Hi SoCalGIS group,

We’re reaching out to you and your organization about an upcoming mapathon Saturday April 2nd (http://meetu.ps/2Wjm0m) at the LA Times in downtown LA to get people together to edit OpenStreetMap and import all the buildings in the City of Los Angeles!

This is part of a larger effort to import all 3 million buildings in Los Angeles County using open data from the LARIAC (Los Angeles Region Imagery Acquisition Consortium) Program and the L.A. County Assessor. The import will improve Southern California’s maps by adding building shapes and data on heights, elevation, general use, year built, and the number of residential units.

As we finalize the process to allow mappers to add this data to OSM, we need your help in spreading the word to anyone interested in learning and contributing to this platform built by a community of mappers.

In the run-up to our first mapathon being held Saturday April 2nd, a tutorial session will be held to teach OSM basics as well as JOSM, the editing tool used during the mapathon. The session will be led by the Los Angeles Chapter of Maptime on March 31st 6:30PM (http://meetu.ps/2Wjm2j), a group whose mission is to open the doors of cartographic possibility to anyone interested by creating a time and space for collaborative learning, exploration, and map creation using mapping tools and technologies.

Our efforts are documented on github and the OSM wiki page, where you can follow and contribute your knowledge as we work towards completing this project.

Looking forward to hear from you!

The OSMlab LA Building Import team,
Alan McConchie, @almccon
Jon Schleuss, @jschleuss
Omar Ureta, @cityhubla
Maning Sambale, @maningsambale