Context

TEDxManagua is an independently organized TED event held in Nicaragua. Since 2012, it has taken place every year, bringing Nicaragua’s best ideas, inventions and reflections to a big stage.

Description

In 2013, Felix Delattre participated with his Spanish-language talk “The map is in your hands” (El mapa está en tus manos), about maps in a country where the streets have no name, community initiatives by active citizens and building the first map of Managua’s public transportation system.

The talk was an entertaining overview of the recent work of the OpenStreetMap Nicaragua group and how open technologies fit especially well into the reality of developing countries and can make a real difference:

• The special way to define addresses: based on reference points, instead of street names.
• How to face Managua’s mobility problem by creating, for the first time, a map of the transit system.
• Mapping important but informal spaces, such as the Mercado Oriental, the biggest marketplace in Central America.

Technology available to the people

It is all about improving one’s own environment, using new technology to leverage things that could not have been done before in this participatory way. Not waiting for anybody to do what makes life better, but getting together, using the tools available, learning from each other and making things happen.