I went along with Shaun to a little community meeting of Green Enthusiasts in Bermondsey. A group called BARGEs.

They were interested in mapping parks and green spaces in the area. Of course we already have the big and medium-sized parks on there. They had documents about a whole bunch of tiddly little parks, so Shaun demonstrated how to add them to the map. Some of them weren't familiar with the project at all, so I gave them the spiel on what OpenStreetMap is about, and got talking about the kind of unique things they could do with OpenStreetMap, and why the council's lovely ultra-detailed GIS systems wouldn't necessarily allow them to do those things (all Ordnance Survey derived)

Thamas Wood was also there, creator of the Sutton Green Map. Had a quick chat with him about that, although sadly I couldn't stick around long enough. That site does nifty mash-up type things with pins (including live updating mysociety feeds), but understandably he said a custom rendering tool chain (mapnik install etc) was too much hassle. I guess this could be a good use case for rustling up a 'green map' style in cloudmade style editor

One thing that's clear, is that these localised community organisations should be targeted with more OpenStreetMap evangelism. They have great local knowledge and enthusiasm about details on a local level. A lot of the stuff they do is based at specific locations. These kinds of organisation can also benefit massively from a little bit of smart map technology, to do something powerful on their websites and coordinate their activities.

So last night was fun. Londoners don't forget: Random pub meetup in Liverpool Street TONIGHT! (Wednesday)