Meet Up, follow up and more

Posted by Demuth on 7 June 2016 in English.

After a bit of planning, a group met up on Google Hangouts this past Sunday to talk about OGF. Well, a group of two as it turned out: me and Simon, a.k.a. Sarapeva. I can’t speak for Simon, but I had a great time talking with him for nearly an hour and a half about random OGF things.

One topic that came up that I promised to mention publicly here was the idea of a physical meet up.

I know in April that Thilo, Joschi81 and Histor met in Hamburg for a day of workshopping - I wonder how that went. What do you say, guys, how’d it go?

Simon and I thought, since there seem to be a fair number of Brits, Germans, Dutch and Belgians on OGF, Amsterdam might be a good central place to meet (and an interesting city map-wise ;-) Although we also realized also that there might be more people from the Americas than from any other region, so maybe Europe isn’t so central.

And thinking furhter, I realize for this to happen will mean a lot of work for someone(s) to plan and even finding a place to actually meet up could be tricky.

So what do people think? Sound like fun? Sound doable? Who’s interested? What would the purpose be? Should there be an agenda and if so, what should be on it?

Discussion

Comment from clik on 7 June 2016 at 16:23

I would also like to know what has been said during the meetup of Hamburg. :)

I am very interested in any other talk, and also in physical meet up, ready to take the plane to take part. It sounds really doable, I’ve already done that for associations.

Maybe a whole week end would be a good moment.

Comment from Leowezy on 7 June 2016 at 17:12

I love the idea of meeting in person and chatting and just having a good time in general as well. As seen with the recent Hamburg meetup however, I think it’s safe to assume that it will be close to impossible to schedule such a meeting for more than, let’s say, half a dozen people. Even if you find more people who are dedicated enough to spend their time and money on such a meetup, it will be very hard to find a good date that fits most people’s schedule. In regards to the place, I think you’re completely right in that Amsterdam would be a good meeting place; pretty central for Europe, large international airport and a high touristic value (it might be a bit of a stretch for some people to travel to some meeting place just for the sake of such a meetup, but Amsterdam is a trip worth in it’s own right as well).

I think we should approach the whole thing from another angle though; if even for a well planned video chat only two people eventually take part, maybe we should think of (very) small real life meetings with mappers closer to one’s own location first, before planning a “community field trip” to Amsterdam. For example, two or maybe three people who vaguely live in the same wider area could coordinate a meeting amongst them, to come up with some exciting in-world or meta projects (I’d love to meet with mappers from NRW of even some adjacent regions in the BeNeLux for example), or just chat and hang out, whatever they want. If we successfully want to attempt such a wide meet up as you proposed, I think it should accrue out of these smaller groupings, rather than completely starting from scratch.

What do you think? And are there any mappers in ~200 km of Cologne who fancy to meet in person and get their hands dirty with some intense projects ;D?

Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 7 June 2016 at 22:33

I couldn’t make Sunday - but I’ll try and hook up some time. Doubt I’ll be able to travel, but I’d be keen to join in, I just find it hard to work out when I’m going to be free! I think that smaller groupings may well be the way to go - in person or online. That would certainly help the organising.

Comment from wangi on 7 June 2016 at 23:48

The Openstreetmap “State of the Map” is September 23 - 25 in Brussels. OGF would probably be a natural “Fringe” event…

http://2016.stateofthemap.org/

Comment from bhj867 on 9 June 2016 at 04:49

I wish I wasn’t all the way in Las Vegas, or I would definitely be there.

Comment from tparigo on 9 June 2016 at 10:32

If some people are interested, we can organize a Paris meeting.

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