Hi all, my name is Pete Masters and I am the outgoing Missing Maps coordinator at MSF UK (I change jobs in a few weeks).

I would like to be considered as a HOT board member because I have a lot of respect and admiration for what HOT does in the humanitarian sphere and I think my skills, experience and networks can be of value to HOT on a strategic level. For me, it represents a chance to contribute to a community that I have come to be very proud of in a different way. This would be my first board position and I am eager to prove to myself and to the community that I can operate at this level and help to take HOT forward.

In my eyes, the future of HOT is very interesting. On the one hand, local communities are growing strong in places where previously HOT would have been only mapping remotely. The size and diversity of the community behind the first State of the Map Africa this year is testament to this growth. On the other hand, NGOs, large and small, are coming to rely more and more on OSM data and HOT through activations, and initiatives like Missing Maps. These are serious organisations with short timelines and specific needs. In my opinion, HOT must continue to walk the line between these two vital elements; the bottom-up, grassroots communities and the top-down, humanitarian actors. I do not have the answers to how HOT does this, but I believe I have some good ideas.

The most important in my eyes, and the one I would like to discuss here, is credibility, and this works both ways.

For the NGOs, HOT’s activations, both emergency and long term must be impact-focused and appropriate. This means providing data that meets the needs of the situation in a timely fashion. We will need to better able to understand and translate operational needs, prioritise mapping, mobilise resources and motivate current and new community members and mappers effectively. I think my experience with MSF can help HOT to do this. Over the past two and a half years, being the bridge between an extremely operationally-focused NGO and a volunteer community has been my job and translating what an epidemiologist or a logistician or an emergency team needs into mapping projects has been my day-to-day. Through this, I have learnt the importance of understanding of where limitations of humanitarian mapping lie and how expectations need to be managed.

On the other side, I believe HOT needs to stay true to its roots and HOT’s roots are in community. The community members and the mappers should be an integral part of what HOT is. This means supporting people to be more proactive in their engagement with the mapping, but also with the decision making. At the heart of this should be information flow. Too often I feel that a lot is asked of the community without them necessarily being offered much in return. For me, the best Missing Maps collaborations have happened where MSF has been able to externalise a problem it faces, volunteers have felt empowered to add value to the medical care being delivered in the field, and where that value has been reported back quickly. I feel I have been able to instill this successfully in the culture of Missing Maps (although improvement is always possible) and would look forward to putting this experience and my background in communications and community building at the disposal of HOT to help try and make this happen at a broader level.

To be honest, whether as a board member or not, I look forward to a long relationship to HOT. I love being a part of this community and love the conversations (easy and hard) that come with it.

I apologise for the brevity and lateness of this post. I have been on the road with MSF for a few weeks now and have only just found the time…. In the interests of transparency, it is important to note that my new job will also be with MSF (as Medical Innovation Advisor).