Perth, Australia
GeoGeeks first started running free events for the Perth open geospatial community in 2016. When OSGeo Oceania started its grant program in 2021, GeoGeeks was one of the first recipients of a “microgrant”, funding food & beverages at a QGIS meetup.
In 2023, OSGeo Oceania approved a larger grant for a full year’s worth of GeoGeeks events. With a stable source of funding, GeoGeeks has been able to organise a regular monthly program, including a mix of talk nights, OSM mapping parties, and informal hack nights. It’s become a fixture on the Perth community calendar, and a great way to gather and connect!
Ben’s story
GeoGeeks is a long running Perth-based community and meetup group, focused on open geospatial in general, QGIS and OSM. I’m not actually sure how long GeoGeeks has been operating, or how long we’ve been collaborating with OSGeo Oceania, but it has been some time!
I joined the group in 2021, attending the OSM workshop that was run as part of the FOSS4G Perth Hub. At that time, I was enthusiastically learning about OSM and doing regular hobby surveying around local neighbourhoods, a habit I had picked up during COVID lockdowns. The OSM workshop was my first real introduction to the Perth OSM community, and I quickly became the champion of all things OSM.
I started organising semi-regular “Social Mapping Sundays”; mapping parties for OSM enthusiasts of all levels to meet one-another, share their knowledge and do some good quality OSM surveying. This is the “project” within GeoGeeks that I can speak to. The series of events has been a big success in my eyes, providing many rewarding social experiences, bringing together a strong core of regular mappers, and providing the first steps for a number of curious not-yet-mappers. I am also very proud of the map data that we generate in each of the locations we visit.
Starting up the event series within Geogeeks made it much easier than starting it alone. There was organisational support and an existing community that was aware of OSM. I was told about the OSGeo Oceania grants available for such events, and filled out the application, which was easy to do given how well aligned the goal of the grant was to our events. The grant has been providing morning tea for the mapping parties and beer and pizza for our evening events for some time now. While we don’t have any direct measurements, the conventional wisdom is that catering at these kinds of events is an important part of attracting new guests, and it has certainly felt impactful to me. We hope to continue to receive this support in the future as we work to maintain the momentum we have built up.
Regularly attending GeoGeeks events has become a valued part of my social calendar. Socialising over morning tea at the mapping events and over pizza after our evenings of talks is always fascinating, and I have made many connections from them. As an open source enthusiast, I have learnt about many interesting projects through the talks that we host, and through conversations about OSM.
Being in touch with local OSM mappers also keeps me engaged with the project, as I am always learning new ways that people are trying to learn it. The group is an ongoing forum of brainstorming, theory crafting, experimentation and problem solving of surveying techniques, map production and geospatial data usage. The latest project we have been discussing is obtaining funding for Geogeeks to purchase a 360 degree camera so that we can collect Google Street View style imagery (specifically for Mapillary and KartaView) during our mapping events and for our members to use in between. The imagery itself is an interesting resource, and is an incredibly efficient way to survey for OSM.
Our recent events are all catalogued on the GeoGeeks website at https://geogeeks.org/events. I also wrote about the experience last year on my OSM Diary: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/BudgieInWA/diary.
— Ben Ritter, Geogeek