It was a privilege for me to be part of the HOT’s Open Mapping Guru Fellowship Programme, where I sharpened my mapping skills and became more knowledgeable about OpenStreetMap (OSM) tools. Though I had many trainings for volunteers in OSMmany times, this was first time I am involved in a longer programme with a structured plan. The structured training activities and assignments helped me learn about OSM such as validation techniques, changeset discussions, and creating MapRoulette challenges. Beyond expanding my knowledge base, this fellowship introduced me to an energetic community of mappers that has livened up my journey as a mapper.

As a Fellow of Open Mapping Guru, my adventure was a crazy pursuit of education, discovery and community involvement. The program allowed me to go deeper into the Open Street Map (OSM) tools and sharpen my skills in mapping, validation and community collaboration.

In this fellowship period I explored some new JOSM plugins such as validator.other which made validation tasks much faster, easier and enhanced data quality. Another different aspect of mapping is when I would actively contribute to changeset discussions. The use of tools such as OSMOSE and OSM Inspector to identify issues of data quality was something which I liked the most in the entire program. For some reason creating my first MapRoulette challenge was not done to a satisfying level. I will be exploring the tool in detail later in the programme.

Besides that, going through OpenStreetMap Changeset Analyzer aka OSMCha again reminded me of how we dealt with vandalism in OSM of Taj Mahal before thanks to the development SEED blog post quoting the Taj Story. That was noticed by chance and usage of tools like OSMCha will help in analysing these in a much better systematic way.

As the fellowship came to a close, I thought about all the lessons that I had learned and the developments that had taken place during this fellowship. Additionally, I am enthusiastic about what lies ahead; This involves advancing on new tools; continuing to engage in community and also venturing into mapping with new tools.

Although I used to write, advocate, and preach about OSM wherever possible, this fellowship became a reason to write my first OSM Dairy too.

Also check about other OSM writings
1. Mapping Evolution in my Life
2. Tutorials
3. OSM Kerala - The past, present and future
4. Mapping for Tomorrow: Building Resilience through OpenStreetMap Contributions
5. All my writings on OSM