On Saturday the 28th of April, OpenStreetMap Ireland will be holding an OGM for all who are interested in knowing about our ongoing process to set up a company, that will represent the collaborative mapping of Ireland through OpenStreetMap. The interim committee will keep the community up to date with our progress so far, in what should be finished in a few months. This means the meeting will predominantly be about legal and administrative matters. This is your chance to talk with many of the interim committee members who will be present, during the midpoint in our work and raise any matters you may have or are simply curious about. We hope this will be the second last meeting before we can formally announce the creation of the company. One question that has been raised is “Why create a company to represent OSM Ireland?”. The answer is that part of the work members have done is to lobby government bodies to open data and bring it into the sphere of the citizen, where it can be used to improve our lives. On another occasion, a member was offered a grant to continue our work. To be able to accept money, lobby effectively, or any related task, we need to have a legal entity behind us. Which will, in turn, boost our ability to spread the benefits of open source maps for and by the people and not solely in the hands of large corporations or government bodies.
We are aware most members have a greater interest in actual mapping, so we hope to resume normal services by the end of summertime. We talked about doing a little mapping towards the end of the upcoming meeting. Perhaps a short walk around the area to submit some updates to OpenStreetMap. Or using some new tools like Mapillary or StreetComplete, this will depend on interest and who shows up.