Birds of a feather where 2.0
Notes from the BOF (Birds of a Feather) session for OpenStreetMap held May 20, 2009 at Where 2.0 in San Jose, CA
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2009 BOF Where 2.0
OpenStreetMap/OpenMapData discussion
Notes
Response to map-maker
-SAS (elite UK army)
-'Take the fight to the enemy' -respond to posts, engage dialogue
-They don't have a community, they have customers
-Who owns it? -Google
-Can't use it commercially
-Richness of detail; licensing
-More independent developers; eventually
-Better tools; make it easier to map
-Better clarification; what is OSM? what is CloudMade?
Environmental
-Connection between water and climate change
-People think they are independent
-Scientific side; hard GIS side
-Community side; e.g. mapping trees
-Private layers in OpenStreetMap?
-Budget minded environmental groups
-Easy tools for standard GIS folks are needed to explore the 'tag soup' of OSM
-QGIS plugin to read OSM and create layers on the fly based on tag filter?
How to convince other map movements to align?
-Map-Maker
-How do you get proprietary companies (Tele Atlas, Navteq) to donate data?
-Same database
-Personal relationships
-Convincing 'old-school' people of validity of OpenStreetMap
-Comparing to 'Wikipedia'
How to engage non tech-savvy people in OSM?
-Engaging people, make it easy to contribute
-Paper-mapping
-Community representative 'map scribe' inputs map data
-Ease of use of editors
-re: Mike Migurski of Stamen, has been working on paper maps -> OSM (Springmeyer plans to help)
-Niche mapping communities (e.g. hikers, fishers, etc..)
-work flow
-Do you want to lower the barrier? Every idiot mapping?
Mapping more detail
-see Wikipedia: central listing of areas that need mapping
-RSS feed of stuff that changes in your neighborhood, or list
-Don't show unreviewed TIGER data in primary Mapnik tiles or make unreviewed streets a really ugly color (bright Barney purple)
-Make sure to motivate people to notice and fix empty areas and consider bulk import 'empty' until reviewed/cleaned up
-Different levels
-Allow people to take ownership of area, 'I am responsible for this area'
-local chapters, responsible for their area
-Meeting other local contributors
-BOF
-Flicker meet-ups are popular
-Competition
Retaining mappers
-Lots of churn in OSM
-70,000 registered users, have never edited
-Edit for one or two days, and drop off
-Understanding
-New sign-ups get a 'buddy'
-Notifying you when people are editing in your vicinity
-Creating a social network
-What is our map crack?
-Analogue to 'Adopt a street' or 'This Highway adopted by: XXXX'
-Inviting editors in your area
-Getting the word out
-Peer pressure
Bulk contributions
-OSMF set up a bulk imports working group
-Have a process set up
-Negotiating terms of upload
-Network of donors
-Finding motivations for companies to give up data
-Tapping into the "fat head", not the just "long tail"
-Hey, use OSM database to store your data
-Working Group established to help import issues
-Better tools
-Conflict resolution
-Promoting the foundation
- Using FME (from safe software) for bulk imports - Drag and drop graphical interface for attribute/semantic mapping of data attributes to OSM tags