welcome to #maptime!

a kick off to a new #maptime community in Chattanooga, Tennessee

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i'm here to speak to you as a beginner

not as a beginning mapper, because i've been doing it now for several months, which i really think is enough time to become dangerous with just about anything.

but as a beginning educator.

i've been learning things for a long time, and i've been teaching for a while too. but it's taken me a very long time to acknowledge it, and to recognize the value. and it's taken me even longer to recognize the need to cultivate it actively.

maptime is established to welcome newcomers into the geo world, and to share the power of the tools and techniques of mapmaking.

“Maptime is, rather literally, time for mapmaking. Our 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.”

In just over a year, maptime chapters have sprung up around the country, opening up mapping to hundreds of new people

to me, maptime is about setting forth to establish a learning community, where people – us – can learn new concepts and teach one another.

Wikimedia senior technical writer Sumana Harihareswara spoke recently about "legitimate peripheral participation". Think about this.

Rather than taking advanced and complex technical tasks as something only approachable by experts, by trained technicians, we can put mapping in the hands of anybody with the time and interest to get involved. By sharing the complexity of learning among a broader community, we can create and share our own body of knowledge without needing to become GIS professionals.

People will learn a lot slower if they’re afraid to fail. Our work is public, and often times that extends to online spaces. Learning works a lot better when we can all be safe and assume good faith.

Maptime Chattanooga and all of its related activities, both in person and online, are governed by a code of conduct , available on out website at github.com/maptime/chattanooga . I encourage you all to read it, and we’re serious about enforcing it. As a shorthand, here are 4 community ground rules we’re adopting from Hacker School in New York:

no feigned surprise
no “well actually”s
no back-seat driving
no racism, sexism, other ism

I’m so excited that you all made it here tonight as we embark on this new journey of #maptime Chattanooga. I hope you find it rewarding!