I'm receiving a geo-bombardment a the moment. I went to a three day Society of Cartographers conference in Plymouth followed immediately by the big one, State of the Map in Denver. I also crashed a party after the first day of the FOSS4G conference before I had to fly back from Denver. My geo-cup was overflowing, but then it was topped up a little more with #geomob back here in London. I've got as far as uploading photos from these things on my flickr, but I still need to fanny around with publishing slides (takes a long time if you're perfectionistical about it) and write some more blog posts about these things.

But never mind all that. The most important geo event of all is happening TONIGHT. The event which brings it all back to earth. The very bedrock of geo. The ultimate fusion of deadly serious geospatial expertise and social pub shenanigans. Yes that's right... Tonight we have...

...a London Mapping Party.

So we'll be doing the usual thing. I haven't been to a good old mapping & pub evening since July, so let's just remind ourselves what the usual thing is: Everyone is welcome. We sit around in the pub and chat about OpenStreetMap. There's some regulars, but we love to meet new people, OSM experts and beginners alike. If you've never edited OpenStreetMap, don't be shy. We'd love to meet you too (And we know from our stats that surprisingly some people the in world have not edited) Before going to the pub we try to go out and do some mapping in the area, but if that sounds complicated, ignore it. Generally this is a relatively minor part of the evening which many people skip altogether. However...

This time the mapping's a bit special because Ollie O'brien has found us a patch of real mapping. Genuinely important missing map features, not just POIs. We're off to Stratford to map the new shopping mall areas which are newly opened near the Olympics site, around here somewhere. None of it's on the map yet. Not even the pub we're going to! (but it should be easy to find. "The Cow" is a new pub in amongst the new shopping area there)

So see you tonight? All the details and sign up list, on the wiki