I've been a mapper for just a short while. A little over 1 and a half. I'm surprised how much I like mapping in OSM. There is a real empowerment. For example, at our last mapping party, I met the mayor of the town we held the meetup. He was getting ready to kick of their Centennial celebration. I was able to help by mapping the brand new visitor's center that they were getting ready to open the following day. At the same event I ran into to folks that were changing the name of their mobile home park to a brand new co-op. With their help I was able to enter in the boundaries of the park along with the new name.
I wonder about the future of OSM, where it is going and how it's getting there. I've been a Fedora (linux) user since the inception of Fedora. I like how Red Hat provides the employees to work with the community to solve problems. How does that happen in OSM? In my short time I see some weakness. For example, our last mapping party, it would have been nice to invite local mappers to join us. But there isn't an easy way. Since OSM doesn't have a regular announcement means, there is no real easy method to reach out. It would be nice to be able to use the OSM mail application to announce meet ups within x distance of the meetup location. We're mappers, how hard can it be to run a query? Another concern I have is the OSM main map. We have Wikipedia and website links as well as telephone numbers. Shouldn't our flagship home page have links for points of interest? Those are just two areas that need work. As I read this mailing list there are other global issues similar to mine. It seems to me that OSM needs a full time staff that can work with the community to build OSM for the future. I would think that at the rate we are growing, we need to be planning for a much bigger future. -- Clifford OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
_______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk