How I got in touch with HOT

Having always been interested in maps some of my favourite activities apart from hiking is producing topographic style maps from OSM data particularly for areas where hardly anything else is available. When I had a couple of months time available while changing my job about three years ago I wanted to give something back to OSM from where I got so many useful data for free.

Being a software engineer I did not simply want to contribute to some of the tools involved but rather spend my spare time doing something different. Browsing the wiki I read about HOT. I was instantaneously fascinated by the idea to combine the expansion of the database with another goal - provide help to communities in urgent need for this. And the concept of micro-tasking made the start quite easy: you can contribute basically any amount of time available.

After having spent one year with the usual mapping of roads and buildings in the beginning I turned my attention to more difficult tasks and thus got in touch with Séverin Menard and his activation in CAR. This should be the first in a series of import tasks where I contributed and extended my skills.

Apart from directly working on our data I was working together with Nick Allen on learnOSM translating large parts of existing documents to German while also updating some existing English documentation.

What HOT means to me

HOT is an opportunity to provide assistance to people in need in various areas of the world even if one is not able to provide help on site. It offers a much more direct involvement than just donating money: after a couple of days into an activation, white spots on a map turn into a maze of tracks and roads making sure that the vulnerable people on the ground can be given assistance.

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