The “UK method” is appropriate for large organisations but adds significant extra work for smaller organisations. I can confirm that OSM UK does not do do this.

If you want a low effort, high gain change, then one suggestion would be that Local Chapters have to offer out any work to the community prior to taking it on themselves. The OSM UK Local Chapter does this. Each time we are approached to do paid work, we share the scope of the work openly with our community. Anyone is free to apply to do this work and the company can pick who they want without interference from OSM UK. This has been successful on several occasions for us. In other instances nobody came forward to do the work. In those cases the OSM UK Local Chapter did the work via one or more of the board members and the money raised went in to the OSM UK account for use on OSM UK projects.

If you ban Local Chapters from engaging in paid work, then you reduce the number of ways that Local Chapters can raise money. Less money means less ability to support the local community.

Good to see the Mapbox layer I created getting some use :-)

I think we should let each local group decide what works best for them. We should therefore not add extra rules that might work well in some parts of the world but not in others.

On clauses in the Articles of Association, my own experience of helping to set up OSM UK is that you should be really careful what clauses you add to the Articles of Association. Every extra clause makes it harder to do something and what might seem like a good idea at first, could cause you more trouble that what it is worth. I think it is much better to define principles but allow flexibility. With regular elections the board can be held to account if the local community feel it is deviating too far from the principles.

Summary: Let local groups decide and ensure that the local members can elect new directors / vote on resolutions if they feel the need to change direction.

As an aside, I suspect it it these UK statutory rules that has led Mike to state that “My candidacy for the OSMF board has been vetted by communications and legal representatives at Facebook”. As in, his employer would have needed to understand that Mike’s duties to OSMF are significant and legislated above his duties as an employee of Facebook. They would have wanted to understand and agree to this.

I had exactly the same when I was a director of OSM UK. My employer, which is completely outside the geospatial industry, needed to assess and agree my candidacy. It was then kept on their conflict of interest records. It’s all pretty normal practice across not just OSM but in all other sectors.

Hi ndrw6,

I’m not sure if you are aware, but all new (and existing) directors have to comply with significant legal duties of being a Director. It’s worth reading the following link if you’re not aware. It sets out that directors need to promote the company (OSMF in this case), apply their own independent judgement (and not that of someone else or an employer) and avoid/manage conflicts of interest.

I trust all directors to understand and take seriously these statutory duties. If they don’t then they will be in beach of primary legislation and can be prosecuted.

Being a Director is a privilege and one that people should take very seriously. As I’m sure all those standing for election do.

I’m summary, voting in a director who happens to be employed by another company is not giving a company control or representation on the OSMF board as that would be a direct beach of the law.

https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2019/02/21/7-duties-of-a-company-director/

Aside: A note on timing:-
Proposals to change the Articles of Association require a “Special Resolution”. To pass at least 75% of the votes cast must be in favour of the Special Resolution. Under sec283(6) of the Companies Act 2006 the full text of a Special Resolution must be included within the notice of the meeting. Unlike OSM UK, the OSMF have not specified a longer notice period in their Articles of Association, as such I believe the notice period is 14 days. With the meeting planned for 12 December, this means that the notice has to go out on or before 27 November. This means that the members, and only those who view the osmf-talk mailing list, have been given just 5 weeks to consider and discuss a proposal. They have not been briefed on the results of any legal counsel and therefore do not have a complete picture. Are changes to the Articles of Association even the best way to reduce the risk of a takeover? Nobody knows as nobody has seen the legal advise!

My second, smaller comment relates to training and other impacts on WG members:

Has the board considered what training it may need to provide to the working group members to help them switch to any new tools/platforms they will be expected to use? Has the board considered how much extra volunteer time it will consume to adjust to new systems? This does sound a bit petty but volunteer time is precious. When I was on SotM WG I used the tools I knew as they did the job and allowed me to focus on what mattered (i.e. the conference and scholarships). Having to learn alternatives would have diverted my attention from the core tasks.

Wow lots and lots of amazing work. Well done and thank you.

I think the OS are responsible for mapping the buildings although I’m no expert. The local authorities do feed some data in such as new street names and addresses. I think the recent changes that OS had made will make it easier for local authorities to publish their own geospatial data but there is a specific exclusion on building footprints.

The last comment was targeted at any corporate readers. Whilst we have what we believe is a good quote, the price is too high for any one individual to cover.

Hi ABZ_OSM, I might be wrong but I think the new datasets that are the topic of this diary post have come from local governments GIS team’s rather than from AI image detection. Nevertheless AI buildings is something that Microsoft has been releasing whilst Facebook focused on AI road detections.

As you rightly stated, we have good road coverage for the UK but would benefit from more buildings. It’s unlikely that we’ll get any “official” data as this is all done by Ordnance Survey and they clearly don’t want to release this as open data.

Manual or AI tracing of buildings is therefore our best bet. OSM UK has an option to access 12.5cm imagery (at a tiny cost for a company interested in OSM) so let’s discuss… :-D

Marrissa: See https://2020.stateofthemap.org

Øukasz: Yes, communication is very fragmented. Most working groups have their own channels. Minutes of the meetings are published on the OSMF website if you wish to follow. You can also ask to join the working groups.

Nice solution but if I remember correctly the LG360 does not include GPS so was reliant on the phone (and the LG app) for this. How do you ensure you have location data for your images?

I had just been getting back in to mapillary in the last few weeks. Pleased to see the commitment to continuing to make the images and detections available to OpenStreetMap, plus going further to make them free for commercial use. I am still a bit concerned about the very long term but that is nothing new (same concern with Mapillary, same concern with OpenStreetCam, same concern with the other similar projects).

Went out today and collected more photos. For now the benefits far outweigh the risks. Hoping to see the benefits grow as the development progresses at pace without the need to worry about finances for a while.

Same here in Warwick. JOSM to trace the buildings and StreetComplete to collect the addresses by survey.

Oh and of course there is an opportunity for fraud here. Another thing that makes the work of the microgrant committee that bit harder.

I suspect that the OSMF and microgrant committee would welcome your views on how to minimise the risk of fraud (minimise as it’s impossible to eliminate risk unless you just stop doing anything). I’m sure they would also be keen to hear your ideas on how to balance extra adminstrative bureaucracy introduced to limit the risk, with the resources available to them (i.e. the microgrant committee volunteers time). Also and obviously, any additional checks would have to be done in a humane way and avoid a ‘witch hunt’ interrogation.

Perhaps you could start by considering what additional steps would be required to understand why the hourly rate ranges from 7 to 80 EUR. Some way of testing that without persecuting the applicants.

Of course people are going to design their own application so that their chances are maximized. If anything that makes my first comment even more relevant. Adding in additional cost weakens the application. Therefore, as I stated, the key take-away I took from reading the applications was just how much I take for granted. I am lucky and have no need to risk weakening an application (had I submitted an individual application) by asking for support to pay for broadband.

I’m still not sure what your main take-away was but it seems like you are suggesting treating everyone the same. Given that this will make those applicants that have had to ask for extra support look worse, then in my view this would be a failure of the OSMF. It would favour those who already have more time and money. It would do nothing to help diversity.

Several years ago I used to share your view. I work in an engineering company which is white male dominated (transparency: I am a white male). I used to think that as long as the recruitment process is fair then everything will be fine after a few years. My view has now changed and I strongly believe that I personaly, and my company has a role to play. We can keep the interview process entirely fair whilst still supporting women and minority groups. One example is going in to schools to promote engineering to everyone thereby helping to remove the idea that it is a man’s job.

When it comes to the OSMF microgrant scheme I see this more like the latter in my analogy (and therefore OSMF should be able to take into account differences in people’s backgrounds) rather than the interview in my analogy (in which everyone is treated exactly the same). I suspect your view is different. At the end of the day, the elected OSMF board is responsible for deciding which path to take. If you or I don’t like it then we get a democratic chance to say so at the next board elections.

I believe that the microgrant committee have a very hard task ahead of them and I am glad I am not part of the group having to make difficult decisions. Unfortunately I suspect that whatever they decide they will be criticised for it. The same was true when I was on the SotM WG and was part of the group selecting talks and scholars. Ultimately the endless criticism eventually wore me down and sadly I stopped volunteering my time to the SotM WG. Ironically this links to the other key OSMF topic right now (a framework for paid employment) in which they are concerned how paid employees could lead to demotivated volunteers. In my case it was volunteers who expected the world from me and criticised at every opportunity that eventually broke me. There was only so many late nights after a full day at work that I could take. Food for thought….

P.s. I wrote above that the interview process is entirely fair. Of course it isn’t as it depends on which country you were born in. I have on multiple occasions had to put absolutely fantastic applicants in the reject pile simply because they have no right to work in my country. I found that very hard and saddening. Decisions are not just numbers and words, they are people and livelihoods. Be glad when it’s not you having to make these cruel choices.

P.p.s thank you for writing in German. It allowed me to read your message as you intended.

Oh good. For a moment I was feeling guilty about taking things for granted all these years. But in fact it is the opposite - it is other people’s greed that has driven them to their view that they should have their broadband paid by the OSMF. How absolutely rotten of them.

(this entire comment is off course sarcasm)

The key take-away I took from reading the applications was just how much I take for granted. For example I have no need to ask for support to pay for my broadband but lots of communities requested this.

For me, this makes me worry about the whole concept of do-ocracy. How can a do-ocracy genuinely represent a truly diverse population when some communities are so lucky with access to cheap internet and loads of free time, whilst others are living hand-to-mouth?

P.S. the fact that you found the free time to do your analysis suggests to me that you are one of the lucky few. Did you therefore get the same feeling as me (about how much we take for granted)?

There is no compromising OSM if you copy details from the website as we were given permission to do this - osm.wiki/Asda_stores_in_the_United_Kingdom

I know some people may say this is not as formal as they would like but it’s a pretty clear indication that it’s ok. I imported petrol stations at the time (following community consultation).

Best regard Rob

Unfortunately I don’t know much about either the DWG or the OWG. I’ve usually been better at the “softer” skill set, hence why I was on the SotM WG for 2013, and 2015 to 2018. I left that group mainly due to a lack of time, but also because there were some members of the OSM community that would always complain no matter what you did. After so many years staying up past midnight to support SotM during busy periods (including on the night before my paid work’s biggest day in the annual calendar) it had taken it’s toll on me. No idea if DWG or OWG members feel the same.

You mentioned above that some of the corporate members “highlighted the role of AI in rapidly detecting vandalism”. Perhaps the DWG could look there for extra support? Sounds like they all want the same outcome (best local data for improving OSM).

Other than that all I can offer as a suggestion is a targetted promotion campaign. We have done mentions at Foundation election time and during SotM. Sounds like we need something more targetted or sustained.

Failing that, how about paying for what we need? It sounds like there are a lot of people without work now due to Covid-19. Perhaps it is a great time for OSMF to step in with some short term contract work. Gets us what we need and helps a few people during what is clearly a tough time globally.