Have you ever thought “Gee I wonder if you took #OpenStreetMap data for North America, and coloured the image based on the distance to the nearest building?”

No? What kind of person are you?

(red=<1km, orange=1→2km, yellow=2→5km,green=5→50km, blue=>50km Image © CC-BY-SA 4.0 technomancy.org, Map Data © ODbL OpenStreetMap Contributors) Canonical Web Page: “Distance to nearest building in North America” on Technomancy.org

Here’s some of the things I’ve been doing in OpenStreetMap in August 2020.

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• Mapping
  • Same old building mapping
  • I was on a cycle trip lately, and tried out mapping with StreetComplete on the go. It worked good, but you have to keep your eyes on the road.
• OSMF Board
  • Draft Attribution Guidelines. The OSMF needs to write guidelines on how to fulfil our attribution requirements, and the board is working on this.
    • Email with our corporate cousel about proposed draft.
  • Hiring
    • The OSMF feels the need to hire, so we’ve been talking inside the board about this.
  • Corporate members: A corporation asked to join, but we have to talk them them about some of their software names, and how the OSMF’s trademark policy affects that. No reply yet.
  • Local Chapters: Some small work on OSGeo Oceania application.
  • HOT & OSMF: Some more drafts & emails about a possible short term memorandum of understanding.
• Coding
  • Submitted a patch/pull request for iD to add an “Irish Pub” preset. It’s not (yet!) a popular tag, so I am skeptical. But I do try to map Irish pubs when travelling

Previously: June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 Mar 2020 Feb 2020 Jan 2020

My June 2020 in OSM

• OSMF Board
  • Continued work on version 2 of the OSMF Local Chapters Agreement, posted to osmf-talk@ & engaged with the discussion & in person discussions
  • Drafted reply to complaints about the recent trademark grant to Cesium. Did an internal board poll.
  • New Attribution Guidelines are being worked on, so we had a call with some corporate members of the OSMF.
  • The OSMF & HOT wants to work better together
    • We had a board to board chat to catch up. Nothing to report, just a catch up
    • HOT’s name uses the OSMF’s trademark and they suggested a contract to cover that, they proposed something, we edited it, and send it back. The beurocracy continues.
• LGBTQ mapping
  • Watched the mapbeks webinar. It was aimed at a lower level of knowledge than I have, so I didn’t learn much. Since they switched in & out of English, I was only able to follow half of it 😆
  • Discovered Qiekub, a map display LGBTQ places in OSM.
• Communications WG
  • OSM Promotional Material Programme: posted 2 small packets of stickers to Germany
• Mapping
  • The OSM Ireland building mapping continues
  • Data Gardening & clean up (e.g. Cleaned up some wrong layer=1 and unneeded source tags
  • A toot on mastodon from Baloo Uriza reminded me that Osmose can fix things online, so I did some of that locally and in my home town
  • Weekend away means, time to do some surveying with Vespucci of picnic tables around me, PoIs in a town, and using StreetComplete to add more details
• Programming
  • Continued to work on my side project to help with vandalism

Previously: May 2020 April 2020 Mar 2020 Feb 2020 Jan 2020

My May 2020 in OSM

(Yes I know I’m posting this in late June. I’m sorry I’m so late. Been a bit all over the place lately)

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The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic is changing everything.

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(Canonical version of this post is on “Sports in Ireland & Britain” on Technomancy)

I created some software to generate heatmaps from OpenStreetMap, here’s what OSM’s sport tag looks like for t̶h̶e̶ ̶C̶e̶l̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶I̶s̶l̶e̶s̶ Ireland & Britain

When you have checked out the code from Sourcehut (or Github), then run make build-deps to install requirements.

Then download the data:

$ make data-ireland-and-britain

Look at the spread. Initially I ran it withouth steps=..., and tried different values until I got something that looked nice.

$ make heatmap_key key=sport steps=0%,1.5%,4%,10%,22%,35%

Shows this:

Unsurprisingly, this shows urban populated areas. On average Britain, even rural areas, have a higher score than rural Ireland. It’s hard to know if that’s because of less mapping in Ireland, or less sporting facilities, which might show a difference in cultures.

Let’s see what’s popular:

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My March 2020 in OSM has been a little weird. The ongoing Coronoavirus pandemic has distracted me. Don’t worry I’m fine. I’m getting used to staying inside.

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My February 2020 in OSM. (sorry it’s a little delayed)

• Community
  • heard about & booked travel to Toulouse Hack Weekend
  • Still hang out on IRC/Telegram/etc.

• Mapping. I continued to help the Irish building mapping project. Data quality is important, so I cleaned up tagging of cuisine=fish_and_chips. While outside, I try to map if I can, such as added benches (etc) while hiking.

• CWG / Swag / Promotional Materials Programme
  • designed, ordered & got join OSMF stickers
  • redesign & recieved Attribution Fixer stickers in English
  • make & ordered josm stickers
  • make & ordered j’adore OSMF
  • Sent out:
    • 600 SotM baltics
    • 600 renne
    • 600 Prague
    • Posted 5 envelopes of stickers, 2 × USA, Italy, Latvia, Spain
• OSMF
  • OSMF Feb 2020 board meeting
    • took a long time due to a long treasurer report
  • boring paperwork for f2f (Bank stuff)
  • Noticing that the contract for our admin assistant was due to expire at the end of the month, we voted to extend it for another 12 months. Seeing that the rate had been the same since the start, we suggested she charge us a little more due to inflation. That all went ahead and a new rate was mutally agreed and the contract adjusted.
• Using OSM
  • I played with generating maps showing statistical distribution of OSM data. I made some maps the make maps of cuisine tag in Europe. This is all gdal hacks & Makefiles, I haven’t (yet) released that code.
• Hacking
  • To make these maps of OSM, I didn’t find any good heatmap command line programme. So I created sheatmap to do that. Surprisingly gdal doesn’t do it.
  • Learned lots about how to do things with gdal, and work with OSM data. Alas I haven’t released or published any of that yet.

Previously: Jan 2020

Just for the record, anything I write here, or on social media accounts, or on mailing lists, or say publicly should be read as my personal opinion, and not the opinion of the OSMF or OSMF Board of Directors. I thought that would be obvious, but it is good to avoid doubt, and to be 100% clear. 🙂

Here’s a summary of things I did in OSM in January 2020.

• Mapping
  • Continued to edit. I added lots (2,000?) buildings in Ireland as part of our new mapping project. I made at least one OSM edit every day in January,
  • Monitored and reviewed some RapiD changes.
  • Found & posted many examples of bad Facebook computer results.
• Coding
  • Wrote a tool to convert OSM history data into CSV files. This makes it easier to process, and work with, OSM data.
  • Wrote a tasking manager stat tool.
  • Attempted to get iD to switch to default opt out.
  • Figured out how to make images of globes from OSM tiles.
• Community
  • Co-founded RainbOSM, a Telegram group chat for LGBTQ+ people in OSM. Telegram is a closed source chat service, which is unfortunate, but there are a lot of people who use it.
  • Submitted 2 links to WeeklyOSM.
  • Participated in many twitter conversations about OSM #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 (Another closed source communication platform).
  • Participated in some conversation on LCCWG IRC channel.
• OSM Foundation Board
  • Jan 2020 Board meeting
  • OSMF board has decided to have a face to face meeting in London, so I had to book travel for that
  • Evaluated 7 fee waiver applications for the OSMF
  • Read the background material for contract agenda item
  • Read the background material for local chapter application for SK, AL, DRC, Oceania, AR
  • Phone call with community members (A. Mustard & OSM Irl group chat)
• CWG
  • Filed an expenses claim form for the stickers I’ve been sending out.
  • Sent out 600 stickers to the OSM community in the Phillipines.
  • Wrote wiki page about promotional material programme.
  • Looked into making more attribution fixer stickers.

Well the 2019 OSMF AGM & board election is over and I was elected! Thank you all who voted for me! The election system was a PR/STV system, so the full rank of preferences were relevant (check out the results).

I’m only now getting set up with all the accounts. The first board meeting of this board will be tomorrow, Mon 23 Dec 2019 18:00Z, as always you are all welcome to listen in. For lots of us the Christmas holiday season is starting, so many of us (incl. me) won’t be doing much until after that (~6th Jan 2020).

previously: I’m running for the board, Manifesto, feedback²

I like the idea of a video chat/conference where you can ask/talk to a candidate (aka “office hours”). I’ll offer that too. Any OSMF member can open up the video chat, and we can have a talk, you can ask me things, or whatever (watch me map buildings if you want). I’ll do 2 slots, 1 hour each, to try to cover time zones. Video or just audio should be possible.

Tuesday 10 Decemeber 19:00 UTC (8pm for me) (i.e. starting as soon as Michal’s office hours #5 ends) for 1 hour. What time that is for you

And the following morning, Wed 11 December 07:00 UTC (8am for me) for 1 hour. What time that is for you

I will use Jitsi Meet hosted by Framatalk, where is Free Software. ☺ Test your browser

I will update this wiki page with the link to the chat just before each event starts. I’ll leave a comment on this blog post, which you can subscribe to.

• https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Rorym/2019_OSMF_Candidacy

See you on the intertubes.

As part of the 2019 OSMF Board Election, I wrote my answers to the official questions, and published a manifesto. When one writes something, one can’t be sure that others have heard what you want to say. When someone explains what they think, it tells you a little of how well you communicated. So I’m writing my response to some responses to what I already wrote. ☺️

My friend Christoph Horman an wrote his opinion on us candidates:

gender pronouns – almost everyone expresses their support for this without critical thoughts and this is once again fairly disappointing.

If you wanna talk about LGBTQ issue, I can talk your ear off. 😉 I’ll have a good faith conversation with any OSMer about this.

At least a hint of reflection on the fact that in a multilingual and multicultural community like OSM thinking about use of English language pronouns is a bit besides the point when it comes to OSMF politics. Allan is the only candidate who shows to understand this.

The entire election is happening in English, so my answer was all in English (yes this is not ideal). I’m aware of other languages. In English, my pronouns are “they”, aber auf deutsch benutze ich „er“. Perhaps I should have said that.

Rory: Some reflection about possible CoI cases but ultimately rejection of the possibility

I’m a little surprised at that. If I was elected, there are decisions which I would have a conflict of interest due to my job. I don’t think the person alone should always be allowed to claim “Nope I have no CoI, let me vote!”. I think there are times when the Foundation/Board must not allow someone to participate in a vote, despite the person claiming no CoI. Otherwise what could you do with bad faith actors? OSMF needs stronger CoI rules. The fundamental idea behind a “conflict of interest” is that the person is not 100% capable of thinking of the Foundation’s interests.

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I mentioned my candidacy for the OSMF Board, and as part of the election process, the community suggested questions, and long time OSMer Mike Collinson collated & edited them down.

The answers to the official list of questions has been published! Read here → Answers and Manifestos to the OSMF 2019 AGM

My answers to the questions will have more detail. My manifesto (also on the wiki page) is here. If you have any questions ask away on the comments (or email me privately)

“Steady as she goes, let’s change everything” – My campaign motto

Hello all. I’m Rory McCann ( ᚛ᚏᚒᚐᚔᚏᚔᚋ᚜ 🏳️‍🌈 on osm )

I’m originally from Dublin, Ireland, but live in Karlsruhe, Germany and work in Geofabrik GmbH. I’m a craft mapper and social justice hacker, and I’d like you to vote #1 for me to be your board member.

I’m a craft mapper. OSM is great when it’s a project of people to map their world, when ordinary people feel empowered to collect information about areas or topics that matter to them, when they feel empowered to use that information to make things, to have fun, or to make the world a better place. (People have this power and ability, they might not know it yet) I am a skeptical when giant global corporations starts acting friendly and offers “help”. They’re not doing it out of their kindness of their hearts! But a passionate OSMer I can trust!

I’m a hacker. I like Free Software/Open Source, and in an ideal world everything should be FLOSS. But I’m practical and do use propritary software when there are benefits. OSM should strive to support free software. I’m wary of heirachies. OSM & OSMF is better when it’s passionate people, rather than dozens of paid employees who are just punching a clock and an elite execute/management/leadership “team” who can talk the talk.

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For those who haven’t been keeping track of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, there will be an election to the Board of Directors on 14 December, and I have decided to put myself forward as a candidate. ☺ There are 7 candidates in total for 4 seats. I am currently finalizing writing my manifesto, and writing up answers to the official list of questions. Stay tuned!

I have printed out the OSM rainbow coloured logos from my last post.

I’ll be at State of the Map in Heidelberg, so if you want some to bring back to your local community, please let me know. I’ll be at any of the diversity talks at a minimum (e.g.). I have loads (each pile is ~50 stickers)

I have made some LGBTQ/rainbow pride versions of the OSM Logo:

What I’ve done is CC BY-SA 4.0, but the OSMF Trademark Policy probably means that doesn’t apply. view all here

I have it all in a github repository, please feel free to download, share, remix, make suggestions, print yourself, etc.

I plan to print some of the these out as 5.2cm× 5.2cm stickers and bring them to State of the Map in Heidelberg. Would you like some? Would you like a specific one? I was only going to print one or two designs. Leave a comment here, or OSM message me, or email me to request a specific set, and how many.

Is anyone else going to the Chaos Communications Camp next week? Does anyone know what, if any, OSM stuff will be going on. I’ll be there, but I’ve been very bad with research!

If you wanna meet up, gimmie a shout. 🙂

I’m thinking about how best to tag LGBTQ venues, (e.g. “gay bars”). And I’m not sure how to do it. I’ve started a thread on the tagging@ & diversity-talk@ lists.

Initially I thought lgbtq=yes was a good tag, but now I’m not sure. Does anyone have any advice for a way to tag them in keeping with the OSM tagging conventions?

I’m thnking lgbtq=primary is a good idea. So a LGBTQ bar/”gay bar” would be amenity=bar,lgbtq=primary.