[sclug] Calling map enthusiasts & GPS owners

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy!

This coming weekend Remix Reading and OpenStreetMap are teaming up to create a 
completely free map of Reading. It's a volunteer effort, so if you're into 
maps and/or have a GPS unit of some description then pitch in!

Maps in the UK are all owned either by the Crown or private companies. You 
strictly speaking need to get permission from them before you can use them in 
certain ways, for example to show where local events are on a web site, or to 
produce your own map of cycle friendly roads. OpenStreetMap is a project 
aimed squarely at creating and providing free geographic data such as street 
maps to anyone who wants them. Remix Reading is a local arts collective that 
promotes and practices creative freedoms, such as freely sharing work and 
remixing each others' work.

Basically, we will get together on Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th, then charge 
around Reading on foot or bike gathering breadcrumb trails recorded on GPS 
units. We then plug this data into OpenStreetMap and tell the system where 
roads and cycle paths exist, what they're called, where pubs, clubs, 
community centres and the like are.... until we're bored or have exhausted 
the whole town :o) Then people and groups in Reading will have access to maps 
that they can use for free, and even add to.

Here's the basic info:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Reading

If you'd like to help out, or want more info, just reply to this email. We're 
not going to coordinate a public meeting point or anything like that unless 
there's a lot of interest. Otherwise I'll just let you know a time and a 
place to meet and we'll go from there.

Kind regards,
Tom

-- 
The task of critique is not to denounce the ideals, but to show their 
transformation into ideologies, and to challenge the ideology in the 
name of the betrayed ideal (Fromm ? Beyond The Chains Of Illusion)