Hi, I am currently with Nicolas at the GIS for the UN <http://gisfortheun.com/> conference in Geneva, organized by ESRI (for those who do not know nothing about GIS, it is a kind of Microsoft for GIS softwares - except they work better than Windows 8 :). Good update about ESRI products and capacities cause I did not use ArcGIS much (or at all) since 2011. I am definitely an Open source software fan, but ESRI still remains by far the first GIS software used by humanitarian organizations and we need to see how to interact with it so that the OSM data is more (and more) used, what is basically our main goal. But actually the ESRI workshops will stand tomorrow and the day after to know how ESRI. Today was more keynotes and kind of speed presenting from various organizations. Was great to meet people from MapAction and SBTF but also responders, GIS officers from the UN we meet less and see either their use of OSM, sometimes massive, or their limited knowledge about it. We really have a lot to fill on this. Providing more consolidated data is also a key, as often OSM mixes very precise detailed areas to some others scarcely mapped. Improving this should clearly one main collective objective (I talked about it a few weeks ago here<https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/sev_hotosm/diary/21038>) and the TM v2 will be a great help. An opportunity to know more as well about the http://opendata.arcgis.com/initiative (thanks Mikel for the suggestion). Adoption of this folder and approach would allow HOT's humanitarian partners to more easily share relevant data into OSM.
Sincerely, Severin
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