Who am I?

My name is Wille Marcel. I am Brazilian, nowadays living in Brasília-DF. I started contributing to OSM 5 years ago and I am associate of OSM Foundation since July 2013. I work as a web and GIS developer. I like to organize meetings and give talks about OSM. You can see some of my efforts in my OSM diary. I have done some contributions to the Communication Working Group of OSMF as well.

Why am I standing to the Board of OSM Foundation?

I love collaboration. I really enjoy edit Wikipedia, take pictures to Mapillary and to Wikimedia Commons, to collaborate with Free and Open Source softwares and, more over, I really like to be part of the OpenStreetMap community. OSM has an important role in my life mission, so I want to help making OSM still bigger.

My proposals:

• Diversity

We haven’t had many people from outside Western Europe and United States on the board so far. I think it will be good to have a vision from other regions of the world. I am part of the Latin American and Brazilian communities, so I can contribute with my vision to build actions that increase the number of contributors on the South hemisphere. Furthermore, I think we should seek resources to have more participants on the FOSS Outreach Program, a initiative that helps people from underrepresented groups to get involved in FOSS projects. Or we could start a program more focused on teach mapping skills to women and other underrepresented groups.

• Support to local groups and events

I first met OSM when I watched a talk of another contributor (Nighto). I mapped my first town using a GPS device donated by Open Society Institute and OSM Foundation. Later I gave that GPS device to Edil Queiroz start to map and now he is a great mapper and contributor of Mapillary too. Those examples show that it is important to have initiatives to attract more contributors in some places where we don’t have many. I believe that the OSM Foundation can do more to develop and make our project bigger in some parts of the world.

There are only five users editing each day in Egypt, for example. It isn’t so difficult to gather resources to support some local communities around the world and help them to spread the word about OSM. Recently, in less than one month, the OSMF obtained 56 thousand pounds in donations to buy new servers. If there are people around the world that want to organize or participate of events to promote OSM, we should help them.

Beyond those proposals I am open to listen to new ideas and I promise to act with transparency and ethics.