Author Archive for: Nick Booth
This is from cyclesouthbrum (many of you might have voted for their funding from the people’s millions) – who also offer free bike hire.
Group bike ride to Kings Heath Go Green
Saturday 21 June 2014, leave Northfield 10am, optional return from Kings Heath 3pm, free.
Join us for a bike ride from Victoria Common, Northfield to Kings Heath Village Square, for the Kings Heath Go Green event.
Activities will include:
* Dr Bike * Stalls and Sales * Help and advice on going green * Displays and demonstrations * Entertainment * Children’s activities * Fairly traded and seasonal, local food * Art work * Live music and dance
Click here for more information about Kings Heath Go Green or like them on Facebook.
The ride will leave Victoria Common at 10am and will arrive in Kings Heath at approximately 11am. We plan to depart from Kings Heath at 3pm to arrive back in Northfield at approximately 4pm. Participants are free to make their own way back if they wish.
To book your place, please click here.
Booking is essential on all our rides for health and safety purposes. On all of our group rides, the pace will be gentle, we will go at the pace of the slowest rider and participants are free to stop for a rest if they need to.
Finland is crowdsourcing ideas for new laws and working with the security minded money world to verify the process…
“a non-profit group of Helsinki entrepreneurs started a website called Open Ministry to allow people of voting age to propose initiatives online. The website uses APIs from banks and mobile operators to confirm identities. Recently, the Finnish Parliament approved the platform after verifying that the electronic identification process is secure.”
Of course building a whole new one of these wouldn’t be so smart – borrowing from the one already built would probably be better.
I’ve just received this from Brian Pringle about this weekend’s – open streeet map event. Birmingham will be hosting this global festival of the collaborative openly licensed map of the world. It was back in Feb 2009 that we blogged about how Birmingham was the first city in England to be fully street mapped by the volunteers of Mappa Mercia. Here’s the news release about this weekend:
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“Hundreds of digital mappers from around the world will descend on Birmingham on Friday 6th September as OpenStreetMap brings its annual international State of the Map conference to Aston University for three days. Cartographers, mappers, software developers, outdoor sports enthusiasts, civic activists, governments and businesses with an interest in location-based data will be there.
So if you see lots of people in Birmingham over the weekend avidly photographing and taking notes, its just OpenStreetMap mappers using their spare time to improve the map of Birmingham.
OpenStreetMap is transforming the way maps are made and used. Collecting, editing and publishing geographical data with a global army of over 1.3 million volunteers creates maps with levels of detail unachievable by other means. Its data dynamically and constantly evolves — just as places do
The nine-year-old crowdsourced geodata project is powering mapping apps (Skobbler and, in places, Apple Maps), recommendation tools (Foursquare), sports watches (Leikr), classifieds (Craigslist) and property search engines (Nestoria).
Volunteers collect data that is of specific interest to their communities, which might not otherwise be collected. Mappers who edit the data have usually had personal interactions with a place or locale. They know locations intimately, making their contributions detailed, rich, and hyperlocal. This means more accurate, “fresh” maps for users and an enhanced experience which is critical for successful services. More and more startups and services are focused on providing hyperlocal functionality and features, so hyperlocal data is a necessity. Only OpenStreetMap’s army of contributors can provide that. Traditional corporate map providers are painfully aware of this.
All of the data collected is published under an open license so anyone may use the data freely and for free. Because OpenStreetMap publishes data and not just a map, anyone can make a map to their own style highlighting whatever data they choose, and there are now hundreds in use across the world.
Local authorities are warming to OpenStreetMap: Warwickshire County Council will be showing delegates how they used OpenStreetMap for realtime publishing of their local election results. Delegates will also be hearing from the National Trust about how they’re using OpenStreetMap data.
Speakers from Ordnance Survey and IBM’s Smarter Cities project will address the conference on the impact volunteer-collected map data is making.
Aid and development NGOs, including the World Bank, were quick to recognise the advantages of OpenStreetMap’s methods and now regularly request volunteer teams to build maps rapidly in areas of the world where humanitarian crises erupt. The Humanitarian OSM Team will be updating delegates on their latest projects in the poorer countries of the world.
“This is a golden opportunity for West Midlands and indeed UK software developers to meet the people changing the face of digital maps; and to investigate new lines of business in an increasingly mobile and information-hungry world” said Brian Prangle local organiser for State of the Map 2013.
For further information contact:
Henk Hoff henk.hoff@osmfoundation.org Skype: toffehoff Phone: +31 6 4808 8925
Brian Prangle brian@mappa-mercia.org Phone: 0121 604 1141 Mobile 07811667653
Conference Co-ordination (live from 12 noon Thursday 5th September) 07742 011690
Background Information for Editors:
Conference commences at 0930 am Friday 6th September in the Main Building Aston University. Request press credentials at info@stateofthemap.org before 12 noon Thursday 5th September.
Full Conference Programme is here
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Press_Kit
Here’s a video link to a whole year of edits over the entire planet for 2012.
Watch live updates to the map”
Photographer Joop Reijngoud worked with Linda Malherbe over two years to record 155 groups living in South Rotterdam. The work led to a book and an exhibition on the water front – opened by the Queen of the Netherlands.
A brass band which plays all sorts of styles of music from different communities brings together young people in South Rotterdam. Please click on the link below to listen to more about this.
Punjab Cricket Club Rotterdam
“They are correct and have respect for others, so there was a bond between us”. To listen to more about the Punjab Cricket Club in South Rotterdam please click on the link below.
Click below to listen to the story of how a patch on concrete was turned into a community garden.
Podcast Van Swietenhoff Vrijwilligers en Bezoekers – Community Gardeners in Rotterdam
Wonderful energy from the group from South Rotterdam wound up the night.
An Image from the Biotop project in Germany
“No subject is ignored. On some days nothing happens. We know how exhausting it can be just to listen to people every day”
Biotop are artists who turned up in Dortmund for 6 weeks to explore new “Practices of engagement: lessons in democratic listening”. Some people came and told stories, other took photos, other shot video. At least one asked “do you have beer?. Watch this video from the artists on what R4R means to them and how they try to allow open conversations to flourish:
R4R Rotterdam 