Hi, Serge. As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a place.
At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you get the know my personal history with OSM: - When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project. All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in my region. My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. My second editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial district. In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. There can be value in both. - I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the community. That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I described in a different email how I do so. But I contribute in other ways as well. Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby neighborhood. I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them, helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they returned. I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name. However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I believe several of those students will become regular contributors. Thanks for reading! Eleanor On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Serge Wroclawski <emac...@gmail.com> wrote: > Eleanor, > > I want to clarify some things: > > On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Eleanor Tutt <eleanor.t...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we > > probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the > full > > story. > > I believe that the story that the board tells reflect the overall > experience of the board. Paul did an analysis of the mapping activites > of the prospective board members before they were elected. Some of the > board members are not active OSM mappers, so it shouldn't come as a > surprise to anyone that people who don't do manual surveying don't > talk about manual surveying. > > > I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your > > interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you > > characterize as an "indoor event," while it does admittedly have a photo > of > > people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming > > mapathon is "the great outdoors." > > The events are characterized as "Edit-a-thons" and they were designed > to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members > of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The > advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike > Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next > week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us > archives) they're still largely indoor events. > > The only reason that OSM NYC runs them as outdoor events is that I > believe strongly that the experience of going out and surveying has > value- not only data quality value, but emotional value. There's value > in being connected to the place you live that can't be captured via > areal photo or governmental dataset. > > - Serge >
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