2019 is starting as busy and hectic as 2018 ended, so this will be a very brief review of 2018 as a Voting Member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) but more importantly a globally active OSM contributor.

The Big Important Stuff

• AI-Assisted Roads: Since the tail-end of 2017, I have been managing a team for HOT based in our Jakarta office that is working on the Facebook AI-Assisted Roads project. This has been an amazing project, (personally for getting to work with the team in-person for a week) but is also a great collaboration and use-case for machine learning in mapping/OSM.
• Disaster Response: In 2018, HOT activated to coordinate or support coordination for 24 disaster incidents. Our next biggest year, in terms of number of recorded responses (obviously there’s always some small incidents that we never hear about or get involved with, but local OSM-ers map so we don’t know to count those), was 2010 - the year HOT was founded - with 10 responses. This shows our ability to react quicker, have the capacity to often coordinate multiple responses at once, and that we’re doing a better job documenting responses we are involved in (and maybe that there were just a lot of disasters in 2018).
• HOT Governance: There is still a lot of work to be done, but I remain an active participant in HOT governance. Most notably in 2018, I committed to helping write the first Strategic Plan which we just finished drafting on December 28th - now it’s off to the Board and Executive Director for review and if all goes well - to membership vote during the Annual Meeting.

The Fun Stuff

• State of the Map - Milan: This was not only a great conference, but it was the first time a lot of the staff that was hired in 2018 were able to meet in person (including me getting to meet Wulan, who is the local supervisor for the roads team in Jakarta) and kicked-off some really great friendships. We were also able to do some great work there, getting together to discuss Tasking Manager development and create new connections in our ever growing network of humanitarians.
• FOSS4G & the HOT Summit: Honestly, that was a bit long to be on the road together with a huge contingent of our staff and community. But, it was maybe the most productive conference(s) I’ve ever been to. Not to mention the World Bank and Tanzania being such amazing hosts!
• State of the Map - US: I was maybe a bit burnt out on conferences, etc. by the time SotM-US rolled around. But, I had applied for the Executive Director position, so figured I best be there just in case :) Although I was not offered the position, it was great to briefly chat with Jay and wish her and OSM-US the best of luck in the coming years; as I also have local aspirations…

The Crazy Stuff

• Back home in Colorado, we have now been working on importing the entire Denver metro region’s buildings - around 1.4 million of them - for over a year. But Denver’s addressing is wonky, so we’ve gone back and forth about including addresses and basically have landed at ‘where there’s no weirdness’ we will, and maybe need Mapillary or OpenStreetCam imagery (or field survey) where there is.
• A few month back we starting really shifting gears at HOT from short-term, here-and-now, kind of vision to developing longer-term vision and plans (hence the strategy mentioned above). This got me thinking that it’s been 3 years since we developed the Activation (Disaster Mapping) Protocol and training curriculum. So one of my focuses at the end of the year, and will continue to be going into this year, is reviewing and updating both the protocol and the training courses in the Activation Working Group, which I co-chair.

There’s a ton of other stuff, as rarely a day goes by that I don’t do something involving HOT or OSM, but I will leave it at that for now. If you have a special memory from working with or meeting me in 2018, please share in the comments!

Happy New Year and Happy Mapping!

=Russ

Russell Deffner, HOT & OSM-Colorado&Wyoming (now including MapTime MileHigh)