As I write this, I am wrapping up a year on the OpenStreetMap US Board of Directors. The Ada Initiative has been a huge asset to me in my work on the board. Without the anti-harassment policies and other resources found on the Geek Feminism wiki, I’d have had a much harder time pushing to make State of the Map US, and the OSM community in general more welcoming to women. If you’ve been following the OSMF-talk mailing list at all over the past two weeks, you know our work is far from over.

I have donated $256 to the Ada Initiative, as a token of my appreciation for they work they have done in making my own job easier– I challenge you to follow suit and help me raise $2048 for The Ada Initiative from the OpenStreetMap community. Their annual fundraising campaign is ending on Wednesday– donate today to make a difference for women in FOSS and Open Culture, especially OSM!

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If you follow me online, you know that yesterday I spent much of my day shouting (excitedly!) about the OSM-US board elections and the fact that of the 8 people who are running, 4 of us are women. (Yes, I am running too)

This is incredibly significant. Women make up a small percentage of the tech community and an even smaller percentage of the open tech community. Anecdotally, I can tell you that the OpenStreetMap community in the US (and most other places) is overwhelmingly male. However, there is nothing gendered about the use of the data we are curating. If we’re building a map for everyone, by everyone, shouldn’t it actually be by everyone?

Bridging the gender gap in OSM (and tech at large) isn’t going to happen overnight. However, the fact that as of this morning four women are running for the OSM-US board is a huge deal. For reference, last year no women ran. Let me repeat that. Last year, five people ran for five positions. No women. This year, 8 people (so far) are running for 5 positions. Four women. In fact, no women have been on the OSM-US board since Kate (current OSMF board member) and Thea served on the 2010-2011 board.

Let me be clear about a few things:

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The OSM-US Board elections are happening from Oct 5-12. Take a look at the Elections wiki to learn more, see who is running, and consider running yourself.

UPDATE: I wrote another diary post on the significance of women running for the OSM-US board. You may want to check it out.

OpenStreetMap is an amazing project that intersects geography, technology, data, free and open source software and culture, international development, agency, and community. Each of these components of the project are vitally important, but what I am passionate about is community.

I have been a part of the OpenStreetMap community for over two years, and in that time I have helped plan several #editathons, attended SOTM-US in Portland, I received a scholarship to, coordinated volunteers at, and gave a talk on organizing local in-person OSM communities at SOTM-US in San Francisco. I also organized a distributed Birthday Sprint for OSM’s 9th birthday.

I am running for the OSM-US Board because I care deeply about this community and I want to see it continue to thrive. On the Board I will continue to plan events for the community, both in-person and distributed; for mappers and developers; for community members who have helped the project grow from its infancy and potential mappers who haven’t yet heard of OSM. I will work to ensure that the OSM community is a welcoming, inclusive group so that the map we are building reflects the rich diversity of those who will use it. I will work to ensure that we are finding the best ways to spread the word about the project. I want to make sure that we’re thinking about the future as we’re making decisions in the present. I want to identify the sticking points in how we communicate with each other and find actionable solutions that benefit and enrich our group dialogue.

In short, for all of the strengths of OpenStreetMap, at the end of the day we are only as strong as our community. Ensuring the health of that community is my priority.