Hello and thank you for reading why I’m interested in continuing my service on the OpenStreetMap U.S. board for one more term!

This organization, under the excellent leadership of Maggie Cawley, has been making great strides in supporting our community and open geospatial data. I have been involved in a number of these efforts and would love to have one more appointment to follow through on these projects and help steer OSM U.S. on its path.

Specifically, I’ve been leading the Trails Working Group, a collaboration of OSM mappers, data users and land managers, towards building a better system for trail data that protects our environment and keeps people safe and informed. The Trails Stewardship Initiative is a project I’m passionate about. I am excited to see where it leads OSM U.S. in cooperating with entities that use our data. I am also highly interested in academic connections, such as the opportunity we had to work with data science students at the University of Virginia to help build a tool that will identify where the map is underrepresented. I am also part of the TeachOSM Education Working Group, which is focused on building materials that help teachers bring OSM to their students. OpenHistoricalMap is another space where I see immense growth potential for connections to students given all the data that can be created on that platform.

In last year’s election cycle, I mentioned the following priorities for building connections in the OSM U.S. community and they still hold true:

1. Education Connections – expanding the awareness of OSM among students as something to which they can contribute as well as use as a data source
2. Community Connections – encouraging local groups to engage in OSM to help address their community needs
3. Professional Connections – opening communication with government entities to create symbiotic relationships with OSM

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Hello and thank you for reading why I’d like to continue serving on the OpenStreetMap U.S. Board for 2022!

Serving on the board this past year has been a great honor and learning experience, but it has been too short a time, especially during a pandemic, for me to help the OpenStreetMap U.S. community and expand the awareness of project in the way I’d like.

There are three particular avenues along which I have been helping support our executive director, Maggie Cawley, and the OSM U.S. organization increase the reach of OpenStreetMap:

1. Education Connections – expanding the awareness of OSM among students as something to which they can contribute as well as use as a data source
2. Community Connections – encouraging local groups to engage in OSM to help address their community needs
3. Professional Connections – opening communication with government entities to create symbiotic relationships with OSM

I have spent the past year working on creating these types of connections. For example, I am facilitating the Trails Working Group along with Maggie, to help federal and other land managers work cooperatively with OpenStreetMap. The progression I envision is building more structures within OSMUS to make initiating and maintaining these kind of connections; either with academics groups, diverse communities or government entities; more approachable.

My main goal is growing the OSM community in an open and equitable manner.

Paraphrasing what I wrote last year, because it is still true: I am a scientist and outdoorsperson at heart. I have a degree in earth sciences and turned to geospatial technologies through a research project. I presently work in an academic library as a geospatial data scientist supporting students and faculty. I introduce OpenStreetMap whenever possible through research consultations and the MaptimeMileHigh meetup group I run.

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Hello All!

I made my first edit to the map in 2016 when I discovered OpenStreetMap through a Maptime group which I now organize. I guiltily admit I was unaware membership was an option for some time and didn’t officially join until a little over a year ago. Although I have few changesets to my name (most come from demos while I’m teaching others), I’m an enthusiastic supporter of OSM because I understand the immense potential of this project.

I work in an academic library on an urban campus as geospatial support for students and faculty. Through my position at the University of Colorado Denver, and through the MaptimeMileHigh meetup group I run, I spend much of my time introducing OpenStreetMap to interested mappers and data users. I have led HOTOSM mapathons for students and the community at large to introduce the humanitarian value of this unique crowd-sourced information. I enjoy seeing traditional GIS students get excited when they realize there is an entire world of the geospatial technology they’ve been missing.

Serving on the OpenStreetMap-US board, I hope to expand the awareness of OSM to students, faculty and community leaders as they work together using public data for public good. Through academic frameworks such as the Data to Policy Project (d2p), for which I’m the student and faculty liaison, OSM can shine as support for policy development. With more diverse contributors to the map recruited via community outreach and academic programs similar to d2p, OSM can be better used for research and evidence-based advocacy. With more people from different sectors of society understanding they can contribute data to the global dataset that is OSM, the more representative and complete that dataset will be.

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