Inspired by the success of the Tagaytay Mapping Party last May, OpenStreetMappers from Davao City decided to have their own mapping party this coming Saturday, July 4. This event is being spearheaded by George Tujan and Marloue Pidor, both of Neuraltech Innovations, an IT startup in Davao focusing on GPS and geospatial technologies.

Unlike the Tagaytay event which we Manila OpenStreetMappers organized in a very ad hoc manner, the Davao guys went ahead and carefully planned their mapping party. First, they put up a blog called Mapping Mindanao to drum up publicity for the event. Second, they had an OSM Workshop last June 20 to invite and orient interested mappers on OSM and the upcoming mapping party. A third item in their extensive planning is widespread publicity. They got the support of the Davao Tourism Office and they were also invited to speak at the Club 888 Media Forum that happened last June 17. There they evangelized about OSM and this landed them a nifty press release from the Philippine Information Agency. Woot!

If you’re interested in joining but you missed the workshop, don’t worry, just contact the organizers at their blog and I’m sure they’ll help you get up to speed. Help make the Davao OpenStreetMap the best online map there is!

Here are a couple of other blog posts about the Davao Mapping Party:

• “osm-ph davao mapping party” by Emmanuel Sambale

• “GPS Mapping Party In Davao City”