zverev over on the Geomob podcast.