The latest #MapLesotho project push began on 4 January. Project participants have been asked to adopt a new role - that of validator. They have been asked to move from creators working with blank sheets as part of a team dedicated to common purpose, to modifiers and correctors acting at a coaching level.

I think it’s all about wearing hats that bring a different perspective to bear on the task. I guess the hats are kind of like Augmented Reality goggles that change the way you approach cartography.

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As I work away at the #MapLesotho initiative (there’s a 48 marathon happening as I write) I am also rather proud/gratified/thrilled to have finished grading about 60 assignments submitted by my BA and MA classes in Digital Arts in Humanities at University College Cork.

The second assignment for both this year was to participate in a choice of OpenStreetMap initiatives. The first was simply to get their feet wet working with their own neighbourhood. For the more adventuresome I introduced the #MapLesotho option. For those looking for a real challenge I set a couple of them working in the Irish Townlands Mapping Project which extended OpenStreetMap editing to use of MapWarper and a few intermediary tools adding a temporal challenge to their work.

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Stumbled on http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/938 this am. Call for maximum participation on a small but important task to aid MSF. Was gratifying to be able to switch a few cycles from other tasks and be able to contribute. 100% complete within 10 hours and validation now under way. The power of collaboration and tasksharing.

As we draw close to 100% on the Rural Lesotho Task in the #MapLesotho initiative I find myself filled with very strong reaffirmation of the power of community and the many implicit and explicit benefits and values of crowdsourced engagement.

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A small cadre convened at the Lesotho Embassy in Dublin on Saturday 30 August to focus on keeping up the momentum on this great initiative. Facilities were graciously provided by the embassy and we were hard at work in short order. Hot Task Manager remains a superb tool for keeping the team directed and also providing motivating progress feedback. A rapid, round the room decision was made to focus on the rural task and attempt to move that one forward in a concentrated effort. We were challenged with some network connectivity issues that emerged during the process which conveniently divided efforts between editing and validating based on technological affordances. This arose as IDEditor seemed to place demands on the firewall and the OSM API that prevented certain participants from bei able to get feature updates in real time. Lesson: test all components of the process in situ in advance whenever possible to identify such limitations. As it was it probably was serendipitously beneficial to the process. Through a supremely solid effort we succeeded in breaking the 30% task accomplished threshold. Additionally we had 4% of the overall task validated as well.

I was out to Fingal County Council’s offices on 25 July along with 25 odd volunteers to participate in the world-wide challenge to build the OSM data for Lesotho. I was most pleased to decided to use ID Editor. I am used to JOSM (A very fine tool) but was won over by the simplicity of ID for the task at hand. I fear I had not tried it in the past few years probably experiencing some discomfort with the older Flash-based tool. No longer. Great implementation and superbly intuitive. I was also usefully situated next to the Ambassador from Lesotho would gave me some great perspective from on the ground - those things that look like the top of Canadian silos? Those be huts. Brilliant!

OSM HotTask is also a superb tool. It really makes collaborative marathons smooth, well focused and intuitive to newbies as well as veterans. One of the most impressive aspects? The ability to break an assigned task into more manageable components when you realise you have been over ambitious. It really helps to make things seem more achievable and give you the sense that you are accomplishing tasks and keep great forward momentum. I learn there has been great progress on #maplesotho and the good work continues.

So, to simply put it out there - Twitter doesn’t lie - decided to make a dry run to Fingal County Council to participate in the Lesotho Mapathon. Found the right place to be, just managed to be off by a week. Ahhh well…now I know the bus route, the peculiarities (ie where the stop request button is - where to get some porridge) and all set to be there next week. Looking forward to some African mapping.