The Open Planning Project

Last Saturday, TOPP played host to Wikis Take Manhattan, a city-wide scavenger hunt and free media contest.

The idea:

One part streets -- more than thirty teams of scavengers spent Saturday afternoon taking pictures of curb cuts and separated bike lanes, all the while admiring the beauty of the city by foot, bike, and train.

One part copyleft -- all photos are Creative Commons-licensed, so they can be freely shared and remixed.This event generated gigabytes of freely-licensed content for StreetsWiki and Wikipedia.

And many, many parts fun -- everyone came back to to the TOPP office for pizza, beer, and mayhem. OK, well the mayhem was had mostly by the uploaders, who spent much of the evening frantically trying to upload and score thousands of pictures from dozens cameras.

The results? Well, the final tally isn't in yet (we're still uploading!), but we had dozens of participants, thousands of photos, and smiles all around. But don't trust us, check out the great Streetfilm.

Stay tuned for links to the final photo galleries.

The event was organized by TOPP, Free Culture @ Columbia, Free Culture @ NYU, the NYC Wikimedia meetup, and Creative Commons.

Further sponsorship was provided by Pure Food & Wine, The Camera Club of New York, Brooklyn Brewery, Bicycle Habitat, B's Bikes, Birdbath Bakery, The LimeWire Store, and O'Reilly Media.

Thanks to all who helped make this event possible! A special thanks to Emile from the Camera Club of NY for judging Best Photo.