User:JohnANovak/2012 OSMF US Chapter Board Elections Manifesto

OSM Involvement

I've been actively editing OSM data since 2009, and am working as a professional mapping engineer at Telenav in Sunnyvale, CA. You can see more details about my background at my LinkedIn profile

I have mapped Menlo Park, CA and portions of the Wyoming Valley, PA, as well as other areas. Much of the detailed data was collected with an iPhone app I've created and have been incrementally improving for the past few months. I've been systematically working through way connectivity errors reported by OSM Inspector near US County Boundaries since July of 2012.

It's all about Connectivity

• Community Connectivity - The OSM US community will benefit from more frequent communication and increased coordination of efforts by the US Board. As OSM becomes more connected to the commercial and government communities through more wide-spread adoption of OSM data, the Community at large benefits as well. The US Board can accelerate community development by coordinating data correction and expansion efforts, and actively fostering relations with government agencies and commercial companies.

Many registered users never contribute any edits, or make only a few edits and become inactive. I believe two major contributing factors are a lack of obvious, simple edits to help new editors become familiar with map data editing, as well as a need for better tutorial material on the wiki.

• Tools Connectivity - In a sense, OSM suffers from an embarrassment of riches in terms of sources for discovering data quality issues. While diversity is important, the Board can help newer community members better connect with tools by selecting a small number as a reference set, and assuring that adequate documentation is available and accessible. It can also help by focusing effort upon and providing support for the reference tools developers to further improve them.

In additional to error reporting tools, editors such as JOSM, while powerful, can benefit from focus on improved usability. The Board can coordinate study groups and provide feedback to the JOSM development team regarding areas of the tool to be focused upon.

• Data Connectivity - While some community members clearly possess a deep understanding of the many potential uses of OSM map data, the many instances of clusters of way connectivity errors indicate more effort is required to help editors understand the many facets of data quality. Helping community members become more connected with OSM data concepts will lead to not only better routing connectivity, but additional improvements in other areas as well.