I used to live in Belfast, for around 5 months in 1995. I went there to do a piece of research, some of which was ethnographic, and the rest of it was a few visits to the Northern Ireland Statistics Office. It was an amazing time for that city in terms of peace breaking out, and a City literally stretching with a sigh of relief. And it was an honour to be there at that time. Since my return to Dublin, I only went back three times. Which is very little for a place that I felt very much at home in.

Heading up with my mapping buddies Lineo and Tad we talked about how streetsigns and road markings have subtile differences across the now infamous brexit hard/soft border.

Lineo compared the border to that between Lesotho and South Africa, while Tad resolved to come back this way on his motorbike and capture as much imagery as possible while it remains open.

When we got to Queens’ University and found our kind event host Conor Graham we realised how ready a university can be to hear about openstreetmap things. Their labs, wifi, and the interests of the staff are all really very OSM things already, and opensource is the way forward.

Queens asked two of us to participate in a GPS improvement experiment which he describes here using this thingy.

The event was enjoyable, mostly because of the social side of mapping we get when we have a meetup. I always learn loads, which is why I mention new frontiers. Also, I had a chance to map the building I lived in, on Oldpark Road, old ground indeed.