[Reader-list] Bangalore Free Map workshop registrations open

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

Dear All,

Registrations for the Bangalore edition of the Free Map 2008 workshop  
are now open.

The workshop will be held on February 16-17 at the NS Raghavan Centre  
for Entrepreneurship Learning (NSRCEL), Indian Institute of  
Management, Bangalore (IIMB). This is the same location as was used  
for Barcamp Bangalore 3, 4 and 5 during 2007. Please register here:

http://wiki.freemap.in/moin.cgi/FreeMapIndia2008Bangalore


For more information on the workshop:

http://wiki.freemap.in/moin.cgi/FreeMapIndia2008

Free Map India: A Series of Workshops in February 2008
India is changing faster than ever. A cliche but true. Yet tracking  
the growth of India's cities and the transformation of the  
countryside, through digital mapping, has not continued apace. Geo  
data is closely held and inaccessible, too expensive, and simply out  
of date. The situation is similar throughout the world. But it doesn't  
have to be.

Over the past few years, there has been a revolution in cartography  
and GIS. Through open source software, the Web and the tools of  
neogeography, these formally specialized disciplines of mapping have  
been made accessible to anyone with knowledge about their local place.  
OpenStreetMap is mapping the entire world openly and collaboratively,  
and coverage is increasing exponentially. These tools are powerful, in  
some ways outpacing expensive proprietary and closed systems. The  
barrier of cost no longer exists. The only prerequisite is a will to  
know, explore and share.

This February, Schuyler Erle and Mikel Maron will hold a series of  
multi-day workshops in several India universities. Researchers,  
students, and members of the community are invited to participate,  
learn, and take stewardship of their city. These will be very  
practical, hands-on days, covering the entire toolset of OpenStreetMap  
and empowering participants to lead the growth of free and open  
mapping in India. We will map India!


Topics to be Covered

* General introduction to mapping, cartography and GIS
* Neogeography
* Open Source Geospatial Software
* OpenStreetMap overview and instruction
* Surveying with GPS and data collection
* Photomapping
* Contributing to and editing OpenStreetMap
* Rendering Maps
* Working with geodata and programming OSM and OSGeo tools


Locations
The final locations are still under discussion. But they are likely to  
be Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkatta, Trivandrum, and Hyderabad.

Mumbai will have a slightly different emphasis, due to the production  
of the Mumbai Free Map in 2005. This digital map covers Mumbai in  
fantastic detail, but not in a form usable for OpenStreetMap. We will  
be working on the techniques to transform the Mumbai Free Map data  
into OpenStreetMap Mumbai.


Software Development
This time in India will also be an opportunity to advance the  
capabilities of the software platforms. Particularly we will focus on  
low bandwidth and offline map production, and periodic synchronization  
with the master OSM database. This will aid the spread ofOpenStreetMap  
throughout the developing world.


Workshop Leads
Schuyler Erle is a free software developer and activist. He is  
responsible for NoCatAuth, an early open source wireless captive  
portal, and geocoder.us, an open source U.S. address geocoder. Erle  
wrote O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks with Jo Walsh and Rich Gibson, and  
Google Map Hacks, also with Rich. Previously, he worked with MetaCarta  
in Cambridge, MA, USA, developing nitfy geographic projects like  
OpenLayers, an open source web mapping framework written in pure  
JavaScript, and Gutenkarte, a service for exploring the geographic  
dimension of classic works of literature. Erle is proud to be a  
founding member of the OSGeo Foundation.

Mikel Maron is a freelance web developer, specializing in Open  
Geospatial and Wiki tech. He's been active in the standardization of  
GeoRSS and in the OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping project, and co- 
founder of the geodata aggregator, Mapufacture. He's developed two of  
the first Wikis in use at the UN. Previously, Mikel worked as senior  
developer of My Yahoo! and researched evolutionary models of  
ecosystems for an MSc at the University of Sussex.