Hi All, HOT has been awarded a grant for strategic planning support. What this is means is the HOT board will be meeting in DC the week of May 1st with assistance from the Meridian Institute who will be providing facilitation for the meeting. The core outcome of the meeting is to have a strategic plan for HOT.
We'll be reaching out to everyone in the next couple weeks to collect information to help drive the meeting. Meridian has already interviewed the HOT board to further shape the discussion. If you have questions feel free to contact me or discuss on the list. Below is the full text of the announcement. Best, -Kate Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Awarded Micro-Grant for Strategic Planning Support The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, with the support of CrisisCommons, awarded a small grant to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) to help with its strategic planning process. HOT works both remotely and on site in countries to assist with the collection of geographic information, to train others in OpenStreetMap database and related software, and to act as a bridge between the traditional humanitarian relief community and the OpenStreetMap community. OpenStreetMap is a Web-based project to create a free, editable map of the entire world, built mostly by volunteers using data collected from portable Global Position System (GPS) receivers, digitizing aerial photography, or acquiring and making accessible public geographic data. OpenStreetMap data can fill the gaps in existing map data to improve delivery of humanitarian relief. For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, HOT rapidly created a detailed map of the earthquake affected zone where none existed, providing critical information used by CrisisCommons, MapAction, Mission 4636, the World Bank and other disaster response organizations. This micro-grant reflects new priorities for the larger grant to the Wilson Center by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. Under the new objectives, the grant to the Wilson Center will help establish CrisisCommons as an independent, non-profit entity and support key activities; provide seed funding to other volunteer and technical communities or high-leverage opportunities that will benefit the larger ecosystem; and continue to support the Wilson Center’s events and work on the policy and research issues underlying crowd-sourcing, social media and related technologies. The reorientation of the grant was based on more than 40 hours of interviews with CrisisCommons, several other digital volunteer groups, and traditional crisis response organizations to better understand the critical needs and activities in this space. A limited number of micro-grants will be awarded in 2012. This micro-grant will provide HOT with professional facilitation and support through the Meridian Institute to help HOT refine its mission and develop a strategic plan. Learn more about: Humanitarian Open Street Map: http://hot.openstreetmap.org CrisisCommons: http://www.crisiscommons.org Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/science-and-technology-innovation-program Meridian Institute: www.merid.org. _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
