Position Statement for 2022 OpenStreetMap-US Board election
Posted by frizatch on 23 January 2022 in English.Hello and thank you for reading why I’d like to continue serving on the OpenStreetMap U.S. Board for 2022!
Serving on the board this past year has been a great honor and learning experience, but it has been too short a time, especially during a pandemic, for me to help the OpenStreetMap U.S. community and expand the awareness of project in the way I’d like.
There are three particular avenues along which I have been helping support our executive director, Maggie Cawley, and the OSM U.S. organization increase the reach of OpenStreetMap:
- Education Connections – expanding the awareness of OSM among students as something to which they can contribute as well as use as a data source
- Community Connections – encouraging local groups to engage in OSM to help address their community needs
- Professional Connections – opening communication with government entities to create symbiotic relationships with OSM
I have spent the past year working on creating these types of connections. For example, I am facilitating the Trails Working Group along with Maggie, to help federal and other land managers work cooperatively with OpenStreetMap. The progression I envision is building more structures within OSMUS to make initiating and maintaining these kind of connections; either with academics groups, diverse communities or government entities; more approachable.
My main goal is growing the OSM community in an open and equitable manner.
Paraphrasing what I wrote last year, because it is still true: I am a scientist and outdoorsperson at heart. I have a degree in earth sciences and turned to geospatial technologies through a research project. I presently work in an academic library as a geospatial data scientist supporting students and faculty. I introduce OpenStreetMap whenever possible through research consultations and the MaptimeMileHigh meetup group I run.
Serving on the OpenStreetMap-US board for another year, I hope to continue my work of sharing OSM with students, faculty and community leaders as they work together using public data for public good. Through academic frameworks such as the Data to Policy Project (d2p), OSM can shine as support for policy development. I want to integrate OSM into similar programs at multiple universities. With more diverse contributors to the map recruited via community outreach and academic programs similar to d2p, OSM can be better used for research and evidence-based advocacy. With more people from different sectors of society understanding they can contribute data to the global dataset that is OSM, the more representative and complete that dataset will be.
I appreciate your consideration to let me serve for another year! I enjoyed working with a wonderful group of people this past year and look forward to continuing.
I’m happy to answer questions anyone has.
OSMUS Slack: @fritz Twitter: @fritzgis
Other links of interest: Civic Mapping Workshop 2021, Trails Working Group
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