Silke Helfrich introduces “A global collective mapping effort for “all alternatives”:
“We observe a rapid expansion of social movements and initiatives around degrowth, solidarity economy, cooperatives, p2p initiatives, collaborative consumption, commons and others. New initiatives are appearing all overthe world. Making them visible on a common map (Open Street Map based) will provide useful tools for practicioners, activists and academics, for personal or collective use.
The map will develop stepwise, based on little resources but an enourmous motivation of different stakeholders,and using whatever exists out there to progressively bring people with some affinity in contact with each other. A tech-group is about to create tools for general use, that will allow people and groups with similar interests and needs to mae their respective initiative/ project/ process on an OSM map based on a commonly developed taxonomy (which is currently in the making by another group with representatives from different movements).
The technical tools combined with the technology will be tested by June/July, some basic documentation on the process and the tools will be provided asap so that we can call for international participation in Summer 2014 at the latest.
International mappers will be invited to a first workshop of Mapping All Alternatives at the Fourth Degrowth Conference in Leipzig (September 2-6)
This is our working plattform (until now mostly in German) https://trello.com/allmende but some technical discussions already take place in English
We are collecting international mapping projects and contact information here. I already added most of the information you’ve send me – if there is more, please drop me a note: https://mapping-berlin.titanpad.com/1?
It will be a tremendous effort to bring the mappers to the Degrowth Conference, but if the projects continues well -as we started – it is well worth doing it. Imagine ALL Alternatives within a common taxonomy on Open Street Map.”
What was wrong with greenmaps and a hundred other mapping projects with similar goals who have already accumulated a lot of data?
nothing, we just wanna create an easy-to-handle platform for ALL initiatives based on OSM + add a middleware for further communication/ coordination, actually here in Germany, where we start, almost all mapping project joined to start this initiative and we are trying to programme a middleware that makes use of all the already collected data,
also: We are trying to agree upon A COMMON taxonomy where everybody fits in. Usually the mapping projects map their movement/ their network etc.
Thanks Silke, I’m really glad that you have been able to build on previous work. I think those few facts were a major omission from Michel’s original report.
I am not certain that trying to agree on a common taxonomy is productive. A compromise in representation, by definition, is a failure. Clay Shirky writes an excellent article on why ontology is over-rated: http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html The community needs to create the taxonomy, the taxonomy cannot create the community.
Hi Matthew and Silke and co
We’ve set up a fb open group called “Network of Networks” https://www.facebook.com/groups/networkofnetworks/ and look to support projects this kind of project.
Matt, would be really useful if you and others could list mapping projects that might be relevant.
Silke has siad that you want to find some way of linking into existing mapping projects. simple way to support would be great if people could post other mapping projects that they think are relevant. In this post i list 30 maps with a UK/US focus…. not all, but many of these are relevant and it is a demonstration of just how many layers a mapping project like this could have if it will indeed be “mapping all alternative projects” http://www.reconomy.org/30-maps-to-help-local-change…/