Welcome to the OpenStreetMap Belgium Mailing list

You are receiving this e-mail because you participated in a MissingMaps Mapathon recently. And we thought maybe you'd be interested to participate again sometime.

If you don't want to be bothered by us again, please unsubscribe from this list!
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This newsletter is only there to announce Mapathons and other events, as well as the occasional newsflash. We expect to send one or two messages per month. We won't just be talking about Missing Maps and humanitarian mapping, but also about other things going on in the Belgian OpenStreetMap community.
We'll try to send these messages in your language. Help us do so by letting us know what languages you understand.

We actually already have an announcement to make. Doctors without Borders Belgium (MSF BE) and Handicap International were so impressed by our work, that they will be hosting a Mapathon at their office in Brussels. You are invited to come map with us or help out during the event! We expect you from 5 p.m., Monday, 6th of June.

And as we do every three months, there will be another Mapathon in Antwerp at IPIS: Wednesday, 22nd of June, from 5 p.m. Register to participate or help out.

So we did a large Mapathon – and then what?
Most of you participated in the National Mapathon, April 16th. You were over 200 people, a success of a level no one expected. At this page you can have a look at the maps produced with our work  – it is being used in the field as we speak.

And work we did. In the morning, we mapped over 23.000 buildings in Idjwi. To our great surprise you did such a great job, that the task was finished by noon. So we started working on Swaziland too. We finished a large task there too, and mapped a whopping 25.000 more buildings. We really couldn't believe what we saw as these numbers were coming in. You did a large chunk of the work left to be done in Swaziland. That will support the Global Health Group and the local government to help with the complete eradication of malaria. But it isn't quite finished yet – you can still help out.

Things you might want to know being new to OpenStreetMap
The event you participated in, would not have been possible without the OpenStreetMap community. We're primarily a virtual community, keeping our mapping servers running and making sure OSM data is of the best quality. And we map everything we see. But we do meet in real life too. You can invite us to your town or see which events we're planning using Meetup.
Feel free to ask us anything, using the mailing list, Twitter, or a simple reply to this mail.

Of course you can learn all about mapping online. For mapping more complicated stuff, the wiki-pages will help. There's also a very friendly Help-site and a Belgian forum.

To stay more in the loop than with this newsletter, you can join the Belgian mailing list, which is the primary means of communication within OSM Belgium. You can also follow us on Twitter, join the Meetup group and/or the Facebook group. And then there's the global newsletter, OSM Weekly.

OpenStreetMap is about mapping what you know.
The Missing Maps is there to support local people to do so. But if you enjoyed mapping Africa, you might also enjoy mapping your neighborhood. After all, who else knows the shortcut through the fields behind your house, the nearest bread vending machine, drinking water fountain or dogs-allowed pub?