Mapping Party

We had a mapping party in Toronto on Sunday, 05 May 2009. Some of you have asked what is a mapping party? and others may have wondered what could you possibly do at a mapping party? The best way to find out is to join us at a Toronto mapping party! OpenStreetMap contributors host mapping parties all around the world. You can find the current list of upcoming mapping parties and other OpenStreetMap events on the OpenStreetMap wiki.

Planning the party

We selected a part of Toronto that had been initially mapped from aerial images. It was missing many street names and important points of interest so we made our goal for the mapping party to fill in the street names and points of interest. We also collected block addressing data in places.

The no name layer of OpenStreetMap helps with planning mapping parties by emphasizing areas that are missing street names. Here is Bayview Village before our mapping party as shown on the no name layer.

Each of the roads shown with a red casing are missing the name in the database. This layer isn't much to look at for the everyday user, but is tremendously helpful for mappers!
You can find the current no name layer on the map.

We also printed a large map of the area from the no name layer for mappers to use while mapping. You can see these mapper guides being used in the video below. The files are also attached below for reference.

Before and after

This is the area that we decided to map before the mapping party.

And after the mapping party.

Where did we map? [Update: version 2 of the video includes additional contributor data]

This video is made from the track files collected by our GPSes while we were mapping. A few of the mappers have not sent me their track files yet, so I'll redo the video when I get the rest of the data. This will give you an idea of where we went and what we saw while we were mapping. You can also see the difference in mapping on foot, bicycle and in a car.

Baview Village mapping party - v2 from rweait on Vimeo.

Point of view video of a mapping party

Janusz attended the Toronto mapping party. He's a doctoral masters student at University of Toronto on exchange from Germany. As part of his Ph.D. he wears a camera around his neck. It takes a photo every 30 seconds or when the ambient light changes. And he made those photos into a video of the mapping party from his perspective.

It is awesome. This time lapse of the mapping party runs from about 0:55 to 4:18 on the video.

Openstreetmap Sunday from Janusz Leidgens on Vimeo.