In follow-up to my last post: HOT 2014 Review, here is a brief post regarding my aspirations for 2015. Most of which are related to my Voting Membership in the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, but some are mostly personal goals.

• I intend to run for Chairperson for the Voting Members of HOT again; as described in my 2014 review, it was a bit tougher than I anticipated and I personally had a rough year so I feel that I came up short compared to what I wanted to see happen this year. However, I’m still dedicated to the work and maybe a bit more realistic in what I can accomplish this coming year. (Will save a more thorough ‘campaign’ statement until the election draws more near)
• Whether or not I am re-elected as Chairperson, I will continue to be involved in multiple HOT Working Groups. Currently I feel most helpful and dedicated to the Governance WG, probably followed closely by the Communication WG, but still think it important to participate in all of them as much as I am able (we definitely need more people in all the wgs).
• Specific to the Governance WG and the governance of HOT, it’s on my current agenda to work on a catalog of all the HOT policy and guidance documents; we’ve done a lot of work creating these, but we have not done a good job of making sure they are easy to reference. As part of, or a continuation of that, I expect to spend many, many hours over the next year reviewing, recommending, and possibly amending our policies to be more in line with practice and the strategy developed by our Board and Executive Directors.
• Personally, I’d like to ‘complete’ Park County, Colorado – mapping around ‘home’ is what starting my love for OpenStreetMap. I’d say I’m about 75% done with cleaning up the TIGER mess and maybe 50% of buildings and about 25% of landuse/natural polygons. I guess I should specify that ‘complete’ being what I can do by armchair, longer-term I will get to addresses and other details.
• Of course if things go well, I’ll attend the State of the Map – US conference again this year; hopefully we’ll conduct the first HOT summit (and I’ll be able to attend) this year – and at least a few OSM-Colorado meetups (trying to help plan one in Fort Collins in the next couple months).

Bring on the New Year!

Russell Deffner

Chairperson for the Voting Members

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team