[HOT] HOT's OSM Tasking Manager 3.0 Development Kick-Off!!

[Blake Girardot HOT/OSM]

Dear Friends,

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)  is leading a community focused
software development project to design, specify, develop and release
the next generation of its OSM Tasking Manager 2.0 (TM2) software.
With the generous support of the USAID GeoCenter, experts in the use
of geospatial tools and analysis in a humanitarian context, HOT will
be able to lead a community driven project, in collaboration with some
of the best open source geospatial designers and developers in the
world to produce a user friendly Tasking Manager 3.0 that is focused
on engaging users to better connect them to the OSM community.

The project is OSM community focused and we are looking forward to
involving as many OSM users and skilled designers, coders and system
admin community members as possible. The Tech Challenge we are issuing
is designed for collaboration to deliver the final project. If you
think you have some needed skills to contribute, you are encouraged to
apply, individuals, 2 person teams, companies, or consortia. You will
be working directly with the Tasking Manager stakeholders throughout
the process to support you in and agile, collaborative development
process.

The existing Tasking Manager 2.0 version of the software has been used
by many organizations and 10's of thousands of people to put about 30
million people on the map just in the past 2 years.

Think about the impact of that for a moment, 30 million lives touched
for the better in some small ways by a software package.

You and your colleagues in the international OpenStreetMap (OSM)
community have really put the software to the test and pushed its
limits while making a difference in people's lives.

The overall increase in usage and the new and innovative ways people
are using the software have helped identify a number of areas that
need adjustments and improvements.

Through a community driven process we will develop and implement
significant improvements to functionality of TM2 organized around the
5 key goals for the project, UI/UX improvements, better mapper
engagement, improved project creation and management tools, validation
and exposing a complete API.

A full description of the Tasking Manager 3 project objectives and
methods can be found in the project Terms of Reference here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rUiDk4jMiWZ2gXPJPyAM0td4VGCNwhCBo_E-rsBnc1M

Comments on that document are open and welcome, please leave any
thoughts or comments on it!

A HOT "Tech Challenge" has been released to find the right team of
folks to make the most of this opportunity through their skills and
experience in OSM, design, community engagement, and code.

https://hotosm.org/updates/2016-12-01_hots_osm_tasking_manager_30_tech_challenge

There are many ways for the community to contribute throughout the
process. We will have early and often builds for testing and many
channels for feedback.

First of all, if you have contributed any comment via the HOT email
list about the Tasking Manager, your experiences, new mappers,
validation, project design, etc, thank you, thank you! We have already
started incorporating those comments into the project. Please keep
them coming. Same thing applies to already filed GitHub issues, thank
you so much, those are what we are working from as well. Now is a good
time to go back to GitHub and look for any issues you have filed and
update them if you have any new insights or ideas.

Join a working group is also a great way to be more directly involved.
The Tech Working Group will be heavily involved with the back end
version control, github and deployments, but the Training Working
Group is already playing a huge role in UI, mapper engagement, project
creation, etc. and that is just going to continue I hope. I as Project
Manager will be at all of their meetings to keep them up-to-date and
get their input on every part of the project and after the project as
a TrWG member :)

Attend community meetings on mumble. We will have several voice based
community meetings on HOT's Mumble server throughout the project.

The 2 co-equal  channels for high involvement or closely tracking
progress, you have to sign in, but it is worth it:
HOT Slack - https://hotosm-slack.herokuapp.com/
HOT's GitHub - https://github.com/hotosm

No sign in required for:
IRC: https://webchat.oftc.net/ channel: HOT
Working Group Meetings
Email
Skype if you already use it (mention it is TM3 related :)

I am HOT's overall Project Manager for the Tasking Manager 3
development process, please contact me anytime if you have any
comment, feedback or questions.

Please meet Ethan Nelson (https://github.com/ethan-nelson ) he has
been a leading volunteer in the HOT dev community for the Tasking
Manager. This project is already off to a great start because of the
time and effort Ethan and others have put into the Tasking Manager for
the past year and a half. Our software and discussions can tend to
focus on mappers, validators and project creators, but the 

[HOT] Help HOT give 10 communities the resources to map!

[Tyler Radford]

Dear all,
Over the last 2 years, led by several Boards of Directors, HOT has
developed a concept for our new micro-grants program that is the key focus
of this year's campaign  http://donate.hotosm.org. We're thrilled with the
outpouring of support for local OSM communities in only the first four days
of the campaign.

We're very happy to answer questions as part of a positive and constructive
discussion. My virtual door is always open and anyone in the OSM community
is welcome to ask questions on the list or send me a personal note at
tyler.radf...@hotosm.org
. Like any new
initiative, we don't have all the answers, and are still working out some
details, but one point is clear: donors who give to the campaign may choose
that *100%* of their contribution goes directly to fund micro-grants to OSM
communities.

We'll publish a blog post on our website next week to provide some
additional details on the concept for the program. In the meantime, if
you'd like us to address a particular point, just let me know so we can
include it as part of the blog post.

Discussions of stereotypes of nationalities are not constructive and
hurtful to many of us that are in this together as part of the
OSM ecosystem.

Information and financials on HOT are openly available at
http://www.guidestar.org/profile/27-3166713 HOT financials are prepared
annually by an independent external accounting firm. After an
internal financial audit last year which accounted for all funding, we also
improved the structure of our accounts to conform to nonprofit industry
standards (UCOA).

Warmly,
Tyler

*Tyler Radford*
Executive Director
tyler.radf...@hotosm.org

@TylerSRadford

*Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team*
*Using OpenStreetMap for Humanitarian Response & Economic Development*
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On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 12:22 AM, Mikel Maron > wrote:

> Hey all, please dampen down the conspiracy theories, personal bitterness
> and politics. There are ways to ask questions with out being damning, and
> to share perspectives without lowering ourselves to populist rhetoric and
> smearing. Let’s try better. The etiquette page on the wiki is a good read
> to get our conversations on the right footing
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette.
> Thanks -Mikel
>
> * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
>
>
> On Thursday, December 1, 2016 8:39 PM, john whelan  > wrote:
>
>
>
> One of the problems with giving aid is only about a tenth of the money
> given is used in the way one would hope.
> Probably the most pressing problem in Africa at the moment is corruption
> and in many ways aid doesn't help this particular problem.
> Mapping in OSM is way to assist without fear that the funds will be
> diverted.
> Money given by government agencies stands a little more chance that the
> aid will get through although there is always the temptation to say it must
> be shipped on ships from the donor country or must be spent on goods from
> the donor country.
> Given that HOT Inc exists in the US and given the USA culture, who else
> could elect Donald, I think we can expect them to present themselves in
> this manner.
> Whilst I would hope that requirements and benefits can be presented I'm
> not sure that this is in the US tradition.  Given the attention span of the
> target audience again is it worth the effort to HOT Inc?  Should the
> message have been restricted to those with a US address?
> If I'm cynical then the task manager has been very effective.  The
> training group has identified problem areas and come up with solutions.
> However HOT is not just HOT Inc there are many people involved in creating
> maps and the tools used.  Germany is home to many of them.   The OSM wiki
> contains much wisdom, the page I'm thinking of was put together by a
> Canadian, well a Québécois which is practically the same.
> I'd like to see two slots on the most urgent slots in tasks reserved for
> projects that are run by OSM groups in affected areas to give some sort of
> recognition to the work they are doing.  If nothing else they're learning
> project management skills that they can apply elsewhere.
> In sum HOT Inc probably deserves some support but on transparency I think
> it could do better.
> Cheerio John
>
> On 1 Dec 2016 7:16 pm, "Severin Menard"  > wrote:
>
> Let us figure out what is happening here:
> HOT US Inc starts a micro-grant program supposedly to support 10 local OSM
> communities worldwide by raising money. Some of them being already
> HOT-Sponsored 

Re: [HOT] How to map buildings in very dense suburbs areas? Any hints/materials.... ?

[Eduardo Gonzalez]

Thanks a lot Pete for the tip and Blake for the screencast! This really
gives a good idea on how to deal with similar situations.

This definetely doesn't makes the task easy ;) because it simply is a hard
one. But having a clearer idea of what is a good work flow helps a lot.

Cheers,
Eduardo

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 7:36 PM, Pete Masters 
wrote:

> Hi Eduardo, it is tough mapping!
>
> Blake Girardot made this video for a project that focused on dense urban
> neighbourhoods of Damascus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPiGntG6fs;
> feature=youtu.be
>
> I hope it helps
>
> Pete
>
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Eduardo Gonzalez 
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Does any one have any advice or link to information on how to map
>> buildings in areas like in task http://tasks.hotosm.org/projec
>> t/2108#task/149 with very dense concentration of buildings? Check on the
>> South-West corner area delimited by that bigger road, the river and the
>> high building.
>>
>> At least in Asia and especially in vulnerable areas, this kind of areas
>> seem very common. What would be a good way deal with this so that the
>> result is good enough but also not an impossible task?
>>
>> I am posting this same question to the HOT list, not easy, would be nice
>> to have a video or such. One good suggestion could be "not for beginners,
>> do preferably with JOSM building tools". In this kind of tasks beginners
>> could focus on mapping roads, rivers, channels...
>>
>> Any advice appreciated!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Eduardo
>>
>>
>> ___
>> HOT mailing list
>> HOT@openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Pete Masters*
> Missing Maps Project Coordinator
> +44 7921 781 518 <+44%207921%20781518>
>
> missingmaps.org 
>
> *@pedrito1414* 
> *@theMissingMaps* 
> *facebook.com/MissingMapsProject*
> 
>
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