Appropriately 10 of us gathered at 6/8Kafé to celebrate 10 years of OSM. It was satisfying to see that our email campaign of contacting most users who had contributed to OSM in the midlands brought along six people to their first OSM meeting in the Midlands. We had users from Oxford,Worcester, Coventry and Stafford as well as the usual crowd from Birmingham (well….  minus a few notable examples who had very good excuses!) Thanks to everyone who gave up their time to come along,  I think we all gained something from swapping experiences  and tips and tricks for editing and tagging and data sources. Apologies to Steve Coast, our founder, who still has 12 ways in our region showing him as the last editor – we didn’t have the time or resources to invite contributors with this number of edits.

Naturally we had a cake, baked and decorated by Liz. Here’s  a Level 1 aerial image:

I hope people remember which slice they were allocated- we’ll be expecting some edits!

In true OSM Mapping Party tradition there has to be an image of AFTER:

And of course we need to see who turned up:

And finally thanks to Sal and her crew at 6/8Kafé  on Temple Row who generously donated a venue for us in their basement. Any OSMers visiting Birmingham, pop in for coffee and cake, you won’t be disappointed – beats the corporate coffee chains hand down.

IF YOU’RE ORGANISING YOUR OWN PARTY –  HAVE FUN

On Saturday we held a mapping party in the Warwickshire village of Tysoe (it’s really Upper, Middle and Lower Tysoe) strung out along the foot of Edge Hill. Edge Hill was the site of a Civil War battle in 1642 – fought just to the North of Tysoe, close to the village of  Radway. We were based in the Village Hall  to take advantage of its wifi.

Thanks are due to Mike and Sue Sanderson for organising the event, the local WI for providing the refreshments and the 55 residents who turned up to contribute. Contributions ranged from long walks along unmapped footpaths, geo-tagged photos, addresses and postcodes along with a wealth of local knowledge and history that only residents can provide.

We had a screen displaying OpenStreetMap live edits and people were engrossed to see themselves as part of a much wider mapping community, watching what was going on around the world and seeing their local contributions making an appearance.

Rob and I were hard-pressed entering the data provided, answering questions and demonstrating various editing techniques. We were both exhausted at the end of the day!

The map is considerably improved and will continue to evolve as the local community and Parish Council evolve a Neigbourhood Plan. Several people expressed an interest  in developing their editing skills and we look forward to helping the good people of Tysoe develop their map.

We were so busy during the day that we forgot to take any photos of the event!

For readers not based in the UK the WI is the Women’s Institute – a venerable UK voluntary body set up in 1915 to revitalise rural communities by encouraging women to join the war effort in food production. Its aims have since broadened and it now the largest women’s voluntary body in the UK with over 200,000 members. You can find out  more here.

We had a good turnout last night in the Spon Gate in Coventry – nine people, including  three new faces. A special welcome to Florian who’s just arrived from France for a long stay, working in Coventry. It was a good choice of pub with some excellent choices of beer made tastier by their low cost – well done Wetherspoons!

Our discussions ranged widely and randomly as usual, including: aerial photography, postcodes, quadrocopters, bridge relations, postcodes, listed buildings, footpaths, blue plaques, postcodes, SOTM, memorials in cemeteries and parks, postcodes, tagging businesses, public bodies’ open data, plans to improve our building definition inside the Ring Road in Coventry, Natural England open spaces and all the other topics at the other end of the table I couldn’t hear.

We didn’t just idly chat, we also made some plans:

1. To keep the momentum going from the completion of tracing buildings in Birmingham we decided on collaborative armchair mapping of the buildings in Balsall Common – a large dormitory village midway between Coventry and Birmingham.  Maybe it will motivate some of us to travel there to do some surveying. We’ll have to remember to get off the train at Berkswell ( named after the next village to Balsall Common, even though the station is not in Berkswell  but Balsall Common – such is the logic of naming of stations!)
2. Next month we all felt we’d like a curry rather than a pub meet , which soon progressed into “Let’s map the Balti Triangle in Birmingham”. Now the Balti Triangle can probably be surveyed relatively speedily, so we soon expanded the mapping objective to the Bus Route 37 which can be boarded outside Moor Street Station and will take us to the edge of the Balti Triangle. So the party will be dubbed “Mappa Mercia 37” and will take place on Saturday December 1^st with mapping for as long as the weather and stamina allows until it gets dark – say 4:30 where we’ll meet in a pub (bit of a challenge since the area is mostly muslim and most of the pubs have closed!) and then proceed for an early evening curry. Cake based on No 37 bus stops will be up shortly.
3. SOTM 2013 bid – numerous decisions based on keeping up the momentum which will be communicated separately to Talk-GB.

If I’ve missed anything apologies and let me know so I can add it.