Room: Track 1 - Talks
Saturday, 16:30 UTC
Duration: 20 minutes (plus Q&A)
Slideshow Mapping Heritage in Ireland
video on media.ccc.de
video on YouTube
After moving to Ireland and shortly after becoming a member of a local historical society, I started mapping historical features like ringforts, castles, church ruins and graveyards. As a member of that group, I noticed that the awareness of OpenStreetMap and OpenData is very low in this group and in Ireland in general. One of the excuses often given by these groups is the demographic which is less computer literate than my generation. However, after uploading a few OSM tutorials onto YouTube, I received good feedback and two female acquaintances of that age group started actively contributing to OSM. Motivated by those developments and by looking for something productive to do during the third COVID lockdown, I started a YouTube tutorial series on OSM, uMap, overpass turbo and fieldpapers to show the benefits of OSM to historically interested individuals and groups. Within only a few weeks, I had gathered a small following and continue getting positive feedback from people who discover OpenStreetMap for their personal or group projects. I believe that giving the public concrete application examples of OSM rather than trying to convince them by dropping terms like OpenData and OpenSource into the conversation, is a way to promote OpenStreetMap to an audience that is keen to learn and to apply the knowledge. It is a time consuming process, but necessary for a shift in awareness about OpenStreetmap.