Today, I received an email regarding the Foundation Board election. It’s finally time to vote. So, I read all the board candidates’ manifestos and Q&A session answers before finally deciding on whom to vote for.

While reading those materials, I came across several interesting quotes along the way. Take a look :

My long-term vision for OpenStreetMap is it becoming the default map because it has eclipsed its competitors in accuracy, completeness, actuality and detail.

The ideal state of OpenStreetMap is trivially a state where everyone knows that the project exists. The threshold to contribute shall be so low that everyone can record or update any map feature they consider notable.

First of all, I would like to thank all DWG members for the enormous amount of work they have to do to ensure that our work is not destroyed. If elected to the board, I will try to ensure that part of the OSMF funds are allocated to solutions that facilitate the work of DWG colleagues as well as to support them in recruiting new volunteers.

The recent cases of vandalism in Ukraine and Israel have undermined trust in our data; some data consumers have stopped updating their maps there. Investing in advanced tools to aid the Data Working Group is imperative for enhancing prevention, detection, and reversion of vandalism.

The board should consult the community on what to do for large anonymous donations if we have that luxury problem in the future. I am strongly against strings attached to any donations. The only ones we have ever accepted was the promise that we would earmark the donated funds for the fundraised purpose.

Our greatest strength is our community of editors, and as long as we are united, the project will not be at risk.

We shall start to attract the next generation. The existing generation of mappers have been intrinsically motivated by the absence of useable map data before OpenStreetMap came to frution. Now, good map data is a commodity, and we need to retell the story to remind people that there is hard and ongoing work behind the data.

Strengthening local chapters is vital, not just for diversity but to encourage local initiatives that improve quality.

We should explore support for temporary data like festivals or roadworks and maybe even real-time data integration. This could significantly enhance the utility and relevance of our maps.

2024 promises to be an exciting year with the launch of our new vector tiles. These will be open-schema, minutely updated, and designed for easy remixing with personal or open datasets.