Bio

I am a French Geographer and a GIS/Cartography expert with a background rooted in Litterature/ Social Sciences/ Social activism and 14 years of work in Overseas Academic Research, Humanitarian and Development actions.

I had been living over 7 years in Senegal and developed in this time an interest for Humanitarian and Development understood as fields of practices (theories and actions) where space and location tied to agile, innovative approaches to individual and community empowerment - geography in action - have a role to play which potential has not been fulfilled yet.

From my years as a practitioner in Overseas Academic Research, Humanitarian and Development worlds, I strongly believe that the OpenStreetMap project, the wider open data and open source movements are building a new emerging paradigm in territorial dynamics which allows for renewed global and local citizen actions and empowerments relevant for Humanitarian contexts and leading eventually to human Development.

The HOT Project

To foster the maturation of this paradigm, I invented the concept of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Project with Mikel Maron from late 2007 to early 2009. I engaged in the OSM response to the Haiti 12-January 2010 earthquake, both remotely and on-the-ground, by leading the first field work of the HOT Project from March 2010 onwards. I co-founded the US-incorporated NGO HOT Us with Mikel Maron, Kate Chapman, Robert Soden and Dane Springmeyer in August 2010 to widen and deepen the HOT Project in Haiti and in Humanitarian and Development work overseas. I served as a Board Officer and Programs Director for HOT US between 2010-2014 and focused my engagement in developing the capacities of this Organization, its community and its partners to support and build local autonomous OSM communities in Haiti and Western/Central Africa.

The EOF Project

To better address the specifics of community building in French speaking countries of the Caribbean and Africa, I ideated and started in 2012 the Espace OSM Francophone (EOF) Project with the support of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). The EOF Project represents both a collective as well as an efficient and agile mechanism to support continued local OSM animation. This consists of a mix of volunteerism and a series of small well targeted support projects tailored to the poverty context of those territories. Typically EOF activities spans in-country and remote mapping (humanitarian activations included), training, building of technical and organizational support materials. These are happening within an overall capacity building scheme and a continued mentorship which provides support to the most active individuals and groups. EOF works and operates through local partnerships with Academics (Research), Free Software Associations, Local Government or humanitarian actors. They form the basis of the OSM ecosystem and provides workplaces and resources for collectives of local OSM animators to grow local OSM communities.

2014 in the HOT Project

Over the last year (March 2014 to March 2015), I focused my actions on developing the EOF Project with the support of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) to consolidate and expand OSM in Haiti, Sénégal, Togo, Burkina-Faso, Morocco, Niger, Bénin, Ivory Coast, Mali and Chad. In parallel, I worked fostering EOF’s contributions to the Crisis activations and preparedness work of the HOT and The Missing Maps Projects. The work happened through a mix of paid work (as a freelancer) with OIF and OIF partners and a continued volunteered work. This entailed the following:

• Continued support and mentorship to the most active individuals/groups of the EOF countries
• Design and implementation of the EOF small sized support projects for continued animation, hardware purchases, capacity building missions and production of technical and organizational materials.
• Carried out Western African field support mission in Burkina Faso, Sénégal, Togo and Ivory Coast and provided project support to the other countries
• Lectured for the fourth year about OSM/GIS in master classes of Geomatics in a network of French Universities and Engineering Schools (Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Agrocampus de Rennes, Universités of Paris 1 Sorbonne, Paris 8 Saint-Denis and Paris 10 Nanterre)
• Outreach in various events and conferences : Conférence Humanitaire (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Quai d’Orsay), State Of the Map France (Paris), UN GIS Day (Geneva), Salon Des Solidarités (Paris), GeoBretagne (Rennes), GeOrchestra (Clermond-Ferrand), GeOnG (Chambéry),

Vision for the HOT Board in 2015

This is the vision that Severin and I have for the Board of HOT US in 2015. Work is ongoing to produce and release a collective version from individual statements that will guide our action in 2015 within the HOT Project.

2015 will de facto be a year of changes for HOT with

• On the one hand, the resignation of its ED and a majority of its former Board members.
• On the other hand, the many candidacies with a diverse set of skills and varying levels of experience within the organization. It’s likely that a sound mix of people shall come out from this election.

If elected, my actions within the Board of Directors for HOT will be as follow:

My vision of what a Board member shall be doing

I’ll be using the many hats that my experience provided me with: strategy, project engineering (design/implementation), reporting, admin/business processes, outreach, networking, advising, grants writing/fundraising and the field-specific technical and organizational skills building local OSM communities developed in Haiti and Africa in the past 5 years.

My priority

My compass will be to ensure that our organization fosters its support to the growth of autonomous local OSM communities (made of individuals, groups, chapters and economic operators) and develop their ability to sustain relations amongst themselves (global-local, South-South, North-South) and with technical communities (OSM, free software and open data) as well as the humanitarian and development actors. My intention is to provide feedback from my field experience in many contexts and type of projects, including e.g. budget optimization to systematically encompass support for local emergent OSM communities.

Reinforce HOT US as a member-based organization an carry out internally the following

• Ensure that HOT is a transparent organization for its members who can attend all meetings (Board included) and access all meeting notes, communications and all the Organization documents (specifically finance, admin, projects) ; within of course the respect of privacy
• Make of HOT an inclusive organization in terms of decision making ; specifically in project design tied to subventions, grants, or core funds
• Make of HOT a learning organization for its members from voluntary contributions in Working Group down to project implementation which shall continue to primarily seek hotties’ participation
• Redefine relations and roles between the Board Of Directors and Operational staffs (ED and Project Managers). Ensure a shift towards a more active role for the Directors in strategy/planning/design/implementation/monitoring of operations and projects with the ED in charge of running the day to day business. Resume operations meeting (stopped in 2013) between the ED and Project Managers and introduce continued attendance by Board and WG representatives.

What the organization shall do

• Consolidation of the Commons of the HOT Project (tools, documentation, communication, network) and design a Charter of the HOT Project to which HOT US, other regional HOT organizations and partners have to be compliant with
• Consolidate capacities to support remotely humanitarian and development actors.
• Expand again HOT on-the-ground presence (after its shrinking in 2014) in order to support humanitarian and development actors and grow local OSM communities. Assess and review the fundraising approach to tentatively succeed in securing core funds for the first time in 2015
• Strengthen our neutrality/autonomy from large partner and funding organizations within the humanitarian and development fields
• Ensure that the Organization benefit from continued advisory support through its members and Working Groups and/or in the form of ad hoc simple consultations of experts or through the form of advisory projects tailored to address a specific need of the organization

What is the HOT Project?

Historically, the HOT Project develops as follow :

• It started first as a community made of individuals forming an informal collective from 2007 until the first field work in the 2010 Haiti response (March/May/June).
• In Aug 2010, the HOT Project developed as a community coupled to a US-incorporated NGO, HOT US fulfilling the role of a de facto Humanitarian/Development chapter operating mostly through volunteerism and an economic operator relying for project implementation on a mix of paid and voluntary work.
• In 2015, the HOT Project consists of a community, a chapter (HOT US) and economic operators (HOT US, TheMissingMap project and many others)

The components of the HOT project can be developed as follow:

• A community of individuals involved through remote activations and field work far beyond the HOT US voting members and the stable core of active contributors
• An associative component as a kind of Humanitarian/Development Chapter with HOT US, for voluntary activity around OSM in the Humanitarian and Development fields in the form of mapping, training, outreach, documentation and tools creation
• Economic operators, including HOT US, using the business mechanisms (proposals, calls for bids) and raising funds to support the use of OSM in the Humanitarian and Development fields.

HOT US within the HOT Project

• Organize the Decentralization/Regionalization of HOT US into autonomous HOT regional entities (both chapters and/or economic operators) able to operate worldwide. By so doing, they will comply with the HOT Project Charter (cf supra) and maintain and enrich the HOT Project Commons (cf supra) and seek coordination/cooperation synergies in running their voluntary or economic project-based activities.
• Organize for HOT US to play the role of incubator for such a regionalization process and for the regional entities to share in return with HOT US the financial costs of maintaining the Commons of the HOT Project (through a project fees, for example like TheMissingMap project).
• Organize the cooperation between HOT US, future emerging HOT regional entities and already existing partner entities (GroundTruth, TheMissingMaps, etc.) or projects like the Projet EOF. This will ensure that HOT US incubate/support (if needed) those entities and that mechanisms are in place for those entities to operate by the HOT Project Charter and its Commons and contribute with HOT US to those Commons
• Organize/address the handling of conflicts of interest for Board members involved in professional uses of OSM