While I was sitting here last night beating my head trying to compile QGIS on a VM and I saw a post here – https://www.facebook.com/groups/osm.us/ . David Smith had started editing in Washington Illinois.
There’s been a lot of back and forth between “us” and “them” as of late – I guess us being NRGS and them being some of the speakers for the OSM community. There’s going to be a bit more with an idea that’s been stewing on this side of things.
It’s also GIS day – a giant marketing day to sell more software – a day to explain to people why you do what you do. So for those of us GIS People who aren’t doing much today, Why not map? Why not spend about 20 minutes and trace off some buildings in Washington Illinois. Kill a break or part of your lunch. ID editor is simple enough to figure out for those that trudge through piles of mapping software every day.
- Will it get used? Who knows.
- Will it save lives? Probably not.
- Will it help? If we do our jobs as GIS people and let the people know the data is there it might. Their GIS site indicates their data might be a bit out of date – plus I did a quick look through on some lists and didn’t see anyone doing anything except David…and now me…hopefully you and maybe a few others.
So go forth and map! Trace buildings. Fix roads. Add schools. Add features that existed on the BING image layer. Lets hope someone there sees what we are doing and uses it.
Lets get Washington Illinois mapped for GISDay.
