okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, March 21, 2010
A couple of thoughs about open maps
I've been playing around with both OpenStreetMap and OpenOrienteeringMap for a few months now and wanted to post a few notes/thoughts....
OOM is useful. You can create a simplified map and put it to use right away. You wouldn't want to use it for a formal event without some fieldchecking, but for training it is fine. I've used a couple of OOM "street O" maps for training this winter. I think OOM could be useful for introducing people to orienteering. Instead of just telling someone what orienteering was all about, you could create a street orienteering map of the neighborhood where they live and draw them a little course. Maybe they'd even go out and walk or run the course and really get a feel for what the sport was about.
Editing OpenStreetMap might be a good way to introduce orienteers to mapping. Editing OSM gives you a chance to do some fieldchecking and drafting, to make some cartographic decisions, and to see the results. You can do something that feels useful with a lot less time and effort than fieldchecking and drawing a real orienteering map. Maybe we'd find more orienteering mappers if more orienteers tried editing OSM and discovered that they liked mapping.
