Re: [Talk-us-bayarea] [Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters

[Kate Chapman]

Sounds good, I think that we have to have a board in order to  
incorporate.  That will need to be done when we file we register the  
non-profit corporation.  Also we should probably look into where we  
want to register.


Kate Chapman
(via GPS...I mean iPhone)

On Sep 18, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com  
wrote:



Hello All,

Looks like we are getting off to a good start. We have 15 folks on  
the wiki, and need 20 to start our the chapter. So please spread the  
word.


 I think it might be helpful for us to break into committees, so to  
handle different aspects of forming, managing and advocating for the  
chapter. Thoughts? It may be best for us to self identify on the  
wiki with what committee we would like to be on, as well as if we  
have services that could be of help (ie lawyer, accountant,  
experience in forming a non-profit etc). If we plan to have an  
advisory board, we may also want to create a section where people  
can make proposals.


From there we can work on drafting and adopting the draft rules, as  
well as decide on when and where to incorporate. If its helpful, we  
may want to set a time for a conference call to iron out some of the  
details.


Best,
Sarah



On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
As listed by Kate in her second email (and being built out on the  
wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States 
)  A local chapter will do more advocacy within their own nation.


In the US, if incorporated as a non-profit, the chapter would be  
able to accept donations without having to pay taxes on them (and  
provide a tax write off to those who donate to us), be eligible for  
public and private grants, act as a separate legal entity that owns  
all data/material donated (which often makes government bodies more  
willing to share). I know that the OSMF can to that in the UK now,  
but I have the feeling the US companies/governments would be more  
comfortable in supporting the project if it had US legal status.  
(esp if its map data collected with US tax payer money). I think if  
we want to the US mapper community to grow, this is a way to help as  
well as formalize the presence here.


The cons- more paperwork, money and time.


On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:03 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
Playing devils advocate a bit - what will the chapter do that we can't
or aren't already?

Does the aura of having an incorporated body somehow change
everything? It certainly didn't with the OSMF, it was more that we
needed a body to hold independent control of things like the domain
names.


On 15 Sep 2009, at 19:32, Kate Chapman wrote:

 Hi all,

 I've heard various talk going on about local chapters in various
 places. I did a quick archive search but didn't find that much
 information regarding U.S. chapters.  There seems to be people
 interested, but perhaps working separately.

 Let me preface the rest of my email with the statement that I'm not
 a lawyer, but a geonerd.  I have helped establish a non-profit in
 the U.S. that obtained tax-exempt status and I can speak with
 regards to that experience though.

 For the group I worked with we already were operating as an L.L.C.
 at the time and moved to incorporate in D.C.  In order to
 incorporate we had to pay a small fee (roughly 100 dollars), have a
 registered agent in the District and have articles of
 incorporation.  The tax-exempt status was far more work and involved
 proof of events we had (in this particular case it was flyers), tax
 records as well as filling out a 27 page IRS form.  If I understand
 things correctly a U.S. Local Chapter could do the same thing, but
 we might need to file paperwork with each state we are active in
 (not totally sure about this, does anyone else have a better idea?).

 What are people's thoughts about local chapters or having 1 large
 U.S. chapter?  I can see benefits to both sides.

 Advantages:

 - I think easily enough possible members
 - Pooling of resources, one set of paper work

 Disadvantages:

 -Spread out, most work would be remote (maybe not a disadvantage)
 -Where would we be incorporated?

 Thoughts?  I've seen in various places such as the wiki a well as
 talking to people that there is interest in some sort of U.S. based
 chapter, but exactly how has to be worked out.

 Thanks,

 Kate Chapman





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[Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters

[Kate Chapman]

Hi all,
I've heard various talk going on about local chapters in various places. I
did a quick archive search but didn't find that much information regarding
U.S. chapters.  There seems to be people interested, but perhaps working
separately.

Let me preface the rest of my email with the statement that I'm not a
lawyer, but a geonerd.  I have helped establish a non-profit in the U.S.
that obtained tax-exempt status and I can speak with regards to that
experience though.

For the group I worked with we already were operating as an L.L.C. at the
time and moved to incorporate in D.C.  In order to incorporate we had to pay
a small fee (roughly 100 dollars), have a registered agent in the District
and have articles of incorporation.  The tax-exempt status was far more work
and involved proof of events we had (in this particular case it was flyers),
tax records as well as filling out a 27 page IRS form.  If I understand
things correctly a U.S. Local Chapter could do the same thing, but we might
need to file paperwork with each state we are active in (not totally sure
about this, does anyone else have a better idea?).

What are people's thoughts about local chapters or having 1 large U.S.
chapter?  I can see benefits to both sides.

Advantages:

- I think easily enough possible members
- Pooling of resources, one set of paper work

Disadvantages:

-Spread out, most work would be remote (maybe not a disadvantage)
-Where would we be incorporated?

Thoughts?  I've seen in various places such as the wiki a well as talking to
people that there is interest in some sort of U.S. based chapter, but
exactly how has to be worked out.

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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Re: [Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters

[Kate Chapman]

I currently do work with my local group that organizes around a wiki page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MappingDC   I think there potentially can
be some cash flow.
We have been approaching local governments to get permissions to import
their data.  In the case of the District of Columbia we can just download it
off their website.  Some our municipalities there is a fee for them to make
a DVD of their data.  There are individuals willing to pay in order to
obtain the data, but it does amount to cash-flow.  There may be other
situations where organizations would like to donate equipment such as GPS
units as well.  Also when dealing with NGOs and governments having legal
standing can also potentially give us more weight as well.

Also since OSMF is U.K. based they can't necessarily handle legal issues
within the United States depending on the scope of them.

I'm not saying it is necessary to form a legal entity, but I don't think it
is totally black and white either.

-Kate Chapman



On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:19 PM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.com wrote:

 At least some US local cadre organize around the state and city
 wiki.osm.org pages, with just an event announcement on the list.
 eg http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Boston

 I've been around 501(c)(3) and related state incorporation and
 charitable regs more often than I'd like. I'd rather spend my mapping
 time mapping and leave any corporate governance to the OSMF and
 CloudMade.

 Incorporation is useful if there are assets or liabilities.   I don't
 see a cash flow in a OSM chapter.  If there isn't enough cash flow to
 pay for Directors' Liability Insurance, incorporating just focuses
 Liability on the Officers and Directors. The asset is the Map date,
 rights for which are held by OSMF.  CloudMade and the OSMF should
 handle the legal issues. Let's map.

 --
 Bill
 n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com

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Re: [Talk-us] U.S. Local Chapters

[Kate Chapman]

Sounds good, I think that we have to have a board in order to  
incorporate.  That will need to be done when we file we register the  
non-profit corporation.  Also we should probably look into where we  
want to register.


Kate Chapman
(via GPS...I mean iPhone)

On Sep 18, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com  
wrote:



Hello All,

Looks like we are getting off to a good start. We have 15 folks on  
the wiki, and need 20 to start our the chapter. So please spread the  
word.


 I think it might be helpful for us to break into committees, so to  
handle different aspects of forming, managing and advocating for the  
chapter. Thoughts? It may be best for us to self identify on the  
wiki with what committee we would like to be on, as well as if we  
have services that could be of help (ie lawyer, accountant,  
experience in forming a non-profit etc). If we plan to have an  
advisory board, we may also want to create a section where people  
can make proposals.


From there we can work on drafting and adopting the draft rules, as  
well as decide on when and where to incorporate. If its helpful, we  
may want to set a time for a conference call to iron out some of the  
details.


Best,
Sarah



On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
As listed by Kate in her second email (and being built out on the  
wiki: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States 
)  A local chapter will do more advocacy within their own nation.


In the US, if incorporated as a non-profit, the chapter would be  
able to accept donations without having to pay taxes on them (and  
provide a tax write off to those who donate to us), be eligible for  
public and private grants, act as a separate legal entity that owns  
all data/material donated (which often makes government bodies more  
willing to share). I know that the OSMF can to that in the UK now,  
but I have the feeling the US companies/governments would be more  
comfortable in supporting the project if it had US legal status.  
(esp if its map data collected with US tax payer money). I think if  
we want to the US mapper community to grow, this is a way to help as  
well as formalize the presence here.


The cons- more paperwork, money and time.


On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:03 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
Playing devils advocate a bit - what will the chapter do that we can't
or aren't already?

Does the aura of having an incorporated body somehow change
everything? It certainly didn't with the OSMF, it was more that we
needed a body to hold independent control of things like the domain
names.


On 15 Sep 2009, at 19:32, Kate Chapman wrote:

 Hi all,

 I've heard various talk going on about local chapters in various
 places. I did a quick archive search but didn't find that much
 information regarding U.S. chapters.  There seems to be people
 interested, but perhaps working separately.

 Let me preface the rest of my email with the statement that I'm not
 a lawyer, but a geonerd.  I have helped establish a non-profit in
 the U.S. that obtained tax-exempt status and I can speak with
 regards to that experience though.

 For the group I worked with we already were operating as an L.L.C.
 at the time and moved to incorporate in D.C.  In order to
 incorporate we had to pay a small fee (roughly 100 dollars), have a
 registered agent in the District and have articles of
 incorporation.  The tax-exempt status was far more work and involved
 proof of events we had (in this particular case it was flyers), tax
 records as well as filling out a 27 page IRS form.  If I understand
 things correctly a U.S. Local Chapter could do the same thing, but
 we might need to file paperwork with each state we are active in
 (not totally sure about this, does anyone else have a better idea?).

 What are people's thoughts about local chapters or having 1 large
 U.S. chapter?  I can see benefits to both sides.

 Advantages:

 - I think easily enough possible members
 - Pooling of resources, one set of paper work

 Disadvantages:

 -Spread out, most work would be remote (maybe not a disadvantage)
 -Where would we be incorporated?

 Thoughts?  I've seen in various places such as the wiki a well as
 talking to people that there is interest in some sort of U.S. based
 chapter, but exactly how has to be worked out.

 Thanks,

 Kate Chapman





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Re: [Talk-us] US Chapter Call?

[Kate Chapman]

Sure how about this Saturday?  4pm EST using the drop.io space number
218-486-3891
x 663610833 http://drop.io/openstreetmap.
Thanks,

Kate Chapman



On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.comwrote:

 Agreed that call a call during business hours will be difficult for a lot
 of people to attend. To be fair then, should we try for a saturday?



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Re: [Talk-us] US Chapter Call?

[Kate Chapman]

I will work on putting an agenda in the wiki tonight.  If anyone has any
proposed topics add them or let me know.

My suggestion would be we discuss what is in the wiki and figure out how we
are going to move forward on that.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Draft_Rules


-Kate Chapman





On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.comwrote:

 Do we have an agenda? What about someone who will act as a moderator? I
 would volunteer to be it, but I can only be on the call for 15 minutes due
 to a prior commitment.


 On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Agreed that call a call during business hours will be difficult for a
 lot of
  people to attend. To be fair then, should we try for a saturday?

 Thanks Sara, Kate -- that should help people *feel* included, even if
 they *choose* not to call in.

 (as i will choose not to -- big weather conference here saturday, one
 of my favorite uses for maps)

 --
 Bill
 n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com



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Re: [Talk-us] US Chapter Call?

[Kate Chapman]

Christian,

So we discussed on the call that it probably makes sense to get a regular
time set-up.  We were going to do 5pm PST/8pm EST on Mondays starting
November 2nd and those meetings would have a hard stop after 30 minutes.

Sorry I had not sent out a message yet, we were getting the meeting minutes
together as well and will have them out shortly.  I will send out a message
when everything is available.  Your agenda items make sense.

Thanks,

Kate Chapman

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Christian Petersen c...@cloudmade.comwrote:

 The discussion on weekday or Saturday has left me in doubt of when we will
 have the call? I am fine with weekdays or Saturday and imagine I am not the
 only one that prefers to get the date into the calendar with fair warning.

 So which to we choose:
 Thursday (October 29th) at 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST still works for me.
 Saturday (October 31st) at 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST short warning for people,
 but works for me.
 Saturday (November 7th) at 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST works for me.

 Agenda suggestions from me:

 - Create Chapter Committees/working groups that would suggest solutions for
 the following:
 -- Chapter rules: Final Rules
 -- Incorporation: Choose state for incorporation and how to get it done and
 financed
 -- Financial: Create budget, plan for getting sponsors, suggest member fee,
 setup bank account, get ready to pack for incorporation, filing for tax
 exempt status
 -- Membership: Plan for getting more members than the current 21
 -- Partnership: How can governmental, organizational and corporate partners
 help us build the US map?
 -- Map status and objectives: What is the status of the map and what is our
 objectives?

 - Set date for next meeting (where we can decide on a lot of the
 suggestions by the working groups)

 Christian


 From: Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com

 Do we have an agenda? What about someone who will act as a moderator? I
 would volunteer to be it, but I can only be on the call for 15 minutes due
 to a prior commitment.

 On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Bill Ricker bill.n1...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com
 
  wrote:
   Agreed that call a call during business hours will be difficult for a
 lot
  of
   people to attend. To be fair then, should we try for a saturday?
 
  Thanks Sara, Kate -- that should help people *feel* included, even if
  they *choose* not to call in.
 
  (as i will choose not to -- big weather conference here saturday, one
  of my favorite uses for maps)
 
  --
  Bill
  n1...@arrl.net bill.n1...@gmail.com
 
 -- next part --
 An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
 URL:
 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20091023/98454559/attachment-0001.htm

 --

 From: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com

 I will work on putting an agenda in the wiki tonight.  If anyone has any
 proposed topics add them or let me know.

 My suggestion would be we discuss what is in the wiki and figure out how we
 are going to move forward on that.

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Draft_Rules


 -Kate Chapman



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[Talk-us] Reminder U.S. Chapter Working Group Call Tomorrow

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

Just a reminder that the U.S. Chapter Call is tomorrow at 5 P.M. PST/8 P.M
EST.

If you are interested in participating please add your name to the wiki:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_Statesas
well as review the agenda there and the draft rules for incorporation.
 The main goal of tomorrows call is to divide in to committees so we can
work on the needs of the U.S. Chapter.

The call in number is: 218-486-3891 x 663610833
*
*
If you are unable to call in tomorrow but interested in participating list
your name on the wiki as well.  We will be having weekly calls every Monday
as we continue to get organized.
*
*
Look forward to talking to you tomorrow.

-Kate Chapman
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[Talk-us] Reminder Next US Chapter Call Tomorrow

[Kate Chapman]

Just a reminder that the next US Chapter Call is tomorrow (5PM PST/8PM EST).
 Please Add yourself to the wiki if you intend to call in or would like to
but are unable.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Calls

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] [Talk-ca] TIGER considered harmful

[Kate Chapman]

Dan,

What's wrong with doing automated addressing imports in situations where we
have point level address data?  Or are you just referring to not importing
the addressing that is available for the Tiger data?

Kate Chapman


On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 6:00 PM, Dave Hansen d...@sr71.net wrote:

 On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 14:49 -0800, Dan Putler wrote:
  The
  upshot, for a number of US counties you would rather use the county
  centerline road data rather than TIGER data as the basis of the
  import.

 That's really good news.

 This is exactly what happened for Massachusetts.  They had better data,
 and were willing to get it imported in lieu of TIGER.  I think those two
 things are the key:

 1. Data exists in a form that it can be imported
 2. There are willing people to do the import

 If we don't have both of those things, it makes sense to skip doing
 something like TIGER and use the local data.  But, I think just having
 the data be theoretically available to import should be enough to stop
 an inferior but available set getting imported.

 But, I'm not sure we're going to do any truly automated addressing
 imports in the US, anyway.

 -- Dave


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[Talk-us] Mapping Party Bethesda Maryland this Saturday

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Everyone,

There is a mapping party in Bethesda Maryland this Saturday.

For necessary info please read below.

Thanks,

Kate

Start-time:
11 A.M. EST

Meeting location:

Caribou Coffee
Bethesda Place
7629 Old Georgetown Road
Bethesda, MD 20814

Please indicate you are going to attend at
http://doodle.com/ucsf4uc9z4bz6fmm

If you don't have a GPS Unit we will have extras as well as Walking Papers
for people to use.
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[Talk-us] U.S. Conversion Team?

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone set-up a wiki page for the US Conversion Team as
was proposed in another thread.

During the U.S. Chapter call this evening it was brought up that some people
have data, but aren't sure what to do with it to get it imported.  I suspect
there is other data out floating around in a similar situation.  If people
do want to move forward with this I think the team could help move this
forward.

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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[Talk-us] US SOTM Call Minutes

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

Here are the minutes from the US SOTM call.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ASiWbdZM9wnIZDV0dzU0cV82ZnI1bjY2aHMhl=en

To catch those up who may have gotten lost in all the OSM emails.  Some
people on the US Chapter Call wanted to have a U.S. SOTM (State of the
Map).  We had the second call last night.

To summarize the plan is to announce a call for bids on Wednesday and have
it open until January 4th.

For those who would like to help organize the next call is Dec 7th:
5:30PM PST/8:30PM EST (immediately after the US chapter call)
 +1 218-486-3891 x 224699644

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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[Talk-us] U.S. SOTM Call for Venue Bids

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

The U.S. SOTM Working Group would like to announce a call for venue bids.
 We will be discussing bids and deciding on the Jan 4th US SOTM call.

Please link you bid to this page in the OSM wiki:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM/BIDS

The criteria for bids is available here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM/BIDS/CRITERIA

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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Re: [Talk-us] Incorporation

[Kate Chapman]

Since we are going to incorporate as a non-profit the benefits of
incorporating in Delaware aren't as great as they would be if we were a for
profit business.  Our intention is to apply for tax exempt status both
federally and in the state or district that we do incorporate in.

Thanks,

Kate



On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Peter Batty peter.ba...@gmail.com wrote:

 As I've mentioned before, every lawyer I have ever talked to about this has
 told me to incorporate in Delaware. My current company Spatial Networking is
 based in Colorado but incorporated in Delaware through a registered agent
 - you can find lots of these via Google.


 On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Andrew Ayre a...@britishideas.comwrote:

 I believe that California will charge $800 per year income tax for
 for-profit corporations even if you make a loss or no profit...

 A large number of Corporations in the US are incorporated in Delaware
 because my understanding is that they are very friendly towards
 businesses and easy to deal with.

 Andy

 Serge Wroclawski wrote:
  There are two major candidates for incorporation at the moment. The
  first is California, with the possible help of an attorney that works
  with OSM International. Unfortunately this has been difficult as the
  attorney is quite busy at the moment, and so asking him to do more
  pro-bono work may be difficult going forward.

  As discussed, we can incorporate as a corporate entity, get our EIN,
  and then work on the non-profit part- part of which will be the
  mission statement and other documents we're working on at the same
  time.

 --
 Andy
 PGP Key ID: 0xDC1B5864

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 --
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 W: +1 303 339 0957  M: +1 720 346 3954
 Blog: http://geothought.blogspot.com

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Re: [Talk-us] Geodatabase

[Kate Chapman]

I don't know a ton about Geodatabases but I'm pretty sure you need to  
purchase an ESRI product to write to them.  It would be a good idea to  
have a conversion available though.


Kate

On Dec 4, 2009, at 3:52 PM, McGuire, Matthew matt.mcgu...@metc.state.mn.us 
 wrote:


Has anyone had considered a Planet.osm à Geodatabase conversion that 
 works the same as the osm2pgsql?




The geodatabase standard is not published, but there is an XML  
transfer standard.


http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.whitepapers.viewPaperPID=43MetaID=695

The advantage of having this available is that there is a large  
community of map enthusiasts that are professionally committed to  
ArcGIS through their employment.  Exposing them to OSM on their own  
terms will help expand our contributor base in the US.


Matt









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[Talk-us] Reminder Weekly U.S. SOTM Call Tomorrow

[Kate Chapman]

Just a friendly reminder that the weekly U.S. SOTM Call is tomorrow 5:30
PST/8:30 EST.

The venue bid criteria is available as well as minutes from previous calls
is available here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM/BIDS/CRITERIA#Weekly_calls

Tomorrow we are going to talk about possible sponsorships and activities for
the events.

The call in number is: +1 218-486-3891 x 224699644

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Zipcode Import

[Kate Chapman]

Hey Mike,

Where did you find the ZIP Code boundaries?  They are licensed data from the
USPS and would not have a compatible license for OSM.  Or are you refering
to ZCTAs (ZIP Code Tabulation Areas)?  ZCTAs are not the same thing as ZIP
codes http://www.census.gov/geo/ZCTA/zcta.html.  They are usually the same
but not always, this is because the USPS doesn't even give their ZIP Code
database to the U.S. Census.

According to this Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code_Tabulation_Area some of them represent
data that doesn't exist in the USPS database anymore.

Not trying to rain on your parade, just want people to be aware that it is
not the same thing.

Kate Chapman
user:wonderchook



On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 7:57 AM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com 
jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 I have found a nice source of ZipCode boundries,
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/h4ck3rm1k3/diary/8994

 do you want to import them?
 mike

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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Zipcode Import

[Kate Chapman]

Mike,

How do you plan to make money off of this?  When you buy road data from
Navteq and Teleatlas you can get their ZIP code boundaries with it so
everything lines up all nicely.  Though the quality of that data is usually
more up to date than the ZCTAs.

Unfortunately I don't see the ZCTAs as being the best way to create ZIP
boundaries.  I don't see people fixing the boundaries, I have no idea where
my ZIP boundaries are for my area.  I do know my own ZIP code, but that's
because I need it to give people my address.  Creating ZIP boundaries from
address data makes the most sense to me, though on the other hand I don't
see us creating point level addressing for the whole country anytime soon
either.

If you want to import data I would suggest looking at some other sources.
There is a ton of local GIS data available that people want to put into OSM
they just need assitance doing so.  If in the U.S. we are going to do a
combination of imports and community mapping I think starting at a local
level is the best answer.  There is a ton of datasets out there and we
haven't really started asking around for them yet.

Kate Chapman
user:wonderchook


On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 3:39 PM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com 
jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 I understand! The counties are fine for splitting up the data.
 These zip codes are very interesting anyway, but it looks like some
 real work will be needed to process them. After looking on the net, I
 think there will be a big market for such data and I am facinated by
 the idea of being able to make money from this
 need to think about it some more.

 mike



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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Arkansas are you out there? (import of state GIS data)

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Mike,

It is in a couple places at the moment.  I haven't logged anything in
the wiki yet.

One place is on GeoCommons: http://finder.geocommons.com/users/AGIO/overlays

The big data like roads I need to upload somewhere.  I'm going to be
out of my office until next week, but then I can upload that data
somewhere.  I wanted to make sure to send this email out now so people
have some time to respond.

Thanks,

Kate

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 3:15 AM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com
jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:
 Hi Kate,
 That is great news!
 where is the data?
 I was working on mountain home and lake norfork and there was noone
 doing much there. I would take over that county and do the import for
 it.
 mike

 On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
 Hi All,

 The state of Arkansas donated a bunch of data to OSM.  This includes
 streets, parcels, and a bunch of other data layers.

 I can import the data but I don't want to step on the toes of members
 in the state.

 Anyway if you live in Arkansas I'd love to know your opinion on me
 importing all this free data.

 Thanks,

 Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] Conflicts of Interest

[Kate Chapman]

Hey All,

I'm usually pretty up front about the fact that I work for FortiusOne.
 It was an oversight with announcing my acceptance that I didn't
mention it.

FortiusOne uses OSM tiles on our public site http://www.geocommons.com
as well as the appliances.  I personally maintain an open source
geocoder as part of my job which I would love to be able to put OSM
address data in at some point (when there is better US coverage).  The
local DC OSM group meets occasionally in the FortiusOne office, since
the space is free and available.

-Kate




On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:29 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
 Hi

 One of the things we found at the OSMF is that you really need to be open 
 about any potential conflicts of interest, like where you work or if you hold 
 shares in TeleAtlas... that kind of thing. Anything a reasonable outsider 
 could conclude is a potential conflict.

 I think that for your own good so it's not a surprise to people, all those 
 running for the board of OSMF-US should be upfront about it. I don't think 
 there's any shame in it, but I can tell you from experience that people get 
 very upset if you're not clear about everything from day 1.

 Yours c.

 Steve
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Re: [Talk-us] New List: osm-professional

[Kate Chapman]

Sam,

As much as I would love to put on a three piece virtual suit and
synergize the paradigm with everyone that is not the intent of the
professional list.  I can only speak for the United States in this
regard, but we can't direct various government organizations and
non-profits at the talk list.  Groups have been put off by the talk
list before.

There is a growing group of local and state governments that want to
interact with OSM.   If we just say sure join the talk list, we lose
people who don't care for the kind of interaction that sometimes goes
on there.  Not everyone has the good humor to think oh the talk list
here they go again, isn't it cute.  I like to think of the OSM
professional list as a gateway drug to the community.

Maybe nobody else thinks this is important, but I do know there are
those that won't speak up as well.

Kate
user:wonderchook





 Dear Sir,

 I think it just means we should be putting on our business hats, and
 use big words  throw in some technical 'buzz' words here  there, 
 put on the virtual suit  tie, when using that list.
 .. as the intended audience is from the 'corporate world'.
 (so no :-) faces... and 'stuff' is needed). .. like a group of
 hobbyists who want to totally change the playing field  disrupt a
 century old industry of status-quo...

 Cheers,
 (Kind regards,)
 Sam

 Bye
 Frederik

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[Talk-us] US Local Chapter Temporary Board Update

[Kate Chapman]

Hi U.S. Mappers,

Since the election of the temporary OSM U.S. Chapter board we have
chosen positions, which are as follows:

President: Kate Chapman
Vice President: Serge Wroclawski
Secretary: Rich Welty
Treasurer: Thea Clay
Member At Large: Steven Johnson

The regularly scheduled U.S. Chapter call will take place at 8pm EST
this Thursday. You will find the call in details here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States

Since the next couple months will be primarily spent organizing the
incorporation paper work and other logistics, we feel there is no
longer a need to hold weekly chapter meetings. What is your (the U.S.
Community) preference on holding future US Chapter chapter calls? And
are there any objections to holding the calls twice a month?

The US SOTM calls will continue to occur every Thursday at 8:30 PM
EST. You can find the call in information here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM

There is now a page in the wiki for brainstorming ideas for the U.S.
focused efforts
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/Ideas.
The main goal of the U.S. Chapter isn't to incorporate it is to make a
great map.  The idea behind brainstorming is to see if there are ideas
people have not related to the incorporation that they'd like to start
working on (i.e. training/outreach/media).

Your newly elect OSM US Temporary Board

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Re: [Talk-us] osm sign in los angeles

[Kate Chapman]

Great, don't have real plans yet.  Asked for ideas on the talk list
and hoping to see how many of them we can do.

-Kate

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 9:12 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
 yeah it was one I had that CM paid for, it's seen better times but still 
 servicable just about

 I'll bring another one for Where 2.0 plus a table cloth with the logo on it 
 and pins and pens, undoubtedly the DC folks have other plans too?


 On Mar 4, 2010, at 9:09 AM, Steven Johnson wrote:

 I'll bet it could be re-used at the OSM booth at the Where2.0 conference, no?

 SEJ
 
 Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans. -Empedocles



 On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 22:10, Blars Blarson 
 openstreetmap-talk...@scd.debian.net wrote:
 After SCALE, I wound up with the OSM sign.  About 2 feet wide and 5
 feet high when deployed, retracts into its stand.  I fixed the zipper
 on its bag.  Does anyone want it for use at OSM events?

 --
 Blars Blarson                   blar...@scd.debian.net

 With Microsoft, failure is not an option.  It is a standard feature.

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 Steve



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[Talk-us] Going to Where 2.0 and Want to Work the Booth?

[Kate Chapman]

Hey All,

Are you attending Where 2.0 and want to work the booth?

I put up a wiki page for people to sign up for slots.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Where2.0/2010

Thanks,

Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] Going to Where 2.0 and Want to Work the Booth?

[Kate Chapman]

There has been some discussion about having a mapping party the Friday
after Where 2.0.

Also I'm not sure, but I think Steve might have proposed a BoF session.  Steve?

-Kate

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi Kate,

 Will be in the area but can't make time during the day. Any plans for evening 
 events?

 Apollinaris

 On 19 Mar 2010, at 15:32 , Kate Chapman wrote:

 Hey All,

 Are you attending Where 2.0 and want to work the booth?

 I put up a wiki page for people to sign up for slots.

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Where2.0/2010

 Thanks,

 Kate

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[Talk-us] Bylaws for OpenStreetMap US Chapter

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

We would like to incorporate the US Chapter soon and have bylaws up.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Draft_Rules

Could everyone check them out and provide feedback to me or on the
wiki in the next week (by midnight March 31st)?

Thanks,

Kate Chapman
user: wonderchook

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Re: [Talk-us] Going to Where 2.0 and Want to Work the Booth?

[Kate Chapman]

The thought was if we did have a mapping party it wouldn't be aimed at
the WhereCamp/Where 2.0 attendees but rather at people in the area.
This of course is if there is interest.

-Kate

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 11:47 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
 we've done it before at wherecamp over lunch, makes much more sense then than 
 friday when everyone wants to just go home or drink beer

 On Mar 23, 2010, at 6:19 AM, Kate Chapman wrote:

 There has been some discussion about having a mapping party the Friday
 after Where 2.0.

 Also I'm not sure, but I think Steve might have proposed a BoF session.  
 Steve?

 -Kate

 On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 Hi Kate,

 Will be in the area but can't make time during the day. Any plans for 
 evening events?

 Apollinaris

 On 19 Mar 2010, at 15:32 , Kate Chapman wrote:

 Hey All,

 Are you attending Where 2.0 and want to work the booth?

 I put up a wiki page for people to sign up for slots.

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Where2.0/2010

 Thanks,

 Kate

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 Yours c.

 Steve



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[Talk-us] Call for Proposals for SOTM-US

[Kate Chapman]

Hey All,

I made a Google Form for the SOTM-US proposals.  If you have an idea
for a workshop you'd like to lead or a talk you'd like to give please
fill out the form here: http://bit.ly/aI3WiH

Reminder SOTM-US is August 14th and 15th in Atlanta, GA.

-Kate

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[Talk-us] State of the Map U.S. Website

[Kate Chapman]

Hey All,

Would anyone like to help stylize the SOTM U.S. Website?  We have a
logo and just need some help pulling it together and making it look a
bit more professional.

Most of us working on it are backend developer types or sys admins,
not so good at the making things look pretty.

Thanks,

Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] SOTM USA

[Kate Chapman]

There is a new site at http://www.sotm.us,  I need to switch the DNS  
of stateofthemap.us to point at it as well.  Thank you for updating  
the wiki.

Kate

On May 12, 2010, at 2:16 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:

 It's been pointed out that there is a SOTM US website, but it's  
 mostly empty right now:

http://stateofthemap.us/

 This wasn't even linked from the wiki, I fixed that.

 There is a phone call tomorrow which I guess uses the same details  
 that have been advertised for last month:


 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States#Agenda_for_April_29th.2C_2010

 The rest of the USA section of the wiki could need some gardening  
 too if anyone has time:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States

 A good place to start is have a look at your State's page

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:States_in_United_States

 It would be good to have all the state pages link to this mailing  
 list up front. I've done that for CA and CO.

 Any other thoughts on making the wiki experience better?


 On May 12, 2010, at 10:43 AM, SteveC wrote:

 Minutes for SOTM US run out in March

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM#Weekly_calls

 There aren't any sponsors to speak of?

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_United_States/US_SOTM/Sponsorship

 The server is still blank?

 http://openstreetmap.us/

 Local chapter minutes run out last month...

 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States



 So, guys, can we be clear is SOTM US happening or not? There really  
 is very little time to turn this around if the state of the wiki is  
 anything close to the state of the planning. If the steam has run  
 out, then we can still put something together in Denver.


 Yours c.

 Steve


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Re: [Talk-us] OSM applications used to help in disaster situations

[Kate Chapman]

I would suggest they talk to CrisisCommons http:// 
ww.crisiscommons.org, though I would think Ushahidi and paying for  
hosting would also work.


Kate

(via GPS...I mean iPhone)

On May 14, 2010, at 7:14 PM, Sarah Manley sarah.m.man...@gmail.com  
wrote:


I recently received the following messages and was curious if anyone  
knew of any applications out there that used OSM (still waiting to  
get OSM's mediawiki extension on Wikia). Suggestions?


I work for the a local County Civil Defense Agency. We have an  
interest in establishing a Disaster Wiki that would allow us to  
take in information from the community when a disaster strikes. Our  
interest stems from an article in Emergency Management magazine,  
which describes how a wiki could be used to gather information. The  
basic thought is that after a disaster, people could go to a pre- 
established wiki and fill out a simple online form, geo-code the  
location of the damage, add a picture and have that information  
populate a map. We could display the map on our monitors in the  
Emergency Operations Center and help identify which areas of the  
island were hardest hit by the event. I was initially steered toward  
a site called ushahidi.com, but we would have to load the software  
on a County Server and we currently do not have the server capacity  
to handle the additional traffic. Our desired solution would be to  
have the wiki hosted offsite. I was wondering if you might have any  
suggestions. Thanks for any help you can offer.


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Re: [Talk-us] Getting data from ArcIMS servers

[Kate Chapman]

Toby,

Do you have a link? Maybe it supports WMS.

Kate

(via GPS...I mean iPhone)

On May 15, 2010, at 1:37 PM, Toby Murray toby.mur...@gmail.com wrote:

 My county uses ArcIMS to serve up their GIS data. I have received
 permission to use their 6 resolution aerial photos for tracing things
 in OSM and when asked about accessing the data, I was pointed at the
 ArcExplorer software. Now I just need to figure out how to use it. It
 seems like ArcExplorer itself is a pretty dumb client that just
 displays images it gets from the server.

 I did a packet capture while loading some data into ArcExplorer and it
 looks like it is a pretty simple protocol. The client sends an XML
 document specifying an ENVELOPE element with a bounding box
 (although I'm not sure what the units are in... it doesn't look like
 lat/long) as well as tags indicating which layers it wants. The server
 renders the request and then sends back a response in XML with an
 output URL tag that specifies a .jpg that the client then downloads
 and displays. All layers do appear to be pre-rendered into a single
 flat image so getting shape files out of it doesn't seem possible.

 Now, my county DOES have an FTP server where I can probably get access
 to the raw data however getting access to it will require more begging
 on my part. Not that I have a huge problem with that... but talking
 with others on IRC, it sounds like ArcIMS is a fairly popular product
 for city/county GIS systems. So I was wondering if anyone already
 knows more about it and if there is a good way to get OSM-usable
 images and/or data out of it without FTP access. If not, would it be
 worth it for me to look at this in more detail? The most spectacular
 outcome I could see would be a JOSM plugin that lets you give it an
 ArcIMS server URL and then acts like the WMS plugin to download
 background images.

 Thoughts?

 Toby

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[Talk-us] Participation at SOTM U.S.

[Kate Chapman]

Hey All,

We've gotten some great submissions for talks/workshops at SOTM U.S.
We could still use more!

Have something you'd like to talk about regarding OSM?  It could be
technical, community related or even an OSM comedy routine.  To
participate go here: http://www.sotm.us/?page_id=2

SOTM U.S. is August 14-15 in Atlanta, Georgia.

-Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] Participation at SOTM U.S.

[Kate Chapman]

Steve,

Sorry there haven't been meetings.  We have discussed it some within
the OSM US board meetings.  I realize this is not very a community and
should be rectified.  The volunteers in Georgia have a conflict with
the previous meeting time.

I've been handling sponsorship, we will put up a list of sponsors once
someone actually writes a check.  I have verbal promises from 6 or 7
groups at the moment.  Would you like to sponsor?  You could be our
first.

-Kate

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 8:02 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote:
 The minutes still haven't been updated in 3 months.

        http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/US_SOTM

 Have there been meetings? Is anyone even in charge of sponsorship?



 On Jun 15, 2010, at 5:53 PM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 hi,
 what will the entry fee cost? can we find sponsors to help cover the costs?
 --
 James Michael DuPont
 Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org 
 flossal.org

 Chat  Google Talk: JamesMikeDuPont  Skype: h4ck3rm1k3  MSN: water_proof
 Contact Me


 On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:47 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
 Hey All,

 We've gotten some great submissions for talks/workshops at SOTM U.S.
 We could still use more!

 Have something you'd like to talk about regarding OSM?  It could be
 technical, community related or even an OSM comedy routine.  To
 participate go here: http://www.sotm.us/?page_id=2

 SOTM U.S. is August 14-15 in Atlanta, Georgia.

 -Kate

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 Steve Coast / stevecoast.com



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Re: [Talk-us] Participation at SOTM U.S.

[Kate Chapman]

The registration is $35.  Sponsors could potentially offset the cost, but I
think $35 is a pretty low cost.

-Kate

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 7:53 PM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com 
jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 hi,
 what will the entry fee cost? can we find sponsors to help cover the costs?
 --
 James Michael DuPont
 Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org
 flossal.org
  http://xhema.flossk.org:8084/openx/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=5
 Chat Google Talk: JamesMikeDuPont Skype: h4ck3rm1k3 MSN: water_proof
 Contact Me [image: Linkedin] 
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmikedupont[image:
 Facebook] http://www.facebook.com/james.m.dupont[image: 
 Twitter]http://twitter.com/h4ck3rm1k3[image:
 Google] http://www.google.com/profiles/JamesMikeDuPont#buzz


 On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:47 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:

 Hey All,

 We've gotten some great submissions for talks/workshops at SOTM U.S.
 We could still use more!

 Have something you'd like to talk about regarding OSM?  It could be
 technical, community related or even an OSM comedy routine.  To
 participate go here: http://www.sotm.us/?page_id=2

 SOTM U.S. is August 14-15 in Atlanta, Georgia.

 -Kate

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[Talk-us] State of the Map U.S. Registration

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

Reminder that SOTM US is August 14th-15th and registration is open.

We have great speakers lined up including individuals from Stamen,
USGS, the State of Arkansas.  On a variety of topics from technical
topics like OSM in MongoDB and using OSM in Schools.  I'll be
releasing the preliminary schedule tomorrow or Monday.

Register here: http://stateofthemapus.eventbrite.com/

We have great sponsors such as Stamen, Traverse Technologies and FortiusOne.

Thanks!

-Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] Community Involvement

[Kate Chapman]

So I think having a formal organization can enable people to do
certain tasks.  There are plenty of situations where it isn't needed
of course.

Examples where it can help:

-We wanted to put on a conference, it is much easier to have a formal
organization for sponsorship and reserving a venue.
-There has been talk about wanting to have Tagwatch and Extracts for
the US.  Can you do that without a formal organization?  Sure.  Can
you get donations for hardware as an individual? Perhaps.  But it is
easy to have an organization own such a resource.  The actual day to
day running I would hope would be the community.
-Some people want to set-up OSM education programs.  Not impossible as
an individual but can be easier as an organization.
-There is a crew that wants to get a bus and drive around the US
having mapping parties.  Could someone just buy a bus and do it on
their own? Sure. Do we think it would be easier as an organization?
yes

So none of these things have to happen with a formal chapter, but
there are those of us that think they would be easier with one.

-Kate

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 18 Jul 2010, at 6:07 , Serge Wroclawski wrote:

 I want to be clear on the outset that this mail is personal, and while
 I'm going to discuss some OSM US business, I'm not speaking on behalf
 of the organization or the board in this mail.

 With that out of the way...

 At the OSM US board meetings, one area of frequent discussion is How
 can we get the community to be more involved with us?

 did you ask if there is a community at all? Even this list is literally 
 silent.
 why bother with an US board if there is so much to map and so few mappers.


 So this is an open ended question:

 If you're in the US, what are your thoughts on the OSM US?  Is there
 something you wish we were doing that we're not? What would you like
 to see the organization doing? And how can we get you (personally)
 more involved?


 What can a US board offer? I know there was much talk about what can be done. 
 All this is on a legal, organizational, governmental contracts, fundraising 
 level…  I'd say community first and the rest will follow


 I'm really looking for practical answers, something we can take action
 on and accomplish.

 If you joined the organization, first, thank you, and second: What
 were your reasons for joining?

 And if you haven't yet joined the organization: Why not, and is there
 something we could do to encourage you to join?

 Simply don't see a personal reason for it or where and how it will help osm 
 in US.



 - Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] SOTM US Schedule Up

[Kate Chapman]

Richard,

Sorry, I was trying to avoid the massive cross posting everywhere we
seem to love to do in OSM.  I figured people interested in mapping in
the US would be subscribed to this list.

Of course everyone is invited.

-Kate

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 3:55 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
 Hi All,

 The schedule for SOTM US is up.

 http://www.sotm.us/?page_id=2

 No post to talk, or other lists?  Is this event only for US-based
 mappers or open to all?


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Re: [Talk-us] Community Involvement

[Kate Chapman]

From our trips to Haiti we have documents on data collection, editing
to use of OSM.   They are focused on the Humanitarian tagging scheme
though.

Here is the JOSM training manual:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ab5-nI93RBqoZGZxcHcycXRfMzFnaDQzejJmawhl=en
The QGIS/Mapnik one:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUeMslP3EFo2ZHJkYnhiNF83ZHpjNXQ2Znohl=en


-Kate



On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:29 AM, Hillsman, Edward hills...@cutr.usf.edu wrote:
 I also agree that this would be an excellent idea (I just introduced a class 
 of about 25 students to OSM last night, and I really would like something 
 clean and organized to point future classes to). If someone can put together 
 an outline of such a Beginner's Guide, I'm willing to work on a section of 
 it, and help reconcile it with other sections as they get written. Richard, 
 given your experience and obvious thought on the matter, could you maybe 
 sketch a high-level outline to get us started?

 Ed

 Edward L. Hillsman, Ph.D.
 Senior Research Associate
 Center for Urban Transportation Research
 University of South Florida
 4202 Fowler Ave., CUT100
 Tampa, FL  33620-5375
 813-974-2977 (tel)
 813-974-5168 (fax)
 hills...@cutr.usf.edu
 http://www.cutr.usf.edu



 Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:07:32 -0700 (PDT)
 From: Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net
 To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org
 Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Community Involvement
 Message-ID: 1279732052442-5321954.p...@n2.nabble.com
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii


 Apologies for butting in on your mailing list - thought this one was
 sufficiently non-US specific it deserved an answer.

 Toby Murray wrote:
  Yes, navigation is a pain. The map features page is a pretty
  good index of things to map but it often links to proposal or stub
  pages (like the doctors page) that don't give a lot of information
  about how to map this feature but rather offer discussions about
  the tag or some OSM jargon that is not really helpful to
  newcomers. The problem is that as one gains more experience
  within OSM those pages DO become somewhat helpful so there
  is little incentive for experienced mappers to change them to
  make it better for new mappers.

 We desperately need a real OSM Beginners' Guide (rather than the apology
 that currently passes for one on the wiki), written by people who care
 about
 documentation, focusing on the basics, and liberally illustrated with pics
 and videos.

 And I hate to say it, but it shouldn't be open to general public editing -
 otherwise you get the situation at the moment where people come along and
 add their personal hobby horses every other day, and it degenerates into an
 unreadable, sprawling, unfocused mess.

 It's not just about tag documentation (to a certain extent, better editor
 presets are making that less important), but about a general introduction
 to
 OSM. A DokuWiki install on dev.osm.org, with a small team writing the core
 docs, would be a good way to do it. I'd love to have a go (after all, my
 day
 job is as a writer and editor), but what with Potlatch and all don't have
 the time to head up such an initiative. But it would be the single most
 useful thing anyone could do for OSM right now.

 I did suggest to Mr Weait of this parish that he might like to be involved,
 as he has a clear track record in writing nice how-tos on his blog. Maybe
 we
 could get a team together?

 cheers
 Richard
 --


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Re: [Talk-us] Reminder: Geobus call tomorrow

[Kate Chapman]

Yes there were 6 or 7 of us.  Here are the notes I took:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1q_Sv8p11O659zrVEpGQWdN3OvYotLAPZKnVgaZFyRCY

Sorry I neglected to document who was on the call.

-Kate

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Jim McAndrew j...@loc8.us wrote:
 Did anybody make the call last night?

 On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Lars Ahlzen l...@ahlzen.com wrote:

 On 9/2/2010 10:50 AM, Jim McAndrew wrote:

 Hey,

 I am out of the country today and will not be able to attend the call
 this week either.

 Sorry, I can't make it either. Being Friday night before Labor day
 weekend, I have a feeling the attendance may be thinner than usual... :)

 - Lars

 --
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 l...@ahlzen.com

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[Talk-us] Washington D.C. Mappy Hour October 12th

[Kate Chapman]

Hey Guys,

The monthly OSM Meet-up in D.C. is this Tuesday at the Capital City
Brewery at 7pm.

Capital City Brewery
1100 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005

The closest metro is Metro Center.

Here's a map: http://osm.org/go/ZZcbh4Ox1--

If you are in the D.C. area I hope to see you there!

-Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] Highway Tagging Consensus to Improve OSM (and address some of 41 latitude's concerns)

[Kate Chapman]

There are some people where IRC is a higher barrier to entry than a
phone call.  All that aside though I think key is just to have some
level of consensus and then have the information available in a clear
place.

New people don't care about arguing about tags, they just want to know
how to map.  By making that easier and having standards documented in
a clear way they will.

-Kate

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:04 PM, Nathan Edgars II nerou...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
 Surely we're missing plenty of people by only having a discussion on the
 mailing list? SoTM.US proved to me that there are orders of magnitude more
 people interested in OSM in the US than are signed up for talk-us.
 The difference is that the people who care enough to talk about it and form
 a consensus between those on talk-us and maybe even a phone call or two are
 the ones that will actually make the changes to the wiki and renderers. It's
 not that there's one consensus it's whoever gets a consensus faster and
 (most importantly) implements it.

 You're getting a consensus of those who can get past the higher
 barrier to entry. It's relatively easy to join a mailing list. It's
 also relatively easy to use IRC, though you have to be free at the
 proper time. It's a bit harder to participate in a phone conversation
 - again you can't have anything else scheduled then, and you need
 either a microphone or a willingness to pay for a long-distance call,
 plus the ability to understand various accents (or half the meeting
 will be can you please repeat that? can you speak more clearly?).

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Re: [Talk-us] Highway Tagging Consensus to Improve OSM (and address some of 41 latitude's concerns)

[Kate Chapman]

AJ,

I'm not disposing of IRC, frankly I use it myself.  I'm just saying
that there are downsides/upsides to both phone calls/email/IRC/IM/etc.
 My real point is that new people probably don't want to argue about
tags in the first place.  Many people come to mapping parties and say
what do you want me to map?  Or I've also heard 'I don't care to map
anything in-particular, but I want to help out.  If people really
want to discuss tagging badly enough they will figure out whatever the
form of communication is and deal with it.  Key is coming out of that
communication is a guide that others can use.

-Kate

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Al Haraka alhar...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
 There are some people where IRC is a higher barrier to entry than a
 phone call.  All that aside though I think key is just to have some
 level of consensus and then have the information available in a clear
 place.

 New people don't care about arguing about tags, they just want to know
 how to map.  By making that easier and having standards documented in
 a clear way they will.

 -Kate

 Kate, I understand where you are going with this, but I think the wiki
 is pretty clear on how low the barrier to entry can be if there is a
 web-based IRC-client.

 http://irc.openstreetmap.org/

 I personally dislike the idea of disposing of one avenue of
 communication because of barrier to entry.  I would say in this case
 it means the people in the channel or on the call care enough to put
 in an effort.  Either way, it costs time or money, regardless of the
 choice.  I personally prefer IRC only for the reason that it is easy
 to document everything that is said and done with minimal effort.
 Someone has to take notes on a phone call, and sometimes those notes
 can be inadequate or inaccurate.  That is my only reservation.  Of
 course, IRC has its own downsides.

 Whatever is decided, I welcome the idea of organizing.  I too am very
 concerned about knowing how to map, and I see this as a positive
 development.  Thanks to everyone for getting motivated about this.

 On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:04 PM, Nathan Edgars II nerou...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
 Surely we're missing plenty of people by only having a discussion on the
 mailing list? SoTM.US proved to me that there are orders of magnitude more
 people interested in OSM in the US than are signed up for talk-us.
 The difference is that the people who care enough to talk about it and form
 a consensus between those on talk-us and maybe even a phone call or two are
 the ones that will actually make the changes to the wiki and renderers. 
 It's
 not that there's one consensus it's whoever gets a consensus faster and
 (most importantly) implements it.

 You're getting a consensus of those who can get past the higher
 barrier to entry. It's relatively easy to join a mailing list. It's
 also relatively easy to use IRC, though you have to be free at the
 proper time. It's a bit harder to participate in a phone conversation
 - again you can't have anything else scheduled then, and you need
 either a microphone or a willingness to pay for a long-distance call,
 plus the ability to understand various accents (or half the meeting
 will be can you please repeat that? can you speak more clearly?).

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Re: [Talk-us] Open.MapQuest.com launched for the US

[Kate Chapman]

One bug I have is with address geocoding.  You don't seem to be
using addresses attached to polygons.  So for almost all addresses
I've added they don't geocode.  The couple that are points do.

Thanks,

Kate

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Stellan Lagerstrom
lagerst...@blindsight.com wrote:
 I also notice that they put the [P] icon only on POI parking lots, not those
 defined as areas.

 --
 /Stellan


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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] TriMet will begin OSM improvements in the Portland area

[Kate Chapman]

Hi PJ,

Sounds cool.  Is there a plan for keeping things up to date?  Or is it
to just get the data the best it can be between OSM/TRIMET and then
continue editing in OpenStreetMap overtime?  Or some other plan I
haven't thought of.

-Kate

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 9:28 PM, PJ Houser
stephanie.jean.hou...@gmail.com wrote:

 TriMet will begin OSM improvements in the Portland area beginning Monday
 February 21, 2011.

 Geographic Extent:  Multnomah, Clark, Washington, and Clackamas County

 Timeframe:  6 months, February 18, 2011 – August 18, 2011

 OSM User Names:  TriMet_PJH, TriMet_MSB, TriMet_GNH, TriMet_BB

 Reference files used to make the improvements:

 Metro’s Regional Datasets: streets.shp, trails.shp, bikes.shp  (starting
 with current versions dated January 2011)

     6 inch aerial imagery flown Fall 2010

 Improvements using ArcMap's OSM Editor include:

 Street alignments

 Streets with bus routes on them are allowed a 5 foot difference between OSM
 and Metro.
 Streets without bus routes are allowed a 10 foot buffer.

 Attributes

 The attributes in Metro's data will be rewritten in a form matching OSM.
 Missing sections can then be copied and pasted into OSM's data layer.

 Geometrically incorrect sections

 will be snapped to match Metro's

 We will also be checking directionality

 The work from this project will support applications and projects such as
 the Open Trip Planner http://opentripplanner.org/ and The Intertwine
 http://theintertwine.org/.



 For more detailed information or questions, please contact Bibiana McHugh
 mchu...@trimet.org or myself (PJ Houser, stephanie.jean.hou...@gmail.com)

 Input?

 --

 PJ Houser
 Trimet, GIS

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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Importing Virginia road centerlines

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Josh,

I've done a couple imports with varying levels of success.  I live in
Virginia (in Arlington) and would like to help.

-Kate

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote:
 I absolutely agree about preserving user contributions. For any given
 segment in the Virginia RCL Shapefile, there are any number of ways in
 OSM that make up that segment, with varying attributes. The reverse is
 possible as well. Merging this won't be easy by any means. However
 there's no reason we couldn't start importing (sooner) in areas that
 haven't been edited since the TIGER import

 As for RoadMatcher, though I haven't played with it yet, I don't see
 how OSM attributes are lost, it's just that you have to map from
 OSM-Shapefile-OSM.

 Remember, I'm just broadcasting my interest, I have a lot of learning to do.

 Regards,
 -Josh

 On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Mike N nice...@att.net wrote:
 I'm totally new to importing, so I first wanted to see if anyone else
 is interested in this project, though I am willing to take the time to
 learn the process myself. Is the process used for importing the
 Canadian database [1] the best method for doing this?

  The process for the Canadian database is best used only for adding new
 roads that don't exist in the OSM database.  As part of the upload process,
 plan on stitching them into existing roads, perhaps using JOSM.

  It would also be handy to be able to project the improved geometry onto
 existing roads of the same name, while preserving attributes and driveway /
 footpath / bridges that have already been added to the OSM data.    That
 will preserve user's contributions and history.  This would require some
 new, yet-to-be developed tool to work directly with OSM data.  There is much
 interest in this because of the TIGER 2010 data and Arkansas state data
 sets.   It is not certain when there will be developer resources to develop
 such a tool.

  The limitation of Roadmatcher is that it works only with shapefiles, thus
 OSM attributes are lost when exporting to shapefiles.

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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] TriMet will begin OSM improvements in the Portland area

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Tom,

Could you post a link to the area you imported?  Not all tags are
rendered in the default Mapnik styling.

Maybe we could help figure out exactly what is going one.

Thanks,

Kate
user:wonderchook

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 7:17 PM, Tom Ponte t...@bendbroadband.com wrote:
 PJ,



 I would be interested in what kind of “significant  problems” you had with
 the ArcMap extension if it is not too much trouble. It might save myself and
 others some time and effort trying to figure out what are operator issues
 and what are software issues. I have been working with that extension and
 recently tried to convert some roads to trails and add a boundary for a
 small BLM wilderness area as a test. The extension said the upload was
 successful but nothing showed up in OSM.  If you are worried about being
 exiled to Los Angles for listing the significant problems with the ESRI
 extension you could email me directly.



 I will be looking forward to seeing your updated workflow.



 Thanks



 Tom Ponte

 GIS Analyst

 541 419-2113

 t...@bendbroadband.com



 From: PJ Houser [mailto:stephanie.jean.hou...@gmail.com]
 Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 3:30 PM
 To: Dave Hansen
 Cc: impo...@openstreetmap.org; talk-us@openstreetmap.org
 Subject: Re: [Imports] [Talk-us] TriMet will begin OSM improvements in the
 Portland area



 Hi Dave  Talk-US  Imports,

 We decided against using Trimet in our name since as Richard pointed out,
 OSM is a collection of individuals. This is us right now. I will let you
 know if we change our names. Should we include RLIS (the data source) in our
 user names? We are all using our personal emails, so we have kept everything
 really informal so far.

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/PJ%20Houser
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/betsy
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mele%20Sax-Barnett
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Grant Humphries

 And our workflow is changing a lot since we ran into significant problems
 with ArcMap OSMEditor, though we are working with ESRI to improve the
 editor. I hope to send an updated workflow really soon for input! Not many
 changes to OSM have been done because we are still trying things out.

 But most importantly, all changes are being done one at a time. Nothing is
 bulk. Every change is done by hand. I am doing my best to make sure nobody
 else's hard work is overwritten or deleted!
 --
 PJ Houser
 Trimet, GIS

 On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Dave Hansen d...@sr71.net wrote:

 On Thu, 2011-02-10 at 18:28 -0800, PJ Houser wrote:
 OSM User Names:  TriMet_PJH, TriMet_MSB, TriMet_GNH, TriMet_BB

 Hi PJ,

 I was just looking for your user pages so I could spy on your
 improvements:

        http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/TriMet_BB

 for instance.  Did you end up using some different usernames, or have
 you just not created them yet?

 -- Dave



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Re: [Talk-us] Ideas for OSMF US Swag

[Kate Chapman]

Richard is right, there is an English language flyer.  I believe
Frederik Ramm has it.

If someone can volunteer to mail it that would be great.  I'm home
less than 50% of the year so I don't think I'm the right person.

-Kate

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:
 On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com wrote:

 Thea Aldrich wrote:

 Our question to the
 community is: If you like this idea, what types of branded materials would
 you like?

 I think it is a great idea and is the sort of thing a local chapter can be
 useful for to support the community and help spread the word.

 One thing that would imho be useful is to create flyers [1] to hand out to
 people who haven't heard about OSM to explain what OSM is about and why
 people should care to contribute.

 From what I have gathered, the German flyer [2] has been quite a success
 with apparently 40.000 flyers printed and distributed to date. There is now
 also an English flyer which the UK chapter distributes for free [3], but it
 only extends its offer to UK.

 So perhaps OSMF-US could print and distribute a similar flyer in the US,
 although it might be good to adapt it to fit the needs of the US better
 first.

 There is at least one English language flyer around.  If I recall the
 biggest hold up is that nobody volunteered to do the actual mailings
 from a US address.  Is somebody willing to do that?  ideally, the
 volunteer would send out flyers each week in response to the requests.

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Re: [Talk-us] Transportation for the Nation Strategic Plan discusses OSM

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Josh,

Myself and Thea Clay were on the strategic working group.  There
weren't a ton of meetings, but we did participate in a couple
conference calls.

There was some tenseness around using OpenStreetMap.  There are issues
such as federal government data being public domain and also people
not that used to the idea of crowd-sourcing.

Thanks,

Kate

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote:
 The goal of Transportation for the Nation is:
 Commence the development of comprehensive, publicly available,
 nationwide transportation data sets. Ultimately, Transportation for
 the Nation (TFTN) will encompass data sets covering multiple modes of
 transportation, however, the initial focus will be on producing a road
 centerline data set that includes all types of roads, both public and
 private. The initial TFTN data set will include consistent, current,
 high quality road centerline data for the entire country.

 This week they released their strategic plan, which includes
 discussion of OpenStreetMap. I would encourage you all to take a look.

 Announcement:
 http://news.nsgic.org/2011/05/transportation-for-nation-strategic.html

 Direct link to PDF:
 http://nsgicftp.gisinventory.net/download/TFTN_StrategicPlan_v8DraftFinal.pdf

 Additional information on TFTN is available on this website:
 http://www.tftn.org/

 They even list OSM as a participant, though I can't seem to find any
 mention of TFTN on the lists or wiki, other than the article I
 created:
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TFTN

 -Josh

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Re: [Talk-us] Transportation for the Nation Strategic Plan discusses OSM

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Josh,

It is difficult sometimes wearing a couple different hats.  Many
organizations aren't used to that.  For business travel and work time
to participate in events it is often easier to have your employer's
name listed.

Thanks,

Kate

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote:
 Kate,
 Thanks for letting me know, I guess I'm surprised there was no mention
 anywhere that the president and treasurer of the US chapter were on
 this group! I trawled the mailing lists, wiki, and more. After your email I
 finally found your names on the TFTN site, of course affiliated with your
 individual companies rather than OSM.

 I'm sure there will be some issues, but it's good to get involved
 early, thanks for being a part of it.

 -Josh

 On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
 Hi Josh,

 Myself and Thea Clay were on the strategic working group.  There
 weren't a ton of meetings, but we did participate in a couple
 conference calls.

 There was some tenseness around using OpenStreetMap.  There are issues
 such as federal government data being public domain and also people
 not that used to the idea of crowd-sourcing.

 Thanks,

 Kate

 On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 9:05 AM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote:
 The goal of Transportation for the Nation is:
 Commence the development of comprehensive, publicly available,
 nationwide transportation data sets. Ultimately, Transportation for
 the Nation (TFTN) will encompass data sets covering multiple modes of
 transportation, however, the initial focus will be on producing a road
 centerline data set that includes all types of roads, both public and
 private. The initial TFTN data set will include consistent, current,
 high quality road centerline data for the entire country.

 This week they released their strategic plan, which includes
 discussion of OpenStreetMap. I would encourage you all to take a look.

 Announcement:
 http://news.nsgic.org/2011/05/transportation-for-nation-strategic.html

 Direct link to PDF:
 http://nsgicftp.gisinventory.net/download/TFTN_StrategicPlan_v8DraftFinal.pdf

 Additional information on TFTN is available on this website:
 http://www.tftn.org/

 They even list OSM as a participant, though I can't seem to find any
 mention of TFTN on the lists or wiki, other than the article I
 created:
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TFTN

 -Josh

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Re: [Talk-us] Which county next?

[Kate Chapman]

On Jun 9, 2011, at 12:34 AM, Steve Coast wrote:

 
 
 On 6/8/2011 12:43 PM, Alan Mintz wrote:
 Is that/will that not be a popular use for OSM? It does not make walking 
 directions impossible - just requires the addition of the driveway to the 
 map. OTOH, putting the pin on the front door of a building inside a large 
 parcel may well leave a driver lost and quite a distance from where he needs 
 to be.
 
 Ah I see. Well the question is really whether the centroid is better than the 
 front door. My argument would be no, the centroid is usually in a pretty 
 random place. The front door with some clever processing will get you the 
 house and also the driveway shapes.
 
 Steve

I think in the majority of cases the front door is going to be the best option. 
 Yes there are exceptions to this, but I would hope that people would start 
adding long driveways to those exceptions as they were improving the map.

-Kate




 
 
 
 On 6/7/2011 3:28 PM, Alan Mintz wrote:
 The site allows you to drag a pin from where we think an address 
 currently is to the front door of the property
 
 Is that really where we want the pin to be for driving directions? I've 
 mostly tended to either putting the address info on a complete landuse 
 polygon, or if a point, placing it on the driveway, just off the street to 
 which it connects. I swear I read this somewhere as standard practice, and 
 it makes sense from a navigation standpoint, particularly for rural 
 parcels, where a driveway can be hundreds of meters long and not mapped.
 
 San Diego County, CA, USA has a bunch of address data from a SanGIS import.
 
 -- 
 Alan Mintz alan_mintz+...@earthlink.net
 
 
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Re: [Talk-us] Road Trip to SotM

[Kate Chapman]

Hey Jim,

Awesome.  Let us know if you want to meet us along the way.

Right now there are just 2 of us in my car, but it is kind of small:).
 The more the merrier though!

-Kate

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Jim McAndrew j...@loc8.us wrote:
 Kate, Richard,

 Although Denver isn't much of a roadtrip for me anymore, I'd still love to
 do at least some of this trip, either as part of the GeoBus project or
 something separate.  I like the idea of multiple carpools coming from
 different parts of the country as well.  Maybe find out some people who are
 interested and design a few bus stops along the route.

 --
 Jim

 On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:

 On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 8:39 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:
  Hi All,
 
  I know there was some talk about the GeoBus for State of the Map.
 
  Well, on a much smaller scale myself and Iván Sánchez are going to
  drive from Washington D.C. to Denver.  This is a one way trip and I
  plan to sell my car at the end.
 
  Anyway if anyone is interested in meeting up along the way here is now
  currently tentative schedule including dates.
 
  DC               Sept 1
  Knoxville        Sept 2
  Memphis  Sept 3
  Dallas   Sept 4
  Dallas   Sept 5
  Amarillo         Sept 6
  Pueblo CO        Sept 7
  Denver   Sept 8

 Sounds like fun.  If you can get Albuquerque / Santa Fe into the mix,
 the landscape  is wonderful.  Of course, I've not been to Amarillo and
 that might be equally great. ;-)

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[Talk-us] Road Trip Update

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

I mentioned a while back about a road trip to SotM.

S Iván and I have a website now and are looking for places to
stop: http://www.willmapforfuel.com/

Also if you are in our path and would like to meet-up let us know.

-Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] SOTM room discounts for OSMF US Members

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Everyone,

This is a reminder about rooms at SotM for OSM-US members.

Please see the details below.

Thanks,

Kate

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Thea Aldrich theaglit...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi US Mappers,

 The OSMF US team has been busy doing some fundraising to help support the
 mapping community. We’ve had some good results and would like to announce an
 exciting opportunity.



 We are excited to announce a program aimed at helping get OSMF US members to
 SOTM inDenver. We have our second general assembly meeting planned to
 coincide with SOTM. It is very important to us that as many members as
 possible are in attendance; both for the meeting and to take part in the
 first International SOTM on US soil. We are very aware of the financial
 burden trips like this can put on our membership. There are discounts for
 airfare available on the SOTM website but we would like to go a step
 farther.



 We have raised some money to help pay for a block of hotel rooms close to
 the event venue for OSMF US members. To be eligible, you need to be a
 current member of OSMF US at the time of the event and live in the US. You
 can join OSMF US here: http://www.openstreetmap.us/membership/


  Remember that most members joined in June of 2010 so you might need to
 renew your membership to be eligible for a room discount. We would like
 provide all OSM US members with some level of financial help. However, at
 this time we are not sure how many people plan on attending the conference.
 The number of members attending will determine the amount of the discount we
 can give on each room. So, if you are an OSMF US member who will have valid
 membership through September 12, 2011 and would like to take advantage of
 this program, please email me at theaglit...@gmail.com no later than July
 15, 2011. On July 16 I’ll post back to the list and let everyone know what
 the next step will be and the amount of the discount. If you have any
 questions, feel free to email me at the address listed above.



 Thanks,

 Thea Clay

 OSMF US Board Member and Treasurer

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[Talk-us] Meet-up in DC September 1st

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

This Thursday in the Washington DC area we are having a meet-up at
Ray's Hell Burger:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Washington_DC#Meet-ups

This is the first stop in the WillMap4Fuel trip:
http://www.willmapforfuel.com/ and Iván's first day in the U.S. for
the adventure.

So if you are in the area add your name to the wiki and come on out.

Thanks!

-Kate

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Re: [Talk-us] OSM US Chapter elections and

[Kate Chapman]

Sorry the issue was we did not have quorum and did not announce the
meeting.  So it could not count as the annual meeting.  The
Treasurer's report is finished (a big part of these sorts of things)
and we can have an annual meeting.

Anyway, the plan was to have an online annual meeting, which is
possible according to our bylaws.

As for SotM-US that is dependent on people willing to organize.
Though the event was smaller than SotM it still was a major
undertaking.  Thea Clay did the majority of the work while she was
working for Cloudmade.   It would require a larger volunteer effort to
do it this year.  Though we could certainly start a bidding process to
look for possible venues.

Best,

-Kate

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:

 On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 7:05 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Last year it was State of the Map US. I assumed this year that it
  would happen at the same time as OSMF has its elections...

 The US chapter was scheduled to meet Saturday at SotM at 12:30.  Did
 anything happen there?
 http://stateofthemap.org/schedules/saturday-september-10th/

 I'm fairly certain that wasn't there on Friday when I typed up the Saturday
 schedule that ended up on the wiki. Either way, there was a HOT meeting at
 that time outside and I don't think a OSM US meeting happened.


 Perhaps a few members will offer to help the US local chapter team
 with organizing things.

 On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Gregory Arenius greg...@arenius.com
 wrote:
  Another barrage of questions
 [ ... ]
  I think it was surveymonkey run by
  some independent (Apache?) observers.  Is it possible to do this again?
   If
  so, what needs to be done?

 As for last year, Mike Collinson and I served as independent observers
 / vote counters.  The vote was handled through surveymonkey last year.
  We just used plain-old-email for the Foundation election just passed.
  I think I prefer email since it removes the reliance on an external
 service.

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Re: [Talk-us] OSM US Nominations Open

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Richard,

Fair questions.  I think one thing that the US Chapter should figure
out is what exactly is expected from the board.  Meaning when we put
on SotM-US it ended up being a significant amount of time commitment
(that didn't have to be board members but mostly was). The chapter
could take on a lot of different projects, or serve as an organization
to support only.  For example paying for SotM-US, buying swag, having
servers, etc.

-Kate

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:
 On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.net wrote:

 i'm dithering if i wish to run again, but i do agree, manifestos are a good
 idea.

 Some of the questions that came up during the Foundation election
 would be interesting in the context of the US local chapter as well.
 Feedback from previous and current board members would be helpful
 whether they plan to run again or not.

 What is the time commitment expected from board members?
 What are the meeting details?
 How are tasks divided / assigned?

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Re: [Talk-us] OSM US Nominations Open

[Kate Chapman]

Just another reminder about the nominations for the US Chapter Board.

I'm not planning on rerunning because I spent as much time outside of
the US as in it this year.

Best,

-Kate

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hello!
 Nominations for 2011-2012 OpenStreetMap US boardmembers are open until
 midnight on October 3rd. If you're interested in running, please fill in
 your name on this wiki page (under the Nominations header):
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Elections#2011-2012
 Elections will be held October 4th - 11th.
 Thanks!
 Ian

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Re: [Talk-us] One click quality printed maps (as an OSM advantage)

[Kate Chapman]

With walking papers you can use other renderings.  The default one is
the OSM tiles though.  There are a couple other Cloudmade styles in
there.

Best,

-Kate

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 5:59 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 Hi,


 On 12/05/2011 10:44 PM, Jeffrey Ollie wrote:

 Neither Walking Papers, nor Hikingbook, nor Maposmatic *ever* used tiles
 from osm.org.


 Whatever the ultimate source, both Walking Papers and Maposmatic use
 Mapnik style sheets close enough to the main osm.org style sheets that
 the difference is irrelevant to me (for this purpose at least).


 You complained about the *resolution* and at least Maposmatic can generate
 pretty much any resolution you want - while still using the colour scheme
 etc. of the main style.

 And I stand corrected with regard to Walking Papers. It used to be a
 black-and-white line drawing (more or less), now it does indeed seem to be
 fed off the normal tiles. Sorry for that.


 Bye
 Frederik

 --
 Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09 E008°23'33

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Re: [Talk-us] suburban superblocks that nobody wants to survey

[Kate Chapman]

What about actually doing the entry while you are in the car?

My first job after college was to map every house in a county.  (Wayne
County, Indiana for those that are curious) The set-up was to use GPS
with a computer and to map the addresses as you went.  We were already
starting with the county's master address list, but I don't see how
this would be different.

The only entire suburban neighborhood I mapped was my own. Can't say
it was that much fun, but I'd just get another string of addresses
everyday on the way to work and enter them that night.  I didn't end
up with that much data at any one time, but it did take a long time to
complete.

-Kate



On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Rich ric...@nakts.net wrote:
 On 03/16/12 01:10, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

 On 3/15/2012 6:43 PM, Nathan Mills wrote:

 On 3/15/2012 4:59 PM, Nathan Edgars II wrote:

 lots of driving and all you get is street names, since everything else
 is single-family houses.


 And address points


 How does this work? Do you stop at every house and write down the address?


 my workflow for the most efficient data collection :

 2 persons in a car. one takes photos and instructs the other on the route.
 later photos are correlated to the gpx based on their timestamps - and i
 have location-identified photos of housenumbers, shops, pubs, restaurants,
 water hydrants and lots and lots of other features.

 there is only one problem with this approach - i can collect lots more data
 than i can process, sleeping factored in ;)
 --
  Rich


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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Addition of building footprints in selected U.S. and Canadian cities

[Kate Chapman]

We did an imperfect import of building footprints in Washington D.C. a
while ago.  I personally find it makes the map far more usable for
adding other information. With the buildings in I am able to add
stores and other details easily without using a GPS, simply by
printing Walking Papers.

Personally for me I enjoy outlining buildings, but there are plenty of
other places without footprints where I could do that if I had the
urge.

-Kate

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:
 On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:46 AM, William Morris
 wboyk...@geosprocket.com wrote:
 So here's something to mull over while we all wait for the license upgrade:

 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23616645/Geosprocket_Share/umd_subset.osm

 That's an extract of the UVM-SAL building footprints I'd like to
 import for swathes of MD and PA. My workflow for killing existing
 feature conflicts actually went best without involving ESRI at all:

 1.) In QGIS, Set up 0.2-degree import grid over new building coverage areas
 2.) Pull down one grid cell worth of OSM data using the QGIS OSM plugin
 3.) Add building footprint .shp, select all footprints that intersect
 OSM lines or polygons
 4.) Switch selection, save as new .shp
 5.) Run ogr2osm.py on new .shp (Special thanks to Andrew Guertin for
 running me through that process)
 6.) Open new .osm file in JOSM, add building tags, upload.
 7.) Repeat for next import grid cell

 Tedious, but it'll get the job done. And a reminder: I do not intend
 to add any building footprint that conflicts with an existing feature,
 adhering to the OSM preference for user-added features over imports.
 Now soliciting thoughts, roadblocks, expressions of ennui, etc.
 Thanks!

 -Bill Morris

 My objection is a generic one and one that has been heard before on
 this channel.  To be clear, I do not wish to criticise Bill; he
 appears to be following the bulk edit guidelines and he is engaging in
 the discussions here.  That's fantastic.  Bill, welcome to the
 community.

 I think imports (taking a large number of objects from an external
 source and placing them in OSM all at once) is bad for the community.
 Most of you have heard me say this before.  I still have no hard
 evidence to prove it.  There is also no hard counter-evidence.  At
 best, imported data will be unmaintained.  I glibly offer most TIGER
 ways as evidence.

 I ask you to suspend disbelief for a moment, and presume that imports
 are generally bad, and presume that adding new mappers is generally
 good.

 Can we try something new?  Can we use this building data as motivation
 to get new mappers in those areas so that specific mappers will have a
 stronger connection to the data in specific areas?

 Something like this:
 - Let's set a smaller grid. Something like a large suburban arterial
 block, say 1.5km / 1 mi square.
 - If you want to import the buildings in one grid square, you have to
 find a new mapper in that area, and they have to do an on the ground
 survey of some part of that area.
 - You can only do so in areas that are no more than four grid squares
 from your home location (or work location).

 This is a cross between adding game-features to OSM, banning
 imports and having users adopt part of the map.  :-)

 This could be really beneficial to a new mapper.  They could survey
 the local fire station, police station, hospital and schools, and
 perhaps the businesses on the main street, and a few local shopping
 malls.  They get all of those business names, and they'll be
 completely up to date.  They'll add them to the map, and they don't
 have to trace as many building outlines, because they have the
 external source available.

 What I hope this will encourage is:
 - new mappers in those areas
 - who will do new foot surveys of interesting things
 - and will feel attached to the data
 - and keep it up to date over time.

 And, if the new mapper understands that the building data for their
 area is a reward, they are unlikely to be frustrated or discouraged
 by it if some buildings end up in the wrong place.  the new mapper
 will just fix them.  And carry on mapping.

 I know that what I suggest is much harder than simply importing the
 data from one or two accounts.  I suggest that the benefit of finding
 and encouraging new mappers in your area is much greater than just
 having new building outlines in your area.

 Now the Negative Army will jump in and say, That's too hard., That
 will never work., I want buildings now.

 You can take leadership on this.  Are you the only active mapper in
 your city or region, or one of only a few?  Do this.  Be a leader.
 Grow the community and then you won't be able to keep up with the
 growth of the map.  Build new contributors.  (And host local OSM
 groups.)

 Thanks for letting me hijack your thread, Bill.  :-)

 Best regards,
 Richard.

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Re: [Talk-us] [Imports] Addition of building footprints in selected U.S. and Canadian cities

[Kate Chapman]

DC GIS

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Catalogue

-Kate

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:56 PM, the Old Topo Depot
oldto...@novacell.com wrote:
 Kate,

 What was the source for the building footprint import ?

 On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:

 We did an imperfect import of building footprints in Washington D.C. a
 while ago.  I personally find it makes the map far more usable for
 adding other information. With the buildings in I am able to add
 stores and other details easily without using a GPS, simply by
 printing Walking Papers.

 Personally for me I enjoy outlining buildings, but there are plenty of
 other places without footprints where I could do that if I had the
 urge.

 -Kate

 On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote:
  On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:46 AM, William Morris
  wboyk...@geosprocket.com wrote:
  So here's something to mull over while we all wait for the license
  upgrade:
 
  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23616645/Geosprocket_Share/umd_subset.osm
 
  That's an extract of the UVM-SAL building footprints I'd like to
  import for swathes of MD and PA. My workflow for killing existing
  feature conflicts actually went best without involving ESRI at all:
 
  1.) In QGIS, Set up 0.2-degree import grid over new building coverage
  areas
  2.) Pull down one grid cell worth of OSM data using the QGIS OSM plugin
  3.) Add building footprint .shp, select all footprints that intersect
  OSM lines or polygons
  4.) Switch selection, save as new .shp
  5.) Run ogr2osm.py on new .shp (Special thanks to Andrew Guertin for
  running me through that process)
  6.) Open new .osm file in JOSM, add building tags, upload.
  7.) Repeat for next import grid cell
 
  Tedious, but it'll get the job done. And a reminder: I do not intend
  to add any building footprint that conflicts with an existing feature,
  adhering to the OSM preference for user-added features over imports.
  Now soliciting thoughts, roadblocks, expressions of ennui, etc.
  Thanks!
 
  -Bill Morris
 
  My objection is a generic one and one that has been heard before on
  this channel.  To be clear, I do not wish to criticise Bill; he
  appears to be following the bulk edit guidelines and he is engaging in
  the discussions here.  That's fantastic.  Bill, welcome to the
  community.
 
  I think imports (taking a large number of objects from an external
  source and placing them in OSM all at once) is bad for the community.
  Most of you have heard me say this before.  I still have no hard
  evidence to prove it.  There is also no hard counter-evidence.  At
  best, imported data will be unmaintained.  I glibly offer most TIGER
  ways as evidence.
 
  I ask you to suspend disbelief for a moment, and presume that imports
  are generally bad, and presume that adding new mappers is generally
  good.
 
  Can we try something new?  Can we use this building data as motivation
  to get new mappers in those areas so that specific mappers will have a
  stronger connection to the data in specific areas?
 
  Something like this:
  - Let's set a smaller grid. Something like a large suburban arterial
  block, say 1.5km / 1 mi square.
  - If you want to import the buildings in one grid square, you have to
  find a new mapper in that area, and they have to do an on the ground
  survey of some part of that area.
  - You can only do so in areas that are no more than four grid squares
  from your home location (or work location).
 
  This is a cross between adding game-features to OSM, banning
  imports and having users adopt part of the map.  :-)
 
  This could be really beneficial to a new mapper.  They could survey
  the local fire station, police station, hospital and schools, and
  perhaps the businesses on the main street, and a few local shopping
  malls.  They get all of those business names, and they'll be
  completely up to date.  They'll add them to the map, and they don't
  have to trace as many building outlines, because they have the
  external source available.
 
  What I hope this will encourage is:
  - new mappers in those areas
  - who will do new foot surveys of interesting things
  - and will feel attached to the data
  - and keep it up to date over time.
 
  And, if the new mapper understands that the building data for their
  area is a reward, they are unlikely to be frustrated or discouraged
  by it if some buildings end up in the wrong place.  the new mapper
  will just fix them.  And carry on mapping.
 
  I know that what I suggest is much harder than simply importing the
  data from one or two accounts.  I suggest that the benefit of finding
  and encouraging new mappers in your area is much greater than just
  having new building outlines in your area.
 
  Now the Negative Army will jump in and say, That's too hard., That
  will never work., I want buildings now.
 
  You can take leadership on this.  Are you the only active mapper in
  your city or region, or one of only

Re: [Talk-us] SOTM-US 2013

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Alex,

Is there going to be a bid process as with previous years?

Thanks!

-Kate

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 5:32 AM, Alex Barth a...@mapbox.com wrote:

 OpenStreetMap US is kicking off planning for State of the Map 2013. With an 
 international conference likely taking place in the fall of 2013 (no 
 confirmation from official places, this is an educated guess at this point), 
 we are shooting for a first half of the year date - thinking around April, 
 May or June. Not being too close to important international OSM dates will 
 allow us to continue to build out the international appeal of the US SOTM.

 Bonnie Bogle, who did much of the organizing at this year's SOTM in Portland, 
 is starting right now with researching viable locations and dates. We are 
 looking for places that will allow for an affordable conference at a great 
 location and date.

 If you'd like to help organize, I invite you to join the planning committee, 
 please let it be known here on this thread or shoot Bonnie an email at 
 bon...@mapbox.com.

 Alex Barth (Secretary OpenStreetMap US)




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Re: [Talk-us] Anyone ever talked about adding more Land Ownership data to OSM?

[Kate Chapman]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:43 AM, Michael Patrick geodes...@gmail.com wrote:


 There are already communities around Disaster Relief,
 etc., and good etiquette would dictate that I wouldn't go in and edit their
 data.

 You wouldn't go in and edit OSM disaster relief data? Why not? If I
 had local knowledge of data in OSM that was of higher quality or newer
 than what I found, I'd go in and fix it. I think HOT would want that.
 If any other disaster group using OSM felt that this was
 inappropriate, then they don't understand OSM.

Yep the whole point of HOT is having people edit their own areas that
they know best. Sure often we do a lot of remote mapping in terms of
response. Ideally though we still want the best available data for the
map same as everyone else. There are expanded tags that we use
sometimes, but the same as any other information if you can improve it
please do.

Best,

-Kate




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Re: [Talk-us] CloudMade's ambassadors

[Kate Chapman]

Thanks for posting this. The first OSM person I ever met was Russ Nelson
when he was a CloudMade ambassador. It was at a mapping party in Baltimore,
that really is what sparked further involvement in OSM for me. Prior to
that I did a bit of mapping in my neighborhood. Thanks Russ!

-Kate

On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 4:59 AM, stevea stevea...@softworkers.com wrote:

 Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember
 CloudMade's ambassadors?)


 I do!  That's how I discovered OSM back in 2009.  Thank you Sarah Manley,
 where ever you are.

 SteveA
 California

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Kate Chapman]

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote:


 It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of
 these two:

 (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web
 pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM
 (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda
 yadda)

 (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of
 humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the
 government hasn't done their job well.


Wow Frederik,

In your post related to one of your pet-peeves about the US OSM community
you managed to stumble across one of MY PET PEEVES!

Honestly I have a hard time with people who spend a lot of time on the
country specific mailing lists telling people that live, are from or often
travel to a specific country or area what OSM is to them. If I'm correct
you have never lived in the US, you have never spent significant time in
the US, you have no plans to move to the US or any other particular
interest, right? So why do you come over to talk-US and tell the people
that do all of those things what OSM should be to them?

If we want a free map of the entire world we should all be free to make our
own meaning out of OpenStreetMap. That is of course within the boundaries
of the license.

Signed,

Someone who has mapped her neighborhood by hand, imported data and traveled
to places of humanitarian crisis all with OSM.  Additionally I live and am
from the US.

-Kate

P.S. Specific to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and your suggestion
that it is mostly people from the US. That is simply not the case. HOT's
new current board is 7 people and only one is from the US. I also suspect
our contributors are more from a few countries in Europe than anywhere
else.




 Bye
 Frederik

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Frederik,

On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 3:36 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 04/04/2015 07:20 PM, Simon Poole wrote:
  I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-)

  Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by
  third parties

 Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in
 the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception
 about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned -
 either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM
 the humanitarian project.


I know we've gotten a bit off topic regarding the subject. My point is that
that OSM is going to work differently in different cultures. I understand
the need for legal compliance completely, but I also think people can
certainly do well thought out imports. The question of stale data in
imports? Honestly at this point that to me is more a matter of tools than
anything else. Are there ways to make it easier to update?

Japan and France spend a lot of time importing data. Do you spend as much
time over there telling them how their OSM culture should be?


 I always put it down to people in the USA traditionally having much
 freer access to data their government has collected (viz. TIGER) and
 therefore more likely to respond to hey, here's people finally making
 their own map with a shrug than with enthusiasm.


It is true, it is hard to excited about mapping roads for example when
there is okay data already existing.


 Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember
 CloudMade's ambassadors?) and in my opinion, every time someone says ah
 we don't have to map this and that, we can take that data from third
 party source, the enthusiasm dampens a bit. Because who wants to be
 seen doing something that might turn out not to be necessary?


The Cloudmade ambassador program was complicated. The people that had the
most success reaching the widest audience were people that came outside of
the OSM community. To me that might be an indication that US culture
developers less people that have the traditional OSM culture fit.

-Kate



 Bye
 Frederik

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Re: [Talk-us] BurningMan 2015

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Frederik,

This has been added ahead of time for years. It will be on the ground and
most people at Burning Man are unlikely to have internet connection, but
use applications with download OSM data. I see no reason this can't be
added this year the same as in the past by the US OSM community.

Thanks,

Kate

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 2:45 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 07/29/2015 07:07 PM, David Chiles wrote:
  In the past  Black Rock City was included in OpenStreetMap. Is the
  generated layout something that could be added?

 OpenStreetMap focuses on things that are on the ground, not things that
 were or will be on the ground.

 There are some exception to this, for example there are tags to map
 things that are planned but don't yet exist; this is not encouraged
 for widespread use but might be applicable to Burning Man.

 For maximum flexibility independent of OSM's old-fashioned adherence to
 physical realities, I'd suggest to set up your own instance of an OSM
 server together with editor(s) and rendering tool chain, which would
 enable you and anyone interested to make the most detailed Burning Man
 map ever, and even retain the full data base from every year, offer
 side-by-side rendering and whatnot.

 Bye
 Frederik

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Re: [Talk-us] GeoBadges 1.0 for OpenStreetMap

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Simon,

The groups releasing Geobadges "TeachOSM with support from Mapstory.org and
American Geographical Society" are not large multi-million dollar US
organizations. None of them have highly paid in-house lawyers. Thank you
for pointing out the legislation, do you hangout on all of the other
country specific lists to point out legislation to people?

I was an active member of the community in 2009 and I'm unaware of any
specific discussions of this nature. There have been efforts to perform
outreach to high schools and scouts at least since that time. If something
was too sensitive to minute, then how is anyone supposed to know that is
the case?

-Kate







On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Simon Poole <si...@poole.ch> wrote:

> Hi Kate
>
> The changes on Geobadges are naturally OK (in a way, more see below)  it
> just isn't backed up by measures on the OSMF side. Aka we don't do any age
> checking at all and I'm slightly concerned that addressing US youths and
> only having (whatever) enforcement for half of the equation is not such a
> good idea. I'm further slightly concerned that multi-million budget US
> based organisations, likely with dozens of highly paid in-house lawyers,
> need me to point out their local legislation to them.
>
> The more general, relevant for OSM, issue is that we should fix the
> problem properly where we can, given that sooner or later we wont be able
> to ignore it. And it seems that it is now "sooner".  Either arrange things
> that we are either exempt from getting consent from the parents, having a
> procedure in place for this to be documented or at least some measures in
> place that outline what the potential dangers are (doodling "my home" on
> the map has a different quality if a 60 year does it than a 10 year old) .
>
> To be clear: "I" don't want to exclude a 12 year old US resident that is
> interested in collecting  data in their neighbourhood from making surveying
> for OSM their hobby*, as a result I'm slightly unhappy with the above, but
> short term it is likely the only thing we can do.
>
> As to "people all over the world are encouraging teenagers": there are
> likely numerous other countries where their is similar legislation. it is
> simply that the US is a  well known case. The oldest discussions of this go
> back to at least 2009 (before I was an active member of the community).
> From the LWG side, if I'm not totally mistaken, the policy has always been
> to not specifically target children and youths. This may have been
> considered so sensitive that it was never minuted,, but the current and
> past board members that were involved are well aware of this.
>
> Simon
>
>
> * personal opinion as a parent is that I don't see a value in trying to
> get kids to spend even more time in from of a screen simply arm chairing,
> but going outside collecting stuff, great.
>
>
> Am 17.11.2015 um 22:11 schrieb Kate Chapman:
>
> Hi Simon,
>
> What do you mean by address the OSM side of things? People all over the
> world are encouraging teenagers to contribute to OSM, this has been on
> going for years. Steven removed the part which encouraged people under the
> age of 13. What is the issue?
>
> -Kate
>
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Simon Poole <si...@poole.ch> wrote:
>
>> Thais good, but doesn't address the OSM side of things.
>>
>> Historically, aka pre 2013 revision of COPPA, we couldn't touch sub
>> 13teeners with a long pole. That may have improved a bit, theoretically,
>> with the 2013 revision of COPPA, but nobody has actually done the foot- and
>> paperwork involved to find out and address any issues.
>>
>> I don't want to dig too deep in to the things that might be considered
>> problematic given general US paranoia on such topics, but I would consider
>> completely ignoring this a bit risky.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Am 17.11.2015 um 19:03 schrieb Steven Johnson:
>>
>> Hi Simon,
>> The developers selected the Credly platform specifically so that the OSM
>> community is not in the business of collecting and managing personally
>> identifiable information (PII). Also, we're doing two things to insure
>> GeoBadges users understand terms and conditions of the badging process:
>>
>> 1. We're adding language to the 'About' section of the site to clarify
>> the relationship: *"**For GeoBadge earning and issuing, we work with the
>> Credly.com platform. Credly manages all earner-level data and security. By
>> partnering with Credly, we can help earners increase the impact of their
>> achievements by sharing it on social media platforms and connecting to
>> other di

Re: [Talk-us] GeoBadges 1.0 for OpenStreetMap

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Simon,

What do you mean by address the OSM side of things? People all over the
world are encouraging teenagers to contribute to OSM, this has been on
going for years. Steven removed the part which encouraged people under the
age of 13. What is the issue?

-Kate

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Simon Poole  wrote:

> Thais good, but doesn't address the OSM side of things.
>
> Historically, aka pre 2013 revision of COPPA, we couldn't touch sub
> 13teeners with a long pole. That may have improved a bit, theoretically,
> with the 2013 revision of COPPA, but nobody has actually done the foot- and
> paperwork involved to find out and address any issues.
>
> I don't want to dig too deep in to the things that might be considered
> problematic given general US paranoia on such topics, but I would consider
> completely ignoring this a bit risky.
>
> Simon
>
>
> Am 17.11.2015 um 19:03 schrieb Steven Johnson:
>
> Hi Simon,
> The developers selected the Credly platform specifically so that the OSM
> community is not in the business of collecting and managing personally
> identifiable information (PII). Also, we're doing two things to insure
> GeoBadges users understand terms and conditions of the badging process:
>
> 1. We're adding language to the 'About' section of the site to clarify
> the relationship: *"**For GeoBadge earning and issuing, we work with the
> Credly.com platform. Credly manages all earner-level data and security. By
> partnering with Credly, we can help earners increase the impact of their
> achievements by sharing it on social media platforms and connecting to
> other digital badging projects that also use Credly. To learn more about
> Credly, visit credly.com .*
>
> *GeoBadges complies with the COPPA and DCMA laws of the United States.
> Only individuals age 13+ are eligible to earn GeoBadges. If any content on
> the site seems inappropriate or out of compliance, please contact us
> immediately at  geobad...@americangeo.org
> ."*
>
> 2. We're removing the Grade 3-5 option, since clearly that would be
> marketed to under 13.
>
> Thanks for your concern. Hope I've addressed your question. Best regards,
>
>
> -- SEJ
> -- twitter: @geomantic
> -- skype: sejohnson8
>
> "Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!" - v.141, *On
> Nature, *Empedocles
>
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Simon Poole  wrote:
>
>>
>> I assume that you have got legal advice on the COPPA related consequences
>> of your activities and are willing to share this with the OSMF?
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Am 17.11.2015 um 02:45 schrieb Steven Johnson:
>>
>> Hello list,
>>
>> Just in time for #OSMGeoweek, TeachOSM with support from Mapstory.org and
>> American Geographical Society, has released the first OpenStreetMap
>> Surveyor I badge.[1]
>>
>> The badge is aimed at the newest open mappers of any age and is awarded
>> for successful acquisition of basic editing skills on OpenStreetMap. We
>> envision this badge to be the first in a constellation of more specialized
>> badges based on skill sets, domains, area knowledge, and so forth. For more
>> info on the mechanics of GeoBadges, see the AGS blog post[2].
>>
>> We have a special deal during OSMGeoweek: Anyone who maps in any of the
>> #100Mapathons, #MissingMaps, #PeaceCorps, or #HOT events during OSMGeoweek
>> will be eligible to claim the badge. Just make sure to comment your
>> changeset with one of the 2015 OSMGeoweek hashtags so we can find it.
>>
>> Happy Mapping, everyone...
>>
>> [1] http://bit.ly/1NAhybF
>> [2] http://bit.ly/1Pwsi0G 
>> -- SEJ
>> -- twitter: @geomantic
>> -- skype: sejohnson8
>>
>> "Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!" - v.141, *On
>> Nature, *Empedocles
>>
>>
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[Talk-us] Office Hours to Help with SotM-US Talk Submissions

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

I'm holding office hours to help with SotM-US Talk Submissions(1).

The next one is tomorrow at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific.

Join on Slack (https://osmus-slack.herokuapp.com/) or through Zoom (
https://zoom.us/j/469162782).

Let me know how I can help.

Thanks,

-Kate

(1)
http://www.openstreetmap.us/2017/07/office-hours-for-sotm-us-submissions/
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[Talk-us] Talks and Scholarship Submissions Extended SOTM-US

[Kate Chapman]

Hi All,

We've extended the call for participation and scholarships until July 14th
for SOTM-US.

http://2018.stateofthemap.us/

State of the Map US is an annual gathering of volunteers, mappers,
organizations and businesses who collaborate and work with OpenStreetMap.
This year we are getting together in Detroit on October 5th until the 7th.

Scholarships are intended for anyone who might not otherwise be able to
attend. So if you are thinking "wow, I'd love to go to SOTM-US, but I don't
see how I can afford it!" Then apply for a scholarship. You probably also
have something you want to share with the OSM-US community, so submit a
talk too!

If you have any questions or just want some help formulating a talk
proposal feel free to reach out directly to me.

Thanks!

-Kate
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