My Pista ng Mapa 2019 Experience

I don’t know where to start in my Pista ng Mapa 2019 experience because everything was amazing and unforgettable, but I’ll start from the very beginning of my journey.

I was invited to Pista ng Mapa 2019 by my mentor. At that time, we just finished our CWTS++ session from our school. Us volunteers and with my mentor were just having our lunch and discussion from the session. At the end of the discussion, he mentioned to us that we should apply a scholarship for Pista ng Mapa 2019. I was interested about the conference and the experience that I will be gaining. As I got home, I applied for a scholarship to Pista ng Mapa 2019. (Spoiler Alert) At that moment, I didn’t know that my application will be accepted. Days went passed by, and shortly I received an email. But at that time I didn’t check on my email, so I wasn’t notified. A day after the email was sent, I was notified by my peer that we were both shortlisted in the scholarship. I was shocked and hoping to get the scholarship. Fast forward through time and I was in tears of joy because I was accepted.

2 weeks before the conference, I was nervous and excited at the same time. As I prepare myself for the conference, I practiced my public speaking skills and I prepared my knowledge to be shared in Dumaguete.

Days went passed by and fast forward to my first flight experience. I consider this experience as one of the memorable, because it is a starting point for my adulthood experience. As I arrived in the airport, it is time for me and my peer to travel through air for the first time. Fast forward to Dumaguete, landing was bumpy and finally we have landed safely.

Now here’s another memorable experience, when we were going to our accommodation. Long story short, we got lost but we found the location safely like after 30 minutes of finding it with some help online. I’ll consider it as a part of my being a mapper experience.

After all the flight and getting lost, I have finally arrived at Dumaguete. After an hour, I went to Foundation University with my fellow travel grantees. As I arrived in the venue, I felt the warm welcoming to us. Upon the registration, I greeted everyone with a smile. There were a lot of workshops to choose from the conference. I was already familiar with the other workshops so that was an advantage for me to try the others.

Day 1 of Pista ng Mapa 2019

• The Pista ng Mapa 2019 started with a warm welcoming to all attendees and proceeded with remarks and different talks. Later on, we had our break and proceeded with the workshops after.

• My first workshop for the event was “Data Storytelling with Open Contracting Data”. It was about bringing together journalists, open data enthusiasts, storytellers, mappers, and visual artist to learn, be inspired, and to come up with their own version of data stories on public procurement. It was worth joining this workshop because it expanded my knowledge in analyzing, critically thinking, and in research. It left me with learnings to use.

• My second workshop was “Geo* Data Science with Python”. It’s about a hands-on introduction to the commonly used tools for implementing geo data science workflows with Python. This workshop was intended for intermediate users, but I still enjoyed the content of the workshop because it shows how broad Python can be used. After the workshop, I had some chat with the professors and students of Foundation University. I consider our chat as a session because I gained more knowledge about the university and its similarity to ours.

• My third workshop for the event is “OpenStreetMap Mapathon”. It’s about mapping pedestrian infrastructures with Pic4Review. I am already familiar with the workshop but I still enjoyed learning more of its content. It’s a win-win situation because I learned something again and I helped assist the validations.

Day 2 of Pista ng Mapa 2019

• The second day of Pista ng Mapa 2019 was more exciting because I consider it as the climax of the event. I’ll start the second day with my lightning talk, all the travel grantees is required to present a lightning talk. My lightning talk is about my CWTS++ program in my university Polytechnic University of the Philippines (San Juan Branch). The lightning talks presented by different groups were interesting and informational.

• I consider this workshop as the most interesting one which is “DIY imagery collection for mapping”. This workshop is about learning to use high resolution imagery collected from off-the-shelf UAV devices for mapping in OpenStreetMap. The instructors taught us the inside and the outside of a drone. They also taught us the rules and regulations of CAAP in using drones and how to become a drone pilot. We went outside to collect images with the drones. It was a new experience and a whole new level. After the imagery collection, we created an available imagery and uploaded it.

• The last workshop that I’ve entered is “Datamining OpenStreetMap with Overpass Turbo”. This workshop is about a hands-on-course on web-based geo data mining. I am already familiar with the workshop content, so I just helped my fellow peers understand Datamining with Overpass Turbo. Overall they learned how to use the platform.

• Day 2 ends with “Geo-ladies Plenary Session”. Members of the Geo-ladies show how they navigate daily life society and the world. They also showed their interest and job. One of the members showed how she maps the ocean using sound waves.

Day 3 of Pista ng Mapa 2019

• Day 3 of Pista ng Mapa 2019 was all about field mapping in the streets near Foundation University. We collected data by using collecting street-level imagery or using the standard field paper. My group was set in B3 which contained a long street and some small streets. We collected a lot of data including names of the shops, school, and some buildings. Some of the areas are not yet mapped, so after collecting data from the field work, my group fully completed our area.

After the field work, Pista ng Mapa 2019 is officially done. The last thing to do is to enjoy the last remaining hours in Dumaguete.

I say good bye to Dumaguete as my plane officially takes off to Manila.

Remarks

Thank you to the organizers for making “Pista ng Mapa 2019” a wonderful experience. Thank you to the instructors and speakers for leaving me knowledge that I can use in my field of interest. Thank you Pista ng Mapa 2019 for the unforgettable and knowledgeable experience that I’ve gained. Finally, thank you to my mentors and the OSM community for letting me have the chance to participate and experience Pista ng Mapa 2019.

Photos

• Here’s me presenting my lightning talk about CWTS++ (Credits to Neyzielle)

• Here’s me and all the participants in Day 1 of Pista ng Mapa 2019

• Here’s me and all the participants ready in field work

• Here’s “DIY imagery collection for mapping” my favorite workshop of Pista ng Mapa 2019

Here I am at the last day of our Internship. From the first day to the last day, I gained a lot of knowledge from the Geo-mapping field. Our training help me gain more interest in the field. I am happy to say that it was worth taking this Internship because it allowed me to deepen my skills in editing, it made me more confident on every task I do, and It made me productive.

I would consider the program as continuing chapter in my field of interest. It added more choices or opportunities in my pathway. From combining what I learned in this program and on what I will be learning in the future, it creates a great combination of knowledge on what I’ll be doing for the better good in the future.

This isn’t the end, I am looking forward to use and continue my training in the upcoming days, months, or years. Whats important is that I stay in that pathway of knowledge and extend my learning towards to others.

I am looking forward for more opportunities in the future. Thank you for this wonderful and grateful opportunity.

Here we are enjoying our stipend (Im in the left side)

KAART’s Internship 2019 in our last day. Heres a pic with my 2 instructors and co-workers. (Im in the second to the left)

After the third week of Kaart’s internship here in the Philippines, I can say that I am getting more consistent on every task I do. I even organized my workflow properly, so that I can finish my work faster. Also I recheck and validate my edits before I upload many times on each tasks, which in that case it lessen the small errors. I can definitely say I improved better than last week workflow.

I would say the whole week is based on reflecting on our errors. Each corrected or fixed error help us lessen the error that we miss or created. It leads us to improve ourselves better and to lessen it. Thinking about errors, I missed a lot of small and big flaws but it sure helped me to look after those.

At the end of the week, we had a workshop which is about Leaflet. Leaflet is a widely used open source JavaScript library used to build web mapping applications. Since I have a small background in HTML, It helped me understand it. At the end of the workshop, we did a exercise of locating our school and adding details like a marker point and highlight box.

Heres a picture of combining what I’ve learned in MapBox and Leaflet.

I am looking forward for the fourth week. Again thank you for this opportunity.

After the second week of Kaart’s internship, I gained more experience and knowledge in geo-mapping. My JOSM skills is improving, I tend to use more shortcuts which let me finish my task faster. Aside from my JOSM skills, my experience extended more on each tasks I do and upload.

This week is more on consistent work which is applying our first week of training. I made my work accurate and detailed, in this way my data represented is clean and exact. The whole week I kept correcting my small mistakes which lessened it in my work. So far I am focusing on less errors, steady workflow and uploading accurate data.

Also in this week, we had a small workshop which is about MapBox. We created our own map with our own designed style. I learned something new again and I hope could use it in the future.

I am looking forward for the third week. Again thank you for this opportunity.

After the first week of Kaart’s internship, the 2 terms in CWTS++ (CWTS++ project pilot is a service-learning program spear-headed by the MapAm❤re Initiative) here in PUP San Juan has finally helped me to apply my skills and knowledge in this internship. My knowledge in Mapping (OpenStreetMap) have went into a new level of being a professional.

Within the first week of Kaart’s internship I have experienced 2 days of training, which I was trained to be accurate in every upload. After the training, my JOSM knowledge, my logical mapping knowledge, and my accuracy sharpened. On every task that I do, I felt confident on every adjustment I make .This internship have started superbly and I am looking to forward on the next upcoming days. Everyday I gain more and more experience and that what makes me to to be accurate, consistent and fast on every task. With that said I felt accomplished and great in the first week of Kaart’s internship. I am grateful for this opportunity.

At last, I am finishing mapping the 50.0 m satellite imagery of my neighborhood. It took around 2000 nodes plus on my total edit. To be honest, it was difficult to map my neighborhood. Because of the dense and subdivision area that I live in, in short, too many houses. Another difficult thing is the imagery. I’ve used two imagery which was Bing and DigitalGlobal Standard imagery. I’ve kept on adjusting the imagery offset because of the misalignment of Bing to DigitalGlobal Standard imagery. After mapping and adjusting the imagery, I move on to naming variety stores or “Sari-sari store” in Tagalog and other important buildings. In the end, it felt good even when there was some obstacles in mapping my neighbourhood.

On the street-level imagery, I have finished capturing data from my neighborhood. It took me 1 day to finish it. I biked all the way while holding my phone landscaped. I started capturing at early morning and I finished it at around 8-9 am. It was very tiring due to re-capturing some errors. I’ve finished capturing and uploading 351 images, it was very satisfying at the end of the day. Well I hope some of my neighborhood will appreciate my work (if they know osm and mapilliary) but except for the guard that told me that I was doing something against the law. Overall it was fun and achieving.

At my CWTS++, it was also fun and achieving because of the nodes that I’ve uploaded to OSM, it was a big help to people who need guidance and information on the times that they need it. Creating a node in JOSM and using imagery is also creating an information. It may be wrong or correct node but it is already a voluntary act. With that I learned something voluntary and at the same time my future career can get from it. The 11 sessions that I went through in CWTS++ was thrilling, it made me adapt from it. I learned many things in this program, including mapping (of course) concept of mapping, tools for mapping, and importantly applying the knowledge. A big thank you to our director of this program. I will continue my mapping adventure until the end.

• Our session of CWTS++ for (September 6, 2018) was fun and interesting. It consisted of learning a new map site, learning more about Mapilliary and OpenStreetCam, and doing more JOSM validation. We started our session with a phrase “Mapping is not always about mapping buildings, roads, etc. It can be mapping other things like constellations or network etc.” Mapping has many possibilities which can be useful and beautiful in both ways. The first topic was our FieldPapers Assignment and our diary entries. We’re finishing our task on each of our neighborhood using FieldPapers and Mapilliary. Our goal is to capture our neighborhood and map it down in our FieldPapers. The last topic is JOSM Validation. It was interesting to know that we can validate and correct the corrections of other users. Furthermore, we learned how to validate correctly on the work of other users and we got re-informed again when to use our group hashtag in mapping.

• We focused on how to use Mapilliary and OpenStreetCam correctly. According to its site, Mapillary is a collaborative street-level imagery platform for extracting map data at scale using computer vision. This goes with OpenStreetCam but a different version. There were some of my classmates that are having issues in Mapilliary and OpenStreetCam, but we managed to fix the issues so we can continue our work. We continued discussing on how to handle and upload files in the site. This is for the task in our own neighborhoods, which is capturing it using Mapilliary. One of my classmates had done a bit of capturing, so we used her captured images as an example. With the example shown, we captured the idea of how Mapilliary works and when it is safe to capture an image.

• Another main highlight of our session is validating task 4993 in Lake Sebu, SCO, PH. We validated each of our own tasks by using JOSM. This part was fun because we had our own though of each comment, which is formal and informal. Even though we were having fun, we learned how to validate and correct the work of my classmates and other users. It was surprising to see that there were many tasks that just got invalidated because of the wrong nodes or highway type or missing roads etc. This task was important because my classmates did not even notice their error. So it was our job to let them know so they can re-map it correctly.

• The last main highlight of our session is exploring Map Roulette’s feature. We did the challenges “Mis-tagged Castles in the Philippines” and “Mis-tagged funeral homes”. It was fun and easy to use because once you have click on the challenge, it will show its details and the location of the challenge. The “Mis-tagged Castles in the Philippines” challenge was done as an example for our activity. So we continued on finishing the “Mis-tagged funeral homes”. While doing the activity, I noticed how the A.I detected the nodes in one place. It appears that the funeral home that it detected was in the same place on the map all over. So it’s our job to correct what the A.I has detected incorrectly and to continue to finish their work. All of the activity was done using JOSM tool because were practicing more about JOSM. Overall Map Roulette is another website that we can help by mapping and correcting missing roads, building, mistagged features etc. It was cool to see how challenges give you a point after you have finished doing the challenge. It even had a leaderboard which shows all mappers with high points. I think the point system is a cool way to finish more challenges.

• We are improving our skills in mapping because we are deepening our knowledge in different mapping tools and other website. I am thrilled to learn more about mapping because not only I can apply this to my skills but also I can help the world by doing a small act. Overall our mapping session was exciting and fun. Each session that we enter gives us more knowledge that we need in mapping. The session won’t be complete without my classmates and our director of CWTS++. I hope to learn more in the upcoming sessions.

• These are our topics for today.

• Exploring Map Roulette

• My classmates doing validation

Philippines/CWTSS++ Project

PUP San Juan

Mastodon

Twitter/pupsjcwts

Mapping my own neighborhood is fun because this is place where I grew up. Its was easy to recognize houses, stores, and other buildings because this is my neighborhood. But as I opened OSM to look for my neighborhood, I was shocked to see that almost half of the 0-100 meters is not yet mapped. My whole neighborhood are basically full of houses because I live in a subdivision. So that is the reason why half of map are empty.

Now its a challenge for me because I need to finish mapping the whole area of emptiness. As I started mapping my field paper outside, things went funny while looking for details. I’ve encountered this old lady who told me “What are you doing young man?”. I’ve said “I am mapping and getting details for field paper that I’m working on.”. She said “What field paper?”. I’ve said “Field paper is an assignment for us students in CWTS, this will help update the map online so that people could navigate and see the location they want to easily.”. The old lady said “Online?? Internet?? Internet makes us addicted to it and it could make tutorials of bombs or destroy the world!!”. I was confused because I only wanted to finish my field paper and this old lady came up to me saying Internet is going to kill us all. But I have no time for destruction for the world so I left the old lady hanging in the air. I’ve continued working on my field paper and after 1 hour of roaming around my neighborhood I came home to rest and finish my field paper on the next days.

Its was a fun experience. 10/11 would repeat again.