On Thursday we did a London meet-up which was a bit unusual. A “mapathon” event to improve map coverage in the Philipinnes after the typhoon. Check out the HOT blog post about the typhoon and the Typhoon Haiyan wiki page for general information about this disaster response mapping activity which is being coordinated by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

On the Wednesday I was summoned to broadcasting house, to do an interview about OpenStreetMap Typhoon mapping on BBC radio (Listen to Wednesday’s World Business Report and skip ahead to 6:52). Fresh from the excitment of having the BBC pay some attention to us, Grant and I decided we should do an event, so we organised this at very short notice. I asked the ODI if we could host it there in 24 hours time.

I half expected that the event would be a full house, but I really wasn’t sure. Turns out we had about 10 people come along, most of whome were seasoned OpenStreetMappers, so not quite the big band of people I was expecting, coming to learn editing for the first time. I guess more notice is needed for most people, and maybe more time to get the word out (what? Why isn’t everyone following @OSMLondon!)

However it was worth it for a couple of reasons. Firstly we got a bit of mapping done, got some people mapping for the first time, and some people mapping more confidently (Worrying that you’re doing something wrong seems a common problem, but mostly the worrying is not justified. Be bold! Give it a try!)

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It’s winter time in London. Time for the OpenStreetMap winter pub meet-ups. Kicking off TONIGHT!

Our last “summer” meet-up was “just a pub” anyway, so this is a smooth transition. Last time we were in the Penderel’s Oak in Holborn on a Tuesday. I’ve been avoiding Tuesdays because I have Portuguese class, but thought I would try to cater to the important subset of our community… “those who like Tuesdays”… while cunningly picking a pub near my Portuguese language school.

Incidentally my language school is this “EC” building (though the school is called “citylit”). In the reception area there used to be a canvas wall-mounted arty picture, about 3 foot wide, and it was OpenStreetMap! Fairly standard rendering except the colours were changed around to be very dark purpley/blue, perhaps done with CloudMade style editor or something. Quite pretty. Sadly it’s been taken down now. I thought I had a photo of it… [UPDATE: I’ve found the photo of it!]

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We’ve done a set of beginner-oriented walk and talk mapping sessions throughout the mapping season here in London this year. A couple of weeks back we did one in Paddington / Edgware road. It was dark and quite cold, but despite this the event was the most popular one yet! I’ve given up trying to explain what makes one OSMLondon event more popular than another. It’s a mystery.

Gathered outside Edgware Road tube station we had a big group of OpenStreetMap enthusiasts and people who were somewhat new or completely new to OpenStreetMap, all coming for a nice walk round Paddington in the cold and dark! My fiancee came along with one of her workmates, Charis, and we had three others. Johnny, Michael, and Tom (four Toms attending in total I believe?)

I actually published a route in advance for the mapping walk & talk (using the “umap” tool. Anyone tried that? Quite handy for annotating the map with things like this) But we didn’t stick to that route plan. Actually we didn’t even start on that route. I was more organised than usual and did some pre-mapping of building outlines the night before, so I knew we needed to get a closer look at new developments by Edgware Road station. This new building has some very funky tile decoration on the outside. Still behind construction fences, but it looks like they’ll be cleared away pretty soon (remap!)

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We’ve had a few OpenStreetMap events lately which I didn’t report back on yet. The big one of course. State of the map, up in Birmingham. I’ll come back to that, but also quite a few London events (The next London event is this coming Thursday)

There were the pre-SOTM drinks with the MapBox guys. Strongroom bar was less annoyingly crowded than I remembered it, so that was good. I shall have to go back there (pretty close to my office) Having said that, we did have quite a crowd made up of OSMers getting together before the conference, and some other Shoreditch start-up tech community type folks.

There was a couple of guys who had printed OSM maps onto little cards as a conceptual experiment in sharing city information with friends. Interesting idea I thought. Can’t find it online though. Mysterious. At this meet-up I full of the usual pre-SOTM excitement, plus I was excited at having just taken delivery of loads polo shirts.

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We’re out mapping again TONIGHT! Join us for the next London summer event in Victoria area. It’s also quite close to Westminster area. We’re starting outside Westminster cathedral in fact. So we should get some people from government involved, or some cops from scotland yard perhaps.

The last thing we did was the OpenStreetMap aniversary party. Sadly I missed it, but it looks like fun was had, and maybe Grant’s email campaign attracted some new faces?

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The OpenStreetMap Anniversary party is happening TOMORROW! In London it’s happening at the Dogget’s coat and Badge on the South Bank from 12:30. That’s the same venue as last year. Remember last year?

It’s quite nice in the back garden if the sun comes out. My recollection of that evening is a little hazy. I don’t think I wrote a diary entry about it, because I couldn’t remember what happened :-) …It was a good party.

I’m sorry I’ve neglected to promote this. The anniversary party is supposed to be the BIG one. …but sadly I can’t make it myself :-( I have wedding organisation commitments this weekend, and I know I’m not the only one. Gah! This is what happens. Next we’ll all be having babies, and then how will we get to the pub?

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The last London meet-up was the Queens Head pub which is here near Kings Cross. It was quite a long time ago now.

From what I remember of the Queen’s Head pub, it was a good meet-up. Nobody from the OKFN “open data meet-up” came to say hello to us, which was my reason picking this pub. Useless! We also didn’t manage to get a table, so sat in a strange circle instead. But on the plus side, there was a map on the wall! A beer map of America. Later we went for burritos in Kings Cross station.

Between now and then, we’ve had a heatwave here in London. I should probably have organised some lovely mapping evenings in the sunshine, but a heatwave causes various things to go wrong for me. The main thing is I don’t feel like drinking tea because it’s too hot, so I’ve spent the past few weeks feeling caffeine deficient. It aint pretty. Also it turns out my home internet cuts out when it’s too hot. Mega heat fail!

To add to the fails, I’ve also managed to lose the photos from the last meet-up. You’ll have to see a photo from last time we were in Kings Cross having burritos and imagine different people sat there :-) I’m getting used to using an iPhone as my main camera, but on this occasion I clicked delete then import, instead of import then delete. How very incompetent. I’ll tell you what. Here’s a stunning picture I took this morning instead (shop=variety_store) :

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A couple of weeks ago we had a London mapping evening around Camden. Derick was off mapping a different slice of cake and Andrew and I were mapping with a new person, and having a good chat about OpenStreetMap as we went.

Camden’s an area I know pretty well, and it’s quite well mapped already I thought, but maybe in need a refresh, and it’s starting to be on the border of London’s building outline overage, so we can start to take it that next level of detail. Down the backstreets there’s always new surprises to uncover too. I haven’t added the data yet but one of the buildings we encountered was made out of a bus.

In the pub we had an unusual gathering. Mainly unusual because there was no TomH and no Firefishy. But we did have Shaun journeying in from Ipswich to join us, and we had two new faces. One who had joined in with mapping, and one who we had met at #geomob previously.

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So who’s coming mapping TONIGHT?? London mapping party in Camden

We’ve had a few pub meet-ups lately which I didn’t write anything about in my diary. This is kind of deliberate. As we move to a mapping evening <-> pub meet-up alternating timetable, I was hoping to talk more about mapping and less about pubs. I was also hoping to spend a bit less time writing diary entries. It is actually quite time consuming dear reader. KathleenD said in her SOTM.US presentation about organising OSM meet-ups that you should be willing to chill out and take a break if it’s no longer fun any more.

But no! Meet-ups must be documented! …well OK I’m going to document some recent London pub shenanigans very briefly. The truth is, the longer we stay in a pub, the more interesting OpenStreetMappy discussions we get into

Way back in the beginning of May we had a good pub meet-up in the Penderel’s Oak. I took some notes at this meet-up but I didn’t actually take any photos, but there was this one. Tee hee. I’m disappointed SplashMaps haven’t used this in their publicity. So we talked about SplashMaps a bit. We also discussed…

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I’ve made a video. Check it out …but be warned. It’s kind of dull, until 6 minutes 22 second in, when the mapping goes TURBO!

The sped up mapping effect is quite fun. I might have to try that again some time. But the idea of the video was to show how (or at least give a rough idea of how) we go about adding in the data, because we did the usual mapping party thing with beginners, of only demonstrating collection of data. …I’m talking about at the Marble Arch Mapping Party two weeks ago.

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Tomorrow evening we’re going mapping around Marble Arch!

This will be a very beginner-friendly introduction to mapping. So if you’re in London come along, and tell all your friends. Anyone who’s never tried OpenStreetMapping, or curious about other ways of doing it. All you people lurking following @OSMLondon … Come tomorrow evening!

OSMLondon events have always been wide-open for beginners to come along to, but I’m stressing this aspect in the tomorrows event. This is part of an exciting new event formula in which we alternate “pub meet-ups” and “mapping parties”.

Last month we met at the Iron Duke pub with the intention of kicking off the mapping season. This is a good spot for some of the mapping priorities of central London, and I’m pleased that Derick managed to fill in some awesome details around St James Street. For my part I had signed up for a slice of cake to the South, but I spent so long in the office preparing a print-out of building outlines to check… that it go too late so I just went the pub (ohhh! That’s cheating!) It was the daylight confusing me.

Outside the pub (in the new evening daylight) the hot topic of conversation was…

An academic paper all about London OpenStreetMap mapping parties! (PDF)

Amazing and slightly weird that these people have analysed this in such detail. It feels a bit like somebody wrote a ten page academic paper about my personal bad habits. It’s weird that they do all of this without ever attending a mapping party themselves, but we figured it was a scientific analysis in which the scientist decides to avoid interfering with their subjects!

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Boom! summer has arrived!

Well spring time at least. And most importantly, daylight hours after work. This means it’s mapping time again. We’ll be heading out mapping TONIGHT in the Mayfair area

I’m falling behind with… well everything in my life right now, because I’ve had holiday sandwiched between lots of work. But I’ve cranked out a mapcraft cake diagram. I’ve also laid down an invite for any new folks to get in touch with me if they’d like a demonstration of the kind of mapping data I tend to collect while roaming the streets of London. We’ll be doing this mapping from around 6pm until 7pm when we’ll be meeting at the pub. From them onwards it will be… a good old casual social meet-up!

We haven’t had one in a while, and yet I didn’t get around to writing up my notes on things we chatted about at two previous pub meet-ups back in March:

Crosse Keyes pub near Bank 7th March

[](http://flickr.com/photos/harrywood/8548664354/)

[](http://flickr.com/photos/harrywood/8548664254/)

[](http://flickr.com/photos/harrywood/8547564537/)

[](http://flickr.com/photos/harrywood/8548664064/)

[](http://flickr.com/photos/harrywood/8548663958/)

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The next London pub meet-up is tonight! Join us at the Crosse Keys pub from 7pm. As usual we’d love to have some new folks come along.

We had a french lady called Victoire joined us last time at the Blue Posts. She was interested in getting started with OSM and learning more about how humanitarian organisations can work with it. So we were talking through all of that.

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First of all… It’s the London OpenStreetMap pub meet-up TONIGHT. Come join us!

I’ve been working a bit more on the map embedding examples I have on my website. For a long time that URL would take you to an apache directory listing of a bunch of files, including various junk experiments. But I kept linking people to it in discussions, and it was getting a bit embarrassing. Time to tidy it up a bit.

At the hack weekend I set-up a php script which allowed me to leave these files (mostly HTML files) arranged in directories, but launch a view of them which presented the examples with nice editor/preview panels (This is done with a neat javascript tool called codemirror)

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We just had the London OpenStreetMap Hack weekend, and I think I’m right in saying this was the biggest OpenStreetMap hack weekend ever!

Big thanks to the Open Data Institute, who provided the venue, and also sponsored the event. The ODI are funded by the technology strategy board to promote and support open data initiatives, and there are surely non more deserving than our London-born global not-for-profit project. However the ODI are particularly keen on supporting innovation which drives UK economic growth. I’ll be writing on the ODI blog soon, about ways in which OpenStreetMap does this (UPDATE: blog post on the ODI site now)

The ODI is also… my office. I work every day at a desk there doing placr.co.uk open transport data stuff. It was quite exciting holding an OpenStreetMap hack weekend at my place of work, but it did mean I had to get up early to be the first one there.

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Two big events coming up in London:

TODAY (Saturday) we’re having a big lunchtime pub meet up. hbogner is visiting with a whole team of Croatian OpenStreetMappers. Nine of them I think! They’ve been doing some kind of OSM workshop in rural Wales, the bit which just got the heaviest snow, but I’m sure that wont stop them getting back to London this morning, and we can meet with them to drink beer in the traditional english environment of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub.

I’m sorry I’ve arranged this at rather short notice. I was umming and aahing because it clashes with something else I have this evening. This is the only reason it’s a lunchtime event actually, so if people want to carry on the merriment into the evening, or arrange a follow-on session at a different pub, I’m sure the Croatian folks won’t complain! I will be aiming to get there before 1pm though. Should be fun. For a while there I wasn’t sure if the Croatians had managed to find out about the event I’d set up. But it’s OK. They’re good to go. But I seem to be the only Londoner signed up on lanyrd so far! Looking forward to it anyway.

The other big event is the next London OpenStreetMap Hack Weekend. Feb 2nd 3rd. This looks set to be an international gathering too, with Emacsen flying in from the States, Ben from Belgium, and Katie from Germany. Again we need more Londoners signing up, but I know you all don’t like to commit until the last minute. The Open Data Institute are hosting and sponsoring! This will be a great venue for this I’m sure. It has “Open Data” in its name, and it’s a nice space. Check it out (we can get set up in the ‘boardroom’ there). Please consider coming along even if you’re a little bit scared by the word “hacking”. It’ll be fun I promise!

So those are some upcoming events.

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Tonight we’re going to the pub! It’s been a while. We need an OSMLondon celebration of Christmas, New Year, and one million users! So join us at the Monkey Puzzle in Paddington from 7pm

We had an awesome hack weekend in December, but last time we had a regular pub session was way back in November. We went to the Parcel Yard pub in the new bit of Kings Cross station.

In the pub we talked about …random topics which I wrote down at the time. Does anyone remember what we said about “floods in the tube”, and “airoplane radars”? And at the end of the list I have written down “weight loss solutions”. I don’t remember that converation at all. Maybe we came up with some brilliant medical breakthrough, but I’m afraid I didn’t write down any more detail. The cure for obesity is lost forever.

We talked about OpenMeatMap.org, a map locating fine meat produce from butchers, farmers markets, and other meat outlets. …which sadly doesn’t exist. But it should!

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1 million users! Woosh! Welcome to 2013. This is going to be a good year.

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As usual the run up to Christmas seems to be building up to a crescendo of chaos for me. But that’s the way we like it. Some of the Hack Weekend promotion was a little hurried/non-existant, but even so we did alright.

We had a lovely venue courtesy of 10gen the MongoDB company where Derick works. Our venue requirements are pretty simple, but this funky warehouse office in Shoreditch surpassed them. Thanks to 10gen for that, and to Derick for helping me run the event.

And we had pizza!

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We’ve got quite a range of London events upcoming in various stages of planning:

TONIGHT! - Join us in The Parcel Yard pub here in the new bit of Kings Cross station from 7pm for our regular London winter pub meet-up

Thu 22nd - geomob - They’ve just announced the line-up. Six different geo-presentations followed by pub. This is always a fun geo crowd, and usually a fair few OpenStreetMappers in attendance.

Sat 24th / Sun 25th - London branch of Operation Cowboy - This one is being organised by Tom Morris. He’s yet to confirm the venue, but has a plan. I hope this can be a good “training” event, at which people can go and learn or share tips about OpenStreetMap editing (That should be the focus I think. Not so sure about the “cowboy” ideas) But it’s not my event! Somebody else is organising something. Hurray! For that reason alone, I’d encourage everyone to support it. It will need experienced mappers and of course lots of inexperienced mappers to sign up to it. Tom has been promoting it to the wikipedians, but there’s probably quite a few other people who have been waiting for a non-pub related non-hacking mapping related OpenStreetMap event. How to get the word out to those people? I’ve pondered training kind of event formats for a long time. Hope it works well.

Sat 1st & Sun 2nd December - Hack Weekend. The dates are not necessarily set yet, but this seems like the most likely weekend. It means it’ll clash with Sanitation Hackathon (a humanitarian tech event), but it’s the best weekend for OpenStreetMap hacker availability. If you’re within range of London and interested in the technical side of OpenStreetMap (“internal” development or just using OSM data) then keep this weekend free. More details to come very soon hopefully.

And finally the Christmas Party 2012. We’ve got a wiki page so far at least. We should probably pick a date.

Phew! So thats the upcoming stuff.

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