Today I had the first of three “office hours” on HOT’s Mumble channel. I was glad that a few people stopped by and I was able to answer a some questions. Very happy to hear voices and connect them with names. I even had a chance to talk with Russ about the activation curriculum. Below are a couple of the highlights from that discussion.

What is the role of regional/local HOT, ie. HOT South America?

I do believe that HOT should be doing everything it can to empower and assist local OSM groups. OSM is great in that the local mapper always supersedes the remote mapper. I think building local communities should follow this same parallel. OSM communities should be driven by local needs and desires but can be supported from remote partners or HOT.

Thinking about this a little more I would add that I don’t think we should have a HOT South America, or a HOT Africa. OSM is the larger project that binds us together. Our goal of HOTties is not to setup local HOT organizations but to empower locals to map their communities and engage and collaborate on the map of the world. HOT should work closely with OSMF to fund grants community grants for equipment and other resources. This will allow HOT to train and mentor mappers to map features for humanitarian use while the larger OSM community goes about its normal business as it does in most of the world.

What is the most important thing for HOTs future?

The most important thing for HOT is to secure long term unrestricted funding. Unrestricted funding will allow HOT to employ more and better staff, engage in projects on its own, and have more control of its own strategic vision. Unrestricted funds for HOT will allow it the financial stability to focus on key growth areas and areas in need of a little love. The Hewlett Grant is amazing in that it allowed HOT to pick its own priorities. This type of grant does not happen very often. HOT was wise to choose the activation curriculum as one these priorities and the benefits are already being seen in the great work the Activation Working Group is doing. This type of work allows HOT to codify and set its standards for handling the next big disaster. There should be more of these efforts.

Do you see HOT participating more in economic development projects.

HOT should participate in more economic development projects. HOT does great work right now in several resilience projects. Partnering with GFDRR and the World Bank in Africa and Asia. While these projects were not explicitly about economic development they have created local economies around OSM. For example GFDRR’s work in Kathmandu a couple years ago lead to the creation of Kathmandu Living Labs creating jobs and establishing a local OSM community for HOT to work with during the recent Nepal Earthquake activation.

I’ll be online again Wednesday and Thursday from 10 am eastern to noon. I look forward to hearing from more of you. As always feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions.