My ASEAN Free GPS Map Project

Dear members,

This topic is not created for bragging but my sincere attempt to identify any shortcoming of our community and discuss proposed solutions. Human life is fragile. I could be happily refueling my car and some crazy drunk driver may slam his car right into me and then..... I think it is better to be prepared

We have a well-oiled map updating machine. Many of our members are experts in tracking or contributing feedback or POIs now. Any newbie that needs help can be guided by more experienced members. Our mappers are dedicated, knowledgeable and willing to teach. But the map data that our mappers update is still some way from the Garmin or Papago map we use. The data needs to go through a preparation and then a compilation process. These two processes become slightly more complicated each time I add another option for our members or Garmin throws us a challenge.

I am comfortable with these processes since I designed most of them and perform them each week. But bro OngCC will tell you the pressure of releasing a perfect map to satisfy the high expectations of our members and map users

We are also in agreement that it is best for MFM to support more navigation software in the future. It will even be better if we can develop our own software in collaboration with other parties. This responsibility for this area lies solely on me currently. So if I am gone, MFM's future may be affected

So please share your ideas on how we can strengthen MFM in this area

Bro Yong,

Nothing is fix except Income Tax ... ... we can be here today and gone tomorrow. We also realize that MfM is reliant on a small group of dedicated GPSGEEKs that eat, sleep n talk GPS. Most contributions that reaches the hands of the mappers still require substantial work before publishing. If this is to continue forever we have to ask you to seek divine help to change the GPSGEEKs to Immortals....

On the serious note, we need to expand our reaches to people who livelihood is dependent on these gadgets. They will be the one who will protect and provide for the longevity of our work. Let's seek out the these people and hopefully be able to progress with them. MfM is still lacking in manpower when such opportunity arises and I hope Bros n Sista here will step forward to assist... just my 2 Sens.

Anucha - (pali :impermanence).

If I am not wrong mapEdit source codes are part open source and written in C language. IMO it would be easier to colleborate than try and work it out alone.

Perhaps a show of hands will give us a guage how far we can travle into this territory.

moeyhc wrote:Bro Yong,

Nothing is fix except Income Tax ... ... we can be here today and gone tomorrow. We also realize that MfM is reliant on a small group of dedicated GPSGEEKs that eat, sleep n talk GPS. Most contributions that reaches the hands of the mappers still require substantial work before publishing. If this is to continue forever we have to ask you to seek divine help to change the GPSGEEKs to Immortals....

On the serious note, we need to expand our reaches to people who livelihood is dependent on these gadgets. They will be the one who will protect and provide for the longevity of our work. Let's seek out the these people and hopefully be able to progress with them. MfM is still lacking in manpower when such opportunity arises and I hope Bros n Sista here will step forward to assist... just my 2 Sens.

Personally, I'd hope to be of assistance. I'm a computer shop owner who is hoping to expand into the GPS business once I'm more well versed in it, so I guess I can consider my lifelihood depends on it, as bro Moey says

However, 1st and foremost, I still consider myself a newbie in this thing. Currently I only go as far as helping friends update their gps maps, and contribute on and off with respect to POI and error correction. My first attempt at tracking was a miserable failure, so I'm laying off tracking for the moment.

But I guess we all get better at things as we learn along the way. And I do look forward to attending our gathering this 10th April, where I hope to learn from the experts.

See our sifus there, then!!

[quote="moeyhc"]Bro Yong,

Nothing is fix except Income Tax ... ... we can be here today and gone tomorrow.


And Death.

Longevity is a difficult property for any business/organization to achieve. MFM is a unique organization of hobbyist whose members personal involvement /committment and passion for mapping is extra-ordinary.

Longevity requires a succession of committed key players. Bro Antyong, you hit the nail when you mentioned QUOTE : So if I am gone, MFM's future may be affected UNQUOTE. For a start, need for each key player in MFM to nominate a key assistant who is capable of taking over load of in event of "non-function" of senior.

Just my 1 cent view ....

Perhaps Antyong can "train" more members and act as backup. as well as occasionally reduce the workload of map compiling by senior members.

antyong wrote:........
We are also in agreement that it is best for MFM to support more navigation software in the future. It will even be better if we can develop our own software in collaboration with other parties. This responsibility for this area lies solely on me currently. So if I am gone, MFM's future may be affected

So please share your ideas on how we can strengthen MFM in this area

agree, MFM will be stronger and to be good if it had much choice support more different navigation software and maps.. so
What if you build such a software house?, which specialized in developing gps navigation program.
then volunteers can be learn somehow from you and develops your own mfm navigation system..
if all the volunteers, the cost will be almost zero, you do not have to pay them but they benefit from you in order to learn something.

if you are going to starting software house, then I will be the first applicant to register..
and fight alongside you to build your own mfm gps navigation software..
its so good if mfm have own navigation system or have any map for almost all gps navigation system,

So if you are gone, Bro Antyong you will be be "a Legend" :-))

speaking from a nerd point of view

personally i feel this forum should have a few strong key mappers that can share the workload of TS.

they have been mappers for so long and they would know if its is really necessary to release weekly updates.
i feel releasing updates once a fortnight should help to ease the workload of mappers.

otherwise they have been doing a good job and keeping this forum alive.

gpsnerd wrote:speaking from a nerd point of view

personally i feel this forum should have a few strong key mappers that can share the workload of TS.
they have been mappers for so long and they would know if its is really necessary to release weekly updates.
i feel releasing updates once a fortnight should help to ease the workload of mappers.

I agree with gpsnerd that the workload can be reduced if we release updates fortnightly or even monthly. Let's be honest.. how many of us update our GPS maps weekly. Personally i do it only once every few months.

Also we have to limit the number of maps we support. At the moment we have Garmin and papago with mapking under discussion. Where will the is list end?

just my 2c worth and may bro Antyong live forever