Just wanted to share some thoughts from the mapping party at Imperial College in London last night.

The London mapathons have always been a place of excellent collaboration and idea exchange and for that reason this is where we try to meet anyone who wants to collaborate with us. I just wanted to share some of the conversations I had or overheard.

Imperial College students in the iD room (different rooms for iD and JOSM users this month) were discussing how they thought they could help Missing Maps and HOT automate some our processes.

Matt from Accenture, who had volunteered at the Accenture corporate mapathon, dropped by to discuss how he and his colleagues might be able to collaborate on helping us quantify the contribution of our mappers, to better plan our tasking and develop tools.

Ny came down from Loughborough, where he is doing a masters, to discuss Missing Maps collaboration on his thesis.

Carmen from MSF recruited some of our JOSM users to support her remotely when she goes field mapping in Bangladesh in July.

Joseph from Reuters was there talking to the HOTties for a story he is planning to write on Missing Maps.

These are just some examples, but it was clear last night that the Missing Maps London mapping parties are becoming so much more than a group of people mapping. The project is coming alive and growing legs and wings (and possibly other bits).

It’s beautiful to see and a privilege to be a part of (and we did loads of mapping!)

By the way, a huge thanks to Astrid and the Imperial College Friends of MSF student society for organising such a great event! Without these guys, none of this would be happening