I am making my way along 43rd St in Kansas City, mapping most of the amenities and businesses I see along the way. About two weeks ago, I went from where 43rd breaks off at Gilham then west to Donutology, and today I worked through the stretch between Donutology and west to the nearby QuickTrip across from the Catholic church. I did not get very far because I walked into many of the businesses and chatted with folks, so as not to be suspiciously loitering outside :D

It was really fun to explore places I wouldn’t normally think to go to. I walked into Gigi’s Health Cafe (the proprietor saw me outside and came out to say hi, so I explained what I was doing and showed her the Every Door app where I was entering her business’s info), and also Paris Banh Mi, which looks like not much on the outside, but is really quite lovely inside.

I have lots of photos that I haven’t decided where to upload yet, but that will be its own project later probably. Along with various points of interest, I started taking photos of all the light poles and street cabinets that I notice which are covered with stickers and/or graffiti. Temporary signs fascinate me. Not sure if there’s a place for photos like those on OSM but I’m keeping them for something at any rate.

On my impression of OSM as a newbie: It looks like there are not a lot of active Kansas City mappers, and that anymore, most of the updates are done by businesses or by people who create / use automated tools, and the most active people are the ones getting deeply into the technical side. A lot of the diary entries I see are about conferences and full of dense technical and/or organizational jargon. Lots of businesses and nonprofits seem to be involved.

For now I don’t want to automate things and I don’t want to think about the high-level strategy of nonprofits or big organizations (enough of that in my real job), I just want to explore and dabble, actually see things on the ground and confirm them with my eyes before I enter them, and hopefully have a kind person gently correct me if I did something wrong.

I do have a bit of programming knowledge (BS in Computer Science and I work with SharePoint Online / Power Platform lots at my job) so am semi-interested in potentially learning how to build apps that use OSM in the future.