Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Inspired by this discussion, I've written up a blog post on why we at the OSM-US chapter love calling editathons: http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/why-editathons/ Like I mentioned before, I think they're a great tool to create an excuse or an impulse for people around the US to get together in meat space and work on OpenStreetMap. We're fully intending to keep calling them regularly. Now also speaking as someone who's helped running them locally in DC, they've been fun to organize and good energy has come from them. Suggestions and feedback on how to improve them are more than welcome. Alex On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.uswrote: On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Michal Migurski m...@teczno.com wrote: We had excellent turnout yesterday in San Francisco with almost 20 people in Code for America's Ben Franklin room. We got a lot of newcomers who had attended the June SOTM and were interested in contributing, a near 50/50 gender balance (!!!), and a handful of traditional GIS education people who were looking for connections to the OSM world. Attendees worked on a bunch of projects: cycling route relations in Kansas City, building import process for SF, highly-detailed parking lot models for San Ramon, addresses and business in San Jose, and automated detection of unmapped suburbs from Telenav probe data (not public). Way to Go! -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Jul 19, 2013, at 9:36 AM, Clifford Snow wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Alex Barth a...@mapbox.com wrote: The local dimension of OpenStreetMap was exactly why OSM US decided to do #editathons. There's one happening this weekend, join us. http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/july-summer-editathon/ Our group is signed up. (Seattle) Well I've been promoting this event quite enough on this list so I'm sure everyone of you already has this on the radar :) But share it in your networks if you haven't yet. It's not too late. We had excellent turnout yesterday in San Francisco with almost 20 people in Code for America's Ben Franklin room. We got a lot of newcomers who had attended the June SOTM and were interested in contributing, a near 50/50 gender balance (!!!), and a handful of traditional GIS education people who were looking for connections to the OSM world. Attendees worked on a bunch of projects: cycling route relations in Kansas City, building import process for SF, highly-detailed parking lot models for San Ramon, addresses and business in San Jose, and automated detection of unmapped suburbs from Telenav probe data (not public). Photo: https://twitter.com/michalmigurski/status/358695759769632768/photo/1 Partial attendee list: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Alan http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Allison%20Carpio http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/bdiscoe http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/chachasikes http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/curiousscholar http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/dirtysouth http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/EmilyWask http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jfire http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/matthieun http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mdrigo http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/migurski http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/MonoSim http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Ondrae http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/rduecyg http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/robertstack http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Thomas%20Hervey Also, here is a JSON API to see the last 25 edits for the #editathon hashtag: http://osm-tags.teczno.com/tag/editathon?callback=do_stuff …and all the #editathon changesets as of two minutes ago: http://mike.teczno.com/img/editathon-2013-07-21-17-43-00Z.csv -mike. michal migurski- contact info and pgp key: sf/cahttp://mike.teczno.com/contact.html ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Michal Migurski m...@teczno.com wrote: We had excellent turnout yesterday in San Francisco with almost 20 people in Code for America's Ben Franklin room. We got a lot of newcomers who had attended the June SOTM and were interested in contributing, a near 50/50 gender balance (!!!), and a handful of traditional GIS education people who were looking for connections to the OSM world. Attendees worked on a bunch of projects: cycling route relations in Kansas City, building import process for SF, highly-detailed parking lot models for San Ramon, addresses and business in San Jose, and automated detection of unmapped suburbs from Telenav probe data (not public). Way to Go! -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Hi Clifford, Wow--thanks for sharing those stats! They are really interesting! I just took a look at the link you shared and it looks like we're seeing the number of mappers contributing on any given day. Do you know if it's possible to find the number of mappers contributing in a week or even month? That might give us a better sense of the real number of mappers in the US. (They would all still be relative to other countries, but it might give us a better indication of how we're doing. For example, when I first saw that 202 number, I was surprised at how low it was compared to SOTMUS attendance (380+), but knowing it's a daily tally makes far more sense. Anyway, I think that a goal of increasing active mappers is really smart-- perhaps we could set annual or quarterly targets for ourselves? Can you talk more about what an OSM Ambassador would do? I'm familiar w/ Fedora, but not its Ambassadors. On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.uswrote: We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94 6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79 7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36 8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10 9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49 10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66 I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target goals. I think this is a worth while project to work on. I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers Support for local groups OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with the linux distribution Fedora) Cheers, -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 3:06 AM, Kathleen Danielson kathleen.daniel...@gmail.com wrote: Anyway, I think that a goal of increasing active mappers is really smart-- perhaps we could set annual or quarterly targets for ourselves? Tracking and publicizing the data monthly should be step 1. Editathons can help increase the number of active mappers, but realistically, we need more mappers. US isn't low because we don't edit enough, it's low because we need more mappers. Step 2 might be setting an annual target. But just setting a goal isn't enough. We need a plan a strategy to get there. Can you talk more about what an OSM Ambassador would do? I'm familiar w/ Fedora, but not its Ambassadors. As I envision an OSM Ambassador program, the goals would be similar to Fedora[1], Organize OSM participation at events Demonstrate OSM to the public Promote OSM at local events with talks, handouts and swag Promote Switch2osm Provide training in iD Funding should be made available to the ambassadors for reimbursement for travel and other related expenses. The most likely candidate to handling the funding would be the US Chapter of OpenStreetMap. A budget and someone to authorize expenditure would be required. We already have people that give talks to outside groups so you might ask why we need a formal program. A formal Ambassador program would allow individuals to travel to events that they might otherwise not be able to afford on their own. It could cover the cost of printed material and swag. Training could be included to make sure our Ambassadors are knowledgeable. An Ambassador program is just a suggestion to help us increase the number of active mappers. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 8:51 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: This doesn't have to wait for funding, or permission! There are hundreds of OpenStreetMap ambassadors reading this list, right now. Are you saying that you are satisfied with the number of active US mappers? Really? 1) Start your local OpenStreetMap group. Meet on a regular schedule. Monthly is best. Make your goal, be available to answer questions about OpenStreetMap. Everything else is okay too. We already have an active local group that meets regularly. It currently has over 125 members signed up. 2) Grow your local ambassador team. You don't have to do it all You don't have to do it alone. Include people in your group who like to reach out to other groups. Include people who like to speak at events. Include people who can host at a venue. Share the load. Replace yourself with assistant- and alternate-organizers to strengthen the local team. But YOU have to start it. Just do that much. 3) Connect with other nearby local groups to share and enjoy. Drop in on Serge's group when you are in NYC. Thank him for starting it! Do the same when you travel to other places with local groups. Welcome distant mappers when they visit your local area, too. Great idea. Ambassador Program Pah! Just get on with it. :-) Sorry, I believe we need to think outside of our current box. -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
+1 to just get going in your city or in your community. Let nothing stop you. The local dimension of OpenStreetMap was exactly why OSM US decided to do #editathons. There's one happening this weekend, join us. http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/july-summer-editathon/ Well I've been promoting this event quite enough on this list so I'm sure everyone of you already has this on the radar :) But share it in your networks if you haven't yet. It's not too late. In terms of publicity, it's exactly stuff like this that gets us into the papers, like here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/what-happens-when-everyone-makes-maps/277850/(interesting to point out that the coverage of the NYC event is the merit of the local group btw, and not the OSM us chapter). Editathons are just one thing to encourage people to get together and organize a local event. There might be other things that the OSM US chapter can lend support with. Speaking as the OSM US chapter Secretary: suggestions and active help are always welcome! On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: [ ... ] As I envision an OSM Ambassador program, the goals would be similar to Fedora[1], Organize OSM participation at events Demonstrate OSM to the public Promote OSM at local events with talks, handouts and swag Promote Switch2osm Provide training in iD Funding should be made available to the ambassadors for reimbursement for travel and other related expenses. The most likely candidate to handling the funding would be the US Chapter of OpenStreetMap. A budget and someone to authorize expenditure would be required. This doesn't have to wait for funding, or permission! There are hundreds of OpenStreetMap ambassadors reading this list, right now. 1) Start your local OpenStreetMap group. Meet on a regular schedule. Monthly is best. Make your goal, be available to answer questions about OpenStreetMap. Everything else is okay too. 2) Grow your local ambassador team. You don't have to do it all You don't have to do it alone. Include people in your group who like to reach out to other groups. Include people who like to speak at events. Include people who can host at a venue. Share the load. Replace yourself with assistant- and alternate-organizers to strengthen the local team. But YOU have to start it. Just do that much. 3) Connect with other nearby local groups to share and enjoy. Drop in on Serge's group when you are in NYC. Thank him for starting it! Do the same when you travel to other places with local groups. Welcome distant mappers when they visit your local area, too. Ambassador Program Pah! Just get on with it. :-) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: [ ... ] As I envision an OSM Ambassador program, the goals would be similar to Fedora[1], Organize OSM participation at events Demonstrate OSM to the public Promote OSM at local events with talks, handouts and swag Promote Switch2osm Provide training in iD Funding should be made available to the ambassadors for reimbursement for travel and other related expenses. The most likely candidate to handling the funding would be the US Chapter of OpenStreetMap. A budget and someone to authorize expenditure would be required. This doesn't have to wait for funding, or permission! There are hundreds of OpenStreetMap ambassadors reading this list, right now. 1) Start your local OpenStreetMap group. Meet on a regular schedule. Monthly is best. Make your goal, be available to answer questions about OpenStreetMap. Everything else is okay too. 2) Grow your local ambassador team. You don't have to do it all You don't have to do it alone. Include people in your group who like to reach out to other groups. Include people who like to speak at events. Include people who can host at a venue. Share the load. Replace yourself with assistant- and alternate-organizers to strengthen the local team. But YOU have to start it. Just do that much. 3) Connect with other nearby local groups to share and enjoy. Drop in on Serge's group when you are in NYC. Thank him for starting it! Do the same when you travel to other places with local groups. Welcome distant mappers when they visit your local area, too. Ambassador Program Pah! Just get on with it. :-) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Am 19.07.2013 12:06, schrieb Kathleen Danielson: Hi Clifford, Wow--thanks for sharing those stats! They are really interesting! I just took a look at the link you shared and it looks like we're seeing the number of mappers contributing on any given day. Do you know if it's possible to find the number of mappers contributing in a week or even month? That might give us a better sense of the real number of mappers in the US. (They would all still be relative to other countries, but it might give us a better indication of how we're doing. For example, when I first saw that 202 number, I was surprised at how low it was compared to SOTMUS attendance (380+), but knowing it's a daily tally makes far more sense. Well yes it is possible, however is essentially boils down to analysing a full history extract of the US, the changeset bounding boxes are just too unreliable to be useful (further: such an analysis just counts people who mapped in the US which is naturally a larger number than bona fida US mappers). Anyway pre-licence change there were contributions from roughly 24'000 mappers in the US extract. To compare that with a random (:-)) other country: number of mappers with contributions at the same point in time as above: 6500, daily editors typically 50-60 (pop 8 million) so the ratio total mappers to daily mappers is roughly the same. Simon ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Alex Barth a...@mapbox.com wrote: The local dimension of OpenStreetMap was exactly why OSM US decided to do #editathons. There's one happening this weekend, join us. http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/july-summer-editathon/ Our group is signed up. (Seattle) Well I've been promoting this event quite enough on this list so I'm sure everyone of you already has this on the radar :) But share it in your networks if you haven't yet. It's not too late. We have been. We have invited members of the local open source gis community to attend as well as the City of Renton's gis team to attend. We are holding the event in the suburb of Renton. Additionally we have reached out, as best as we can, to new mappers. Unfortunately OSM doesn't make it easy to do a mass mailing. It actually doesn't even give the ability! In terms of publicity, it's exactly stuff like this that gets us into the papers, like here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/what-happens-when-everyone-makes-maps/277850/(interesting to point out that the coverage of the NYC event is the merit of the local group btw, and not the OSM us chapter). Editathons are just one thing to encourage people to get together and organize a local event. There might be other things that the OSM US chapter can lend support with. Speaking as the OSM US chapter Secretary: suggestions and active help are always welcome! Alex, what I'm trying to do is get us thinking about how to increase the number of active mappers. If you are happy with the track we are on, fine, you don't have to do anything. But I believe that increasing the number of active mappers should be one of our goals. I threw out a brainstorming list. It certainly wasn't complete nor even tested. The ambassador program was just a suggestion. I certainly wasn't suggesting that people are not acting as ambassadors already. But would more help? Would funding help? I think the answers are yes and yes. It makes for sense to me that instead of everyone looking for funding, that having it centrally managed make sense. -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On 07/19/2013 11:06 AM, Kathleen Danielson wrote: Kai-- those are some really great ideas around publicity! Personally, I think we'd need a dedicated PR person on staff to fully accomplish this. That's not really feasible in the near term, though-- so maybe we should think about ways that we can break that down into volunteer-sized tasks? One good start might be to collect information about what has already being done. e.g. on the site http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap_in_the_media i.e. make sure that all of the articles that are known about are listed and whether anyone in the community worked with the press to make it happen. For events like conferences or trade shows, it might be worth to create a little wiki page about what was done, when and by whom ( e.g. like http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Boot_D%C3%BCsseldorf_2012 ) and add it to the wiki category http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Promotion So far the ones listed are mostly in German speaking countries. We need to be able to add some things in the US as well! That might give some help to figure out who to talk to if you are planning something yourself. This seems like a great Birthday Sprint project... (hint hint...) Yes, that would be a good topic and might go well with beer, cake and celebrations... Non OSM conferences and trade shows also seem like a great opportunity for OSM outreach and publicity, as those events can often also reach hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom might act as multiplicators as they are often the more active members in their community. Can the folks who were at the Esri UC talk about the OSM presence, the mapping party, and how that all went? On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com mailto:kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: Clifford Snow wrote I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. Looking at the data, it is clear that when ever there was significant publicity on OSM, the number of editors (particularly new ones) has shot up, at least for a while. While local mapping events are great and important, they probably only manage to get a handful of new mappers if at all. Having an article in a news paper or significant blog on the other hand is likely to get many more new mappers. Non OSM conferences and trade shows also seem like a great opportunity for OSM outreach and publicity, as those events can often also reach hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom might act as multiplicators as they are often the more active members in their community. So perhaps instead of setting targets of that we want to achieve X number of active mappers in a certain time frame, we could set a target of aiming to have Y articles about OSM in the press and Z talks / booths at conferences by then. Those targets are much more tangible than the number of active mappers as how any given action will effect that number is rather more speculative. As a group in osm-us, we can perhaps work on identifying likely magazines and conferences that would have an interest in high quality open maps. Which groups with interest might be particularly underrepresented and therefor good candidates for outreach? Furthermore, we can exchange ideas of what worked best at those events in order to improve the marketing message. E.g. how does one convince an editor that writing about OSM is worthwhile thing to do for their audience. How can you become a guest author to write an article for them and get it accepted? Which aspects of OSM are particularly amenably for writing good articles? If you go to have a booth at a show, what are things easiest to demonstrate? What are the demos that spark most interest? Then we can find local volunteers who actually go to the events or talk to editors to do the real outreach. We still have a long way to go from the 0.6 mappers per 1M population in the US to the 9 mappers per 1M population in Austria, but collectively we hopeful have enough skill and enthusiasm to really work on improving our PR and push those numbers up. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Steady-increase-in-the-number-of-mappers-in-the-US-tp5770307p5770442.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org mailto:Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Clifford Snow wrote I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. Looking at the data, it is clear that when ever there was significant publicity on OSM, the number of editors (particularly new ones) has shot up, at least for a while. While local mapping events are great and important, they probably only manage to get a handful of new mappers if at all. Having an article in a news paper or significant blog on the other hand is likely to get many more new mappers. Non OSM conferences and trade shows also seem like a great opportunity for OSM outreach and publicity, as those events can often also reach hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom might act as multiplicators as they are often the more active members in their community. So perhaps instead of setting targets of that we want to achieve X number of active mappers in a certain time frame, we could set a target of aiming to have Y articles about OSM in the press and Z talks / booths at conferences by then. Those targets are much more tangible than the number of active mappers as how any given action will effect that number is rather more speculative. As a group in osm-us, we can perhaps work on identifying likely magazines and conferences that would have an interest in high quality open maps. Which groups with interest might be particularly underrepresented and therefor good candidates for outreach? Furthermore, we can exchange ideas of what worked best at those events in order to improve the marketing message. E.g. how does one convince an editor that writing about OSM is worthwhile thing to do for their audience. How can you become a guest author to write an article for them and get it accepted? Which aspects of OSM are particularly amenably for writing good articles? If you go to have a booth at a show, what are things easiest to demonstrate? What are the demos that spark most interest? Then we can find local volunteers who actually go to the events or talk to editors to do the real outreach. We still have a long way to go from the 0.6 mappers per 1M population in the US to the 9 mappers per 1M population in Austria, but collectively we hopeful have enough skill and enthusiasm to really work on improving our PR and push those numbers up. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Steady-increase-in-the-number-of-mappers-in-the-US-tp5770307p5770442.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Kai-- those are some really great ideas around publicity! Personally, I think we'd need a dedicated PR person on staff to fully accomplish this. That's not really feasible in the near term, though-- so maybe we should think about ways that we can break that down into volunteer-sized tasks? This seems like a great Birthday Sprint project... (hint hint...) Non OSM conferences and trade shows also seem like a great opportunity for OSM outreach and publicity, as those events can often also reach hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom might act as multiplicators as they are often the more active members in their community. Can the folks who were at the Esri UC talk about the OSM presence, the mapping party, and how that all went? On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: Clifford Snow wrote I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. Looking at the data, it is clear that when ever there was significant publicity on OSM, the number of editors (particularly new ones) has shot up, at least for a while. While local mapping events are great and important, they probably only manage to get a handful of new mappers if at all. Having an article in a news paper or significant blog on the other hand is likely to get many more new mappers. Non OSM conferences and trade shows also seem like a great opportunity for OSM outreach and publicity, as those events can often also reach hundreds or thousands of people, many of whom might act as multiplicators as they are often the more active members in their community. So perhaps instead of setting targets of that we want to achieve X number of active mappers in a certain time frame, we could set a target of aiming to have Y articles about OSM in the press and Z talks / booths at conferences by then. Those targets are much more tangible than the number of active mappers as how any given action will effect that number is rather more speculative. As a group in osm-us, we can perhaps work on identifying likely magazines and conferences that would have an interest in high quality open maps. Which groups with interest might be particularly underrepresented and therefor good candidates for outreach? Furthermore, we can exchange ideas of what worked best at those events in order to improve the marketing message. E.g. how does one convince an editor that writing about OSM is worthwhile thing to do for their audience. How can you become a guest author to write an article for them and get it accepted? Which aspects of OSM are particularly amenably for writing good articles? If you go to have a booth at a show, what are things easiest to demonstrate? What are the demos that spark most interest? Then we can find local volunteers who actually go to the events or talk to editors to do the real outreach. We still have a long way to go from the 0.6 mappers per 1M population in the US to the 9 mappers per 1M population in Austria, but collectively we hopeful have enough skill and enthusiasm to really work on improving our PR and push those numbers up. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Steady-increase-in-the-number-of-mappers-in-the-US-tp5770307p5770442.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Clifford Snow wrote: We need publicity! Harry Wood is trying to recruit more volunteers for the Communication Working Group. You can e-mail him on o...@harrywood.co.uk . cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Steady-increase-in-the-number-of-mappers-in-the-US-tp5770307p5770444.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Clifford, of your 4 ideas only getting coverage in mainstream press would probably be effective. Hey folks, just a quick note to be mindful of the way we're responding to each other's ideas, and to be especially careful since as we all know, tone is easily misread online. (And thanks to Jason for allowing me to unfairly pull out one line from a thoughtful message and use him as an example) On Jul 19, 2013 6:11 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, Most people would agree that we don't have nearly enough people mapping. Clearly, transcending our early adopter types of GIS and open source software people will be needed. However, effective strategies for on boarding the next million people are going to be very different than what was needed to get the first say 100,000 people signed up. I know this is very un PC to say, but things like mapping parties/local chapters which were absolutely essential to recruit the first 100,000 people, really will not matter much going forward. Even if you get 100 people per mapping party, its 15,000 mapping parties, to get the next 1.5 million mappers! We need to be thinking about things that will scale to lots, and lots of people. Clifford, of your 4 ideas only getting coverage in mainstream press would probably be effective. Besides working on mainstream press, getting people using our data is *and* understanding they can come in and change it is probably our best hope because it scales. 1. Push back on high volume down stream data consumers that do the absolute minimum on working with us. For example, foursquare, who has 30 million users, is doing an awful job supporting us. They have the OSM credit buried in a blog posting which a bunch of other items. They don't even mention that anybody can go to OSM to edit the map. Shame on them!! Cragslists, does a much better job. They have an OSM link on the bottom of the map and have a way of reporting problems on the map from their interface via our notes features. I am sure Cragslists has been drivings new mappers into the project. Other high volume consumer need to look more like Cragslists, and not foursquare, or Apple. 2.We just had a big thread on this on the main talk list, but we need to support using our main web page for using our data for finding stuff, getting directions, and for mapping verticals (hiking, golf, bike, trains, hunting, etc). Just today we took a step in this direction, and enabled the ability to use the location services to find your current position on the main web site! Our second fund raising round, includes a computer for router, and more tile servers. It looks like we are moving in this direction. 3. Last bit, which we are also doing, is to improve our conversion rate. The new ID editor is pretty nice and I think will help. Its coming, I'm optimistic about our direction. But, we do need to understand that the project is at a new phase now. Even though it is lots of fun, getting together for mapping parties is not getting us the next 1.5 million people. Thanks Jason. On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.uswrote: We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94 6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79 7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36 8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10 9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49 10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66 I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target goals. I think this is a worth while project to work on. I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers Support for local groups OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with the linux distribution Fedora) Cheers, -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Hello, Most people would agree that we don't have nearly enough people mapping. Clearly, transcending our early adopter types of GIS and open source software people will be needed. However, effective strategies for on boarding the next million people are going to be very different than what was needed to get the first say 100,000 people signed up. I know this is very un PC to say, but things like mapping parties/local chapters which were absolutely essential to recruit the first 100,000 people, really will not matter much going forward. Even if you get 100 people per mapping party, its 15,000 mapping parties, to get the next 1.5 million mappers! We need to be thinking about things that will scale to lots, and lots of people. Clifford, of your 4 ideas only getting coverage in mainstream press would probably be effective. Besides working on mainstream press, getting people using our data is *and* understanding they can come in and change it is probably our best hope because it scales. 1. Push back on high volume down stream data consumers that do the absolute minimum on working with us. For example, foursquare, who has 30 million users, is doing an awful job supporting us. They have the OSM credit buried in a blog posting which a bunch of other items. They don't even mention that anybody can go to OSM to edit the map. Shame on them!! Cragslists, does a much better job. They have an OSM link on the bottom of the map and have a way of reporting problems on the map from their interface via our notes features. I am sure Cragslists has been drivings new mappers into the project. Other high volume consumer need to look more like Cragslists, and not foursquare, or Apple. 2.We just had a big thread on this on the main talk list, but we need to support using our main web page for using our data for finding stuff, getting directions, and for mapping verticals (hiking, golf, bike, trains, hunting, etc). Just today we took a step in this direction, and enabled the ability to use the location services to find your current position on the main web site! Our second fund raising round, includes a computer for router, and more tile servers. It looks like we are moving in this direction. 3. Last bit, which we are also doing, is to improve our conversion rate. The new ID editor is pretty nice and I think will help. Its coming, I'm optimistic about our direction. But, we do need to understand that the project is at a new phase now. Even though it is lots of fun, getting together for mapping parties is not getting us the next 1.5 million people. Thanks Jason. On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.uswrote: We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94 6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79 7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36 8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10 9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49 10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66 I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target goals. I think this is a worth while project to work on. I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers Support for local groups OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with the linux distribution Fedora) Cheers, -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. I wish this was the case, but it's not. I'll elaborate. Looking at the data, it is clear that when ever there was significant publicity on OSM, the number of editors (particularly new ones) has shot up, at least for a while. Unfortunately our long term trends aren't effected by this. While local mapping events are great and important, they probably only manage to get a handful of new mappers if at all. Having an article in a news paper or significant blog on the other hand is likely to get many more new mappers. When I was in DC, t the Washington Post to covered MappingDC. The Washington Post is not only the largest paper in DC, it's one of the largest newspapers in the United States, but the result of the story was that we got a few signups to our list, but we saw no increase in our events, and no one came to a mapping party saying they'd heard about us from the newspaper. Similarly, when the Washington Post covered the local DC hackerspace, we had two people stop in at the space (only two!) and neither of them joined. So perhaps instead of setting targets of that we want to achieve X number of active mappers in a certain time frame, we could set a target of aiming to have Y articles about OSM in the press and Z talks / booths at conferences by then. I love publicity, but what's really important to us is sustaining community members and mapping activity. Those targets are much more tangible than the number of active mappers as how any given action will effect that number is rather more speculative. It's not born out by the numbers in my experience. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 8:51 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: This doesn't have to wait for funding, or permission! There are hundreds of OpenStreetMap ambassadors reading this list, right now. Are you saying that you are satisfied with the number of active US mappers? Really? That's not what Richard is saying. Remember that Richard Weait was a professional OSM Ambassador, and has many years of experience with OSM community organizing, The real lesson of the ambassador program was that running mapping parties in other cities than your own results in press (sometimes), results in various size turnout, but has no track record of creating sustainable community. What does show sustainable community is regular events. That's why in DC, I tried hard to run an event every month, and why in NYC, I'm trying to do the same. Eventually, if you do this, you get not only people who are curious about the project, but you get regulars, and you find that people hear about the events, and they map regularly. That is how you create a long term sustainable community. We already have an active local group that meets regularly. It currently has over 125 members signed up. Awesome! 3) Connect with other nearby local groups to share and enjoy. Drop in on Serge's group when you are in NYC. Thank him for starting it! Do the same when you travel to other places with local groups. Welcome distant mappers when they visit your local area, too. I'm trying to reach out to groups outside the direct NYC area (less than two hours away) to see if we can run combined events. This is a bit of an experiment, but the hope is that if I can connect with locals in other cities, they will take over and make regular events. Ambassador Program Pah! Just get on with it. :-) Sorry, I believe we need to think outside of our current box. Were you aware of Richard's background when he wrote this? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. I wish this was the case, but it's not. I'll elaborate. I feel that driving adoption of OSM on small mom pop websites is a type of publicity that could work. As of now there's no easy way for a website owner to drop an OSM map on a web page and be sure it will work in the future. Millions of people using the map, could result in thousands of new editors. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. snip When I was in DC, t the Washington Post to covered MappingDC. The Washington Post is not only the largest paper in DC, it's one of the largest newspapers in the United States, but the result of the story was that we got a few signups to our list, but we saw no increase in our events, and no one came to a mapping party saying they'd heard about us from the newspaper. Similarly, when the Washington Post covered the local DC hackerspace, we had two people stop in at the space (only two!) and neither of them joined. I'm not sure that two events are enough data points to state that publicity doesn't work. So perhaps instead of setting targets of that we want to achieve X number of active mappers in a certain time frame, we could set a target of aiming to have Y articles about OSM in the press and Z talks / booths at conferences by then. I love publicity, but what's really important to us is sustaining community members and mapping activity. Any thoughts on what sustains members? Maybe we need to ask people, what got them interested in OSM and what keeps them active. Maybe one of the activities we should undertake is to collect that data to help develop plans go active mappers. -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Serge Wroclawski writes: The real lesson of the ambassador program was that running mapping parties in other cities than your own results in press (sometimes), results in various size turnout, but has no track record of creating sustainable community. Except for MappingDC, for which you can take more credit than me. That is how you create a long term sustainable community. Agreed. I'm trying to reach out to groups outside the direct NYC area (less than two hours away) to see if we can run combined events. Hey, I couldn't pull people from Brooklyn into Manhattan. It's too far. New Yorkers are very parochial. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Maybe we need to ask people, what got them interested in OSM and what keeps them active. Maybe one of the activities we should undertake is to collect that data to help develop plans go active mappers. I'll jump in on this quickly, I first saw OSM as a background in Depiction http://www.depiction.com/affiliate/886/ - went and looked at my local area and was completely overwhelmed by how bad it was (TIGER desert to the max). If I had not have found OSM-Colorado http://www.meetup.com/OSM-Colorado/ (I think just by searching around the wiki, or web search) I may not have even tried to start mapping, I thought 'they' might be the answer and help me map. That didn't happen, but more importantly I learned how to map, and that there were people I could talk to if I had questions. I stay active because there is a done of mapping left to do and I also enjoy 'stewarding' my area looking for edits by others (especially new mappers) and reach out to invite them to the local group and answer questions. =Russ russdeff...@gmail.com russdeffner on OSM ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
I agree that getting mom pop websites to use OSM will help a lot in getting people aware of of the project and primed to assist. But that is not possible now. There are two things needed for any mom pop site to use OSM: 1. Some quick, easy no hassle way to embed a slippery map. 2. Routing available on the main OSM website so that when they click through the slippery map they are setup for getting directions. I'm using Google right now at http://www.nordicbase.org/about because of those two missing features. I thought I could use http://open.mapquest.com/ but if it is possible to do this it is not obvious how. -Tod On Jul 19, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: We need publicity! Yes! Publicity is in my opinion one of the biggest things we need and should try and work on as a group. I wish this was the case, but it's not. I'll elaborate. I feel that driving adoption of OSM on small mom pop websites is a type of publicity that could work. As of now there's no easy way for a website owner to drop an OSM map on a web page and be sure it will work in the future. Millions of people using the map, could result in thousands of new editors. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Hello all, While I agree with Clifford that more publicity is essential to grow the organization, another strategy that might be effective is to work through organizations that could have a use for the maps or for mapping as a teaching exercise. We don't have direct access to large audiences of potential members, such as students or business people, but we could work with their organizations to reach them. Groups, such as science teachers, could add OpenStreetMap to their lesson plans. They could be reached through their national convention. Local business can be reached through groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce or Jaycees. Articles in their national newsletters or presentations at their national conventions could reach large numbers. I'm sure you all can think of other examples of organizations that might work this way. Of course, in cases such as this we would have to reach out and establish relationships with their national organizations. This is the kind of thing that needs to be done in a coordinated fashioin, not just someone going out and doing it on their own. But it would be a lot more cost-effective in reaching large numbers than trying get to individuals directly. Charlotte At 03:08 PM 7/19/2013, you wrote: Hello, Most people would agree that we don't have nearly enough people mapping. Clearly, transcending our early adopter types of GIS and open source software people will be needed. However, effective strategies for on boarding the next million people are going to be very different than what was needed to get the first say 100,000 people signed up. I know this is very un PC to say, but things like mapping parties/local chapters which were absolutely essential to recruit the first 100,000 people, really will not matter much going forward. Even if you get 100 people per mapping party, its 15,000 mapping parties, to get the next 1.5 million mappers! We need to be thinking about things that will scale to lots, and lots of people. Clifford, of your 4 ideas only getting coverage in mainstream press would probably be effective. Besides working on mainstream press, getting people using our data is *and* understanding they can come in and change it is probably our best hope because it scales. 1. Push back on high volume down stream data consumers that do the absolute minimum on working with us. For example, foursquare, who has 30 million users, is doing an awful job supporting us. They have the OSM credit buried in a blog posting which a bunch of other items. They don't even mention that anybody can go to OSM to edit the map. Shame on them!! Cragslists, does a much better job. They have an OSM link on the bottom of the map and have a way of reporting problems on the map from their interface via our notes features. I am sure Cragslists has been drivings new mappers into the project. Other high volume consumer need to look more like Cragslists, and not foursquare, or Apple. 2.We just had a big thread on this on the main talk list, but we need to support using our main web page for using our data for finding stuff, getting directions, and for mapping verticals (hiking, golf, bike, trains, hunting, etc). Just today we took a step in this direction, and enabled the ability to use the location services to find your current position on the main web site! Our second fund raising round, includes a computer for router, and more tile servers. It looks like we are moving in this direction. 3. Last bit, which we are also doing, is to improve our conversion rate. The new ID editor is pretty nice and I think will help. Its coming, I'm optimistic about our direction. But, we do need to understand that the project is at a new phase now. Even though it is lots of fun, getting together for mapping parties is not getting us the next 1.5 million people. Thanks Jason. On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Clifford Snow mailto:cliff...@snowandsnow.uscliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countrieshttp://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 7:42 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: Similarly, when the Washington Post covered the local DC hackerspace, we had two people stop in at the space (only two!) and neither of them joined. I'm not sure that two events are enough data points to state that publicity doesn't work. Let me give you more datapoints. We actually has two stories about MappingDC, one in the Post, and one in a government publication. Neither of those created any sustainable community. Atlanta had a huge event through Cloudmade's ambassador program, with 200 attendees, and CNN coverage. Thea (the ambassador) invested a ton of time and energy into that community. But a couple of years later, and they were gone. Their community consisted mostly of OSM consumers, people working for groups interested in consuming OSM data, or talking about imports, but not of mappers. I really wanted Atlanta to work. There was enormous investment of time and resources in it, and outreach to universities, government agencies and businesses. I was hopeful at the time that data consumers would turn into contributors, but it largely didn't happen. These organizations are very interested in OSM as a datasource, but contributing is another matter, and organizing is yet a different matter still. These people were interested in OSM, but they weren't invested in OSM emotionally. I want to be clear that I think there's a very important place for outreach to data consumers, but I've learned not to expect that these people will turn into OSM contributors (I'm thrilled if they do, but I no longer come with the expectation that they will). I also feel that I owe both Russ Nelson and Richard Weait an apology. It's because of Richard's initial visit to DC that I heard about OSM and became interested in it, and it's because of Russ Nelson's visit that Kate Chapman, Steven Johnson, Katie Filbert and I all started MappingDC (and we started it together, as a group). So yes, it's possible to spark a community by a visit, but AFAIK, for all both of their hard work, DC was the only community where the work was sustained. Any thoughts on what sustains members? Yes, it's consistency. That's the #1 most important thing that sustains members. Run events regularly, monthly is best. And if you can, make it the same day. And if you can, make it the same place. In DC, we used a bar in downtown DC that had a lot of space, and we had a monthly event that was just us sitting around and drinking. Kate coined it Mappy Hour (if you were wondering what the origin of the Virtual Mappy Hours were- that's the story). We can mapping parties too, but the drinking events were super popular. The reasons we haven't done that here in NY is that I have some medical issues that make it difficult for me in a bar environment, and bar space is limited and very noisy in Manhattan (for the most part). If we found a good place, though, I'd try again. BTW, Russ, our mapping parties have been good- we get Brooklynites coming to Manhattan, we get Manhattanites coming to Brooklyn, folks coming in from Jersey, even Connecticut, so it can happen. And after several months of this, we're finally starting to see regulars, folks who will come to most or all the events, and it takes a long time. It's also can be pretty hard work in the beginning, even lonely work, when you set up an event and 30 minutes before the event, half the RSVPs cancel, but those that do show up regularly, they stick with the project, they map, and they stay involved. Maybe we need to ask people, what got them interested in OSM and what keeps them active. Maybe one of the activities we should undertake is to collect that data to help develop plans go active mappers. I think the commonality between dedicated mappers I know is that they're usually already involved in an existing project of similar ilk. They're FLOSS developers, or they're Wikipedians (or both). We get other people, from other backgrounds, but in my experience, the ones who stick around for months and years tend to be people who understand why OSM is so important. We get others to come out- they hear about the project, we get them through their first edits, but they don't stick around. I think there are things we can try to do to bring those people further along, but I think we also need to recognize that OSM has the same issues as Wikipedia does, and that other projects of the same type have- that sustained user involvement hovers at around the same level, and that a very large percentage of contributions come from a minority of users. So in addition to more people, the thing I think is most important is understanding the supermappers near you, bringing them into the one-on-one community, and also making sure that those people are happy. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On 07/19/2013 09:57 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote: On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 7:42 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: Similarly, when the Washington Post covered the local DC hackerspace, we had two people stop in at the space (only two!) and neither of them joined. I'm not sure that two events are enough data points to state that publicity doesn't work. Let me give you more datapoints. We actually has two stories about MappingDC, one in the Post, and one in a government publication. Neither of those created any sustainable community. How do you measure sustainable community? Not everyone is going to come in person to one of the OSM events and that is perfectly fine. Many people might also hear about a project, become aware of it but then not contribute until months later. And for many there is the need for repetition. The first time they read about something, they might think it is an interesting project while reading and then forget about it. The second time they hear about it they might think it seems like it is catching on. Only the third (or likely even more often) time they hear about it will they think, this really sounds like a worthwhile project to contribute to, I should give it a try. To get a sustainable community, you need sustained PR. At some point a project is well known enough that just normal social interaction between the general public talking about it is sufficient to sustain the community. But with about half a mapper per 1 million population, OSM is still far away from that level in the US. Atlanta had a huge event through Cloudmade's ambassador program, with 200 attendees, and CNN coverage. Thea (the ambassador) invested a ton of time and energy into that community. But a couple of years later, and they were gone. That's a real shame that all that effort didn't lead to more. It might be an interesting case study to try and figure out what went wrong there. With 200 people that likely was one of the bigger events in OSMs history. Much bigger than many of the other activity in OSM that has lead to sustainable communities. Their community consisted mostly of OSM consumers, people working for groups interested in consuming OSM data, or talking about imports, but not of mappers. I really wanted Atlanta to work. There was enormous investment of time and resources in it, and outreach to universities, government agencies and businesses. I was hopeful at the time that data consumers would turn into contributors, but it largely didn't happen. These organizations are very interested in OSM as a datasource, but contributing is another matter, and organizing is yet a different matter still. These people were interested in OSM, but they weren't invested in OSM emotionally. I want to be clear that I think there's a very important place for outreach to data consumers, but I've learned not to expect that these people will turn into OSM contributors (I'm thrilled if they do, but I no longer come with the expectation that they will). The conversion rate is likely going to be low. That is always going to be the case. But if you have millions of users, then even if only 1% map that is already a large group. And if the download stats on various sat nav apps for smart phones based solely on OSM data alone are anything to go by, then OSM already has millions of users. However, for average data consumers to become mappers, it requires them to recognize OSM and know the data source is OSM. For that to happen, it needs a lot of PR to build a brand name for OSM, as well as more help from the various data consumer developers to make end users more aware of powered by OSM. Continuing to work more on both contributor marks and attribution marks with strong brand ties to the existing logo could hopefully help in that respect. I also feel that I owe both Russ Nelson and Richard Weait an apology. It's because of Richard's initial visit to DC that I heard about OSM and became interested in it, and it's because of Russ Nelson's visit that Kate Chapman, Steven Johnson, Katie Filbert and I all started MappingDC (and we started it together, as a group). So yes, it's possible to spark a community by a visit, but AFAIK, for all both of their hard work, DC was the only community where the work was sustained. Any thoughts on what sustains members? Yes, it's consistency. That's the #1 most important thing that sustains members. Run events regularly, monthly is best. And if you can, make it the same day. And if you can, make it the same place. Well, in the end, it is likely going to be a combination of all three. 1) People first need to be aware of OSM, as otherwise they won't contribute or come to any events. 2) There needs to be a reason to contribute. For many that is going to be products based on OSM that a 3) Finally the social events to turn casual mappers into power mappers and community organisers that are needed to keep the project
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote: I think that is partly due to a failure of tools and expectations. Too many tools are still geared towards the initial large scale acquisition of data. There indeed you will likely have a pattern of a few contributors contributing the bulk. But for keeping data current and of high quality, you will need many people who passively observe the data to (implicitly) check for errors and then occasionally make the odd edit, if there is indeed a mistake. At the moment, however, it is still to tedious from noticing an error in your every day use of OSM to fixing that mistake. Particularly if your every day use of OSM is not on osm.org but some other app or site, as so far editor integration on third party sites is still more or less non existent. +1 -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94 6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79 7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36 8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10 9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49 10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66 I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target goals. I think this is a worth while project to work on. I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers Support for local groups OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with the linux distribution Fedora) Cheers, -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
Clifford Snow writes: I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Use of OSM data drives editing of OSM data, as long as people know it's editable. We discovered that effect when I was still at Cloudmade. So my suggestion is to look at the way OSM data is used and make sure that the people who are the end consumers of that data know that they can contribute to the accuracy of the map. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US
If someone can hook me up with a logo polo and/or a car sign or two, I wouldn't mind working the shirt into my work rotation, and my car makes it all over Oklahoma. 386 miles today alone, average around 150 miles a day. Occasionally makes longer trips closer to the panhandle, Dallas metro, into NW Arkansas, SW Missouri, and somewhat more rarely into southern Colorado and southern Kansas. Rare outliers being metro Portland (sadly, I had to leave a few weeks before SOTM; would be nice if we could get one centrally located for most of America instead of hugging the coastlines), bay area (again, same trip out of Portland, weeks before SOTM San Francisco was announced), and southern California. Trips to California will likely be along the I 40 corridor or towards the bay area and Portland on US highways (I 25, 70, 80 and 84 are boring on a level I wouldn't wish on anyone for a trip that isn't really that much faster than the US highways; at least 40 has options for nearby chunks of old 66 and the only real mindnumbing segment is crossing the Cimarron, readily bypassed by detouring through Philmont Scout Ranch to US 412 instead). On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.uswrote: We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the details. http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia. Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population 1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01 2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64 3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33 4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77 5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94 6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79 7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36 8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10 9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49 10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66 I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target goals. I think this is a worth while project to work on. I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts: We need publicity! Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers Support for local groups OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with the linux distribution Fedora) Cheers, -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
