OpenStreetMap
Greetings, this is a brief recap of my contributions to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) in 2014.
HOT Community Relations
HOT emails over the last 18 months have become quite counter-productive and personal. I feel as though we have lost our way as a constructive contributory community. For that reason i have stopped reading them, it has also affected how much i interact with the community and alarmingly how much i contribute to HOT mapping tasks. I’d like this community to be a bit more constructive and work together. For my part, i will not create unnecessary noise on shared communication channels and attempt to set an example by chipping away at a few areas i feel i can add value to.
HOT Mapping Contributions
- January 2014 #400 - South Sudan, Upper Nile State, Malakal
- January 2014 #396 - South Sudan, Unity State, Bentiu
- January 2014 #395 - South Sudan, Jeglei, Bor
- January 2014 #397 - Central African Republic/République Centrafricaine, Haut-Mbomou, Zémio
- August 2014 #611 - Gaza-Strip-2014
Reduced involvement in HOT
Over the last two years i have been less involved in HOT due to a number of factors
- I was somewhat disenchanted by the membership process within HOT, i felt a lot of the organisation around members and voting went some way to making it a less inclusive closed group - which was a big attraction when i first started mapping for HOT during the Haiti Earthquake.
- Having a 1 year old child
- Increased pressures and responsibility in my professional career. Ironically i have been working on a large mapping task management system for government and i was able to use some of the ideas from HOT and the tasking manager to achieve this goal.
Regrettably i was unable to contribute to any Ebola mapping tasks in West Africa as i had sever pressures on my time throughout most of this year although i would have loved to contribute and i’ll continue to push myself to make at least a minor mapping effort in the future.
Sincerely,
Sam Larsen
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
Discussion
Comment from mikelmaron on 5 January 2015 at 11:55
Thanks for your sharing this Sam. I encourage you to open your ears a bit more to what’s happening in HOT community and organizationally the last six months. You’re already doing this a bit, since you answered the call to document HOT activities in 2014. I see things as substantially improved. Eager to hear more ideas on how we all can be more constructive, together.