OpenStreetMap OGP Mapping Party on Sunday

More than just talking about open data at next week’s OGP High-Level Conference in Brasilia, we will be making open data. This Sunday there will be an OpenStreetMap ‘mapping party’ where you can go out into town, map the area, and put the data out in the open for everyone to use. OpenStreetMap is an incredible open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... platform. Often described as the “Wikipedia of maps,” it has an amazing community of over 545,000 registered users that have added more than 2.7 billion GPS traces, making it of the most extensive maps of the world. It’s also made up entirely of open data.

The real power of OpenStreetMap is that if something isn’t on the map, you can just add it. While Brasilia has great coverage on OpenStreetMap and it is rapidly improving, there are still important details to be added. These mapping parties are about bringing people together to learn about an an area and collect data to grow the map, a form of data co-creation and collaborating with the larger community. This Sunday you can take part in one and get to know the streets of Brasilia that are not yet on the map.

The mapping party is being led by the open data team at MapBox. If you would like to join, Eric Gundersen and Alex Barth will meet on Sunday (April 15) in the lobby of the Comfort Inn, Setor Hoteleiro-Projeção I, Taguatinga at 11:00 am. You don’t need anything in particular to participate, but if you have a camera and a GPS (maybe just your smart phone) bring it along. If you’re interested, please send Alex an email to alex@mapbox.com or find them on Twitter at @ericg and @lxbarth. If you can’t make the mapping party but want to learn more about OpenStreetMap and open data, Eric and Alex are participating in Tuesday’s OGP Innovation Village where they will present open source mapping tools and MapBox Streets, which is powered by OpenStreetMap. They are also on the panel “Open Data As a Means, Not an End: Getting to Impact” on Wednesday morning.