May 01, 2006
Mapchester:
Making an open-source map for Manchester
Mapchester: Making an open-source map for Manchester--Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th May, 2006. When bands like the Happy Mondays stalked the Hacienda, Manchester was dubbed 'Madchester'; now, a new generation of phreaks are in town, renaming the city 'Mapchester', showing that it isn't just music that puts the city on the map.
Mapchester is a collaborative 'wikimap' project, generated and maintained by users in the same way as Wikipedia. It kicks off with a Mapping Weekend, when Manchester is mapped in a weekend! A number of spin off projects will then take place during the Futuresonic festival, 20-23 July 2006 under the Mapchester banner, and the data generated will be used in a test-case festival guide.
Mapchester will generate a new kind map of Manchester - produced by collective, community effort that will be completely copyright-free. Mapchester was first proposed at the PLAN workshop, as a test-case for how a city could be mapped and a guide for a festival created on collaborative and open principles.
Mapping Weekend invitation: We are seeking map hackers and citizen cartographers to participate in mapping the city for free. Our goal is to bring together as wide an array of different people who are interested in mapping and get them to walk / cycle / drive / bus / train / skate / etc / along city streets recording GPS tracks and noting down road names. These tracks will then be put online in the OpenStreetMap database and edited into map features. We hope that collectively people will work to completely map whole quarters of the city over the weekend.
Please spread the word about Mapchester and forward this invitation to come and map Manchester to other people who might be interested.
Getting involved:
|||| How: Just come along and choose an area of central Manchester to map. Head out with a GPS device (Global Positioning System, which monitors signals from satellites to record location) and notepad to record street names and other notable features. You can map for the whole day or just for a few hours. No prior mapping experience needed - intro briefings and equipment training will be provided.
|||| When: Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th May, 2006. Welcome briefings held at 10am and 2pm both days.
|||| Where: Mapchester HQ, Lower Ground Floor, 117-119 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6ED, see http://manchesterdda.com/article/12/ . (The space has been generously provided by the Manchester Digital Development Agency and they are also helping in signing people up to take part.)
|||| Registering: if you are interested in participating please send an email: mapchester@manchesterdda.com or call Jo Blackwell on tele: 0161 255 8111. (Please indicate on what days you want to participate and whether you have your own GPS / laptop.)
|||| Refreshments: Drinks and a sandwich lunch will be provided for participants.
|||| What to bring: If you have it please bring your own mapping equipment (GPS, laptop, camera, notepad + pencil, etc). If you don't have a GPS receiver, don't worry, there will be a number of extra units available on each day. If you have never used a GPS receiver, don't worry either, hands on training will be provided.
|||| Further questions: please contact Martin Dodge (m.dodge[at]manchester.ac.uk).
Some background:
Mapchester is an experiment in 'citizen cartography' that we hope will make a significant contribution to wider efforts in so-called 'open-source' mapping. This an emerging and rapidly growing cartographic activity, driven in part by technology (cheap GPS equipment and online collaboration tools, like OpenStreetMap.org), but also by a very different ethos to knowledge production. Under open-source models the right of authorship are de-centred and the ownership of knowledge is seen as a common resource that can be distributed and re-used without restriction or license. As such 'opening' up mapmaking has real potential to empower people to create their own knowledge and encourages re-use of cartographic resource in novel, creative ways.
The map data produced for central Manchester will contribute to OpenStreetMap.org, one of the leading projects in the open-source mapping field. Currently, OpenStreetMap has mapped 25,000 kilometres of roads in the UK, including all motorways. However, thus far the majority of this data is for London and Birmingham and many other major cities are hardly mapped at all. It is hoped that an intensive effort to build a map of the whole of a city in a weekend will inspire others and be important to build momentum across the country.
All the map data generated for Mapchester will be free to view, edit and use via the OpenStreetMap platform. An editable map will also be created and used as a test-case festival guide for the Futuresonic International Festival, held in Manchester 20-23 July 2006.
Mapchester mapping weekend is supported by:
|||| Future Everything / Futuresonic International Festival
|||| University of Manchester, School of Environment and Development
|||| Manchester Geographical Society
|||| Manchester Digital Development Agency
Mapchester organising committee:
Steve Coast (OpenStreetMap.org); Drew Hemment (Future Everything); Mick Lockwood (Salford University); Martin Dodge & Chris Perkins (Geography, University of Manchester).
Thanks to:
Mikel Maron (WorldKIT), Libby Miller (FOAF), Ben Russell (PLAN), Steve Benford (Mixedreality Lab) and all others supporting this project.
Please spread the word about Mapchester and forward this invitation to come and map Manchester to other people who might be interested.
Posted by jo at May 1, 2006 11:06 AM
