It’s been quite a busy year for me, so hopefully it isn’t too tough to recall my mappy highlights for the year, but that could prove a challenge, given that I usually can’t remember if I’ve eaten on any given day.

Major Accomplishments

• In December of 2017 Dan Joseph and myself traveled to Canaan, Haiti to collect updated drone imagery on behalf of the American Red Cross to continue to update the map of the area. Since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, this community has grown exponentially, and updated maps are critical to the community there. In the first part of 2018, we shared the imagery on OpenAerialMap and our workflow is highlighted on the Missing Maps Blog. You can contribute to some of these projects using the imagery at the HOT Tasking Manager
• While at the American Red Cross, I brought together a team of volunteers to focus on data quality for our Missing Maps projects in the HOT Tasking Manager. I presented at the April GeoDC meeting, highlighting some of their work, and after only a few short months, they had already contributed over 100k edits to OSM!
• Perhaps the biggest accomplishment for me on a professional level was switching jobs! I left my position at the American Red Cross, and while I certainly miss working with all the fantastically dedicated people there, I traded in my passport for a new, more local adventure (I didn’t actually trade in my passport, that would be wildly irresponsible of me).
• As a voting member of HOT I spent more time involved in some of the working groups. I had the privilege of working with other members of the HOT community on formulating the membership feedback to the organization’s strategic plan. It was an eye-opening and new experience for me, but it makes me all the more proud to be a part of this community!

Little wins

• While not necessarily a “win” in the literal sense, because I certainly did not “win”, I ran for the HOT Board, which on a personal level was exciting for me…and while the votes didn’t fall my direction, I’m extremely happy for both Nathalie and Trudy on their election to the board, a board that is now majority female, a positive step for any organization!
• I’ve continued to map my hometown in Upstate New York, this year I moved on to landuses, which is something I hadn’t ventured into before. Also, relations!, relations have always been something I steered away from in OSM, but I ventured down that road as well.
• I presented at State of the Map - US on creating workflows for validation. I received a lot of great feedback after that talk and I think it prompted some good discussion. There’s a blog version posted on Medium - minus the dad jokes.

What’s to come in 2019?

Hard to know what I don’t know yet, but here’s a few things I hope to do with my mappy-time this year:

• More local mapping! I still have plenty of work to do in Upstate New York, but there’s a never ending list of things to map here in Northern Virginia as well!
• Stay involved in HOT working groups. It’s been a rewarding experience with my time spent in the Strategic Working Group this year, I’m looking forward to doing more of the same this year.
• More daily mapping. A plan to map or validate a single task in the HOT tasking manager every day this year sounds like a good goal…but sadly, I’d have failed already. I’ll try to put a bit more time aside to map when I can, but with a toddler running around the house, you never know when a hand will grab the keyboard. But in general, more mapping is good mapping :-)
• More street-level imagery. My wife decided to put up with the frustration of me setting up an action camera on our car windshield every time we go out for a drive, when she gifted me a new camera for Christmas. Who’s ready for pictures of me driving to the store when we’ve run out of almond milk?
• More sharing. Hope to be more open and sharing of work that I do either professionally or on my own.

Here’s to a great 2019! Happy New Year everyone!

Matt “Giblet” Gibb