The Mayor of Brighton toasted the completion of the map of Openstreetmap, alongside Mikel, Chris Corbin, the Fire Brigade Commander, myself and about twenty others. It marked the successful completion of the Openstreetmap map for Brighton and Hove.
With perfect timing, it also saw at the same event, the launch of a new book, the first commercially published book (for sale) with Creative-Commons licensed, Openstreetmap maps in the back!
The book is entitled, “The Deckchair Guide to Brighton and Hove” by Queenspark Books. In conversation with the QueenSpark book folk there, they said that the cost of other maps meant that they would have not been able to include good street maps in there, then along came Openstreetmap, and they were able to include (full colour) streetmaps.
Next thing, would be a nice way to produce a list of street names, points of interest to help make an index/gazetter (i.e. South Street, Page 233, col2, row D), if more people were wanting to include a collection of free, high quality maps in their books.
It’s a great use of Openstreetmap data, and something that can be championed for other areas! As Mikel says, holding a “1.0” completion event is a great way to increase visibility, and encourage discussion of *uses* of the map with the community.
The other first was the public unveiling of a locative Locomatrix Fruit Chaser game (PacMan in other words) for mobile phone and gps. Richard Vahrman took us around the block in the search of fruit! The idea is to get kids out and about running around. Although there were not enough for teams, the game is meant to be played with teams, and can also be played over other geographic areas, so people running around in San Francisco, and Brighton, hunting for the same fruit. It also comes with an api so its easy to make your own games! Something to looks out for. (It was my first time playing a locative game)
So, full kudos to Mikel and Chris and others who mapped Brighton, and great news that people are using it, and getting engaged with it, lets look forward to seeing more Mayors toasting more completed towns throughout the world!
thinkwhere 