One of my favourite bits from the State of the Map conference last weekend was when they bought out the cakes:
If you are familiar with London’s geographical layout, you might recognise the big green blob on the cake on the right as being Regent’s Park. I think my slice ended up being part of the waterfront in Amsterdam.
A random event? Not quite. When mapping parties are being organised, the most efficient way to ensure that the area in question gets good coverage from the different mappers on the day, is to look at the existing map and divide it up into sectors – mappers then bag one or more sectors that they will concentrate on. Such a map is known as a “cake” and each of the sectors are known as “slices”.
An an example, here’s the mapping party “cake” for the next London mini-mapping party that’s being held on Thursday evening, collecting POIs around King’s Road in the west of the city:
2, 4, 11 and 12 are alreay nabbed. If you fancy a slice, put your name down on the wiki page and then get mapping on Thursday evening!