Greetings, this is a brief recap of my contributions to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) in 2014.

HOT Community Relations

HOT emails over the last 18 months have become quite counter-productive and personal. I feel as though we have lost our way as a constructive contributory community. For that reason i have stopped reading them, it has also affected how much i interact with the community and alarmingly how much i contribute to HOT mapping tasks. I’d like this community to be a bit more constructive and work together. For my part, i will not create unnecessary noise on shared communication channels and attempt to set an example by chipping away at a few areas i feel i can add value to.

HOT Mapping Contributions

• January 2014 #400 - South Sudan, Upper Nile State, Malakal
• January 2014 #396 - South Sudan, Unity State, Bentiu
• January 2014 #395 - South Sudan, Jeglei, Bor
• January 2014 #397 - Central African Republic/République Centrafricaine, Haut-Mbomou, Zémio
• August 2014 #611 - Gaza-Strip-2014

Reduced involvement in HOT

Over the last two years i have been less involved in HOT due to a number of factors

1. I was somewhat disenchanted by the membership process within HOT, i felt a lot of the organisation around members and voting went some way to making it a less inclusive closed group - which was a big attraction when i first started mapping for HOT during the Haiti Earthquake.
2. Having a 1 year old child
3. Increased pressures and responsibility in my professional career. Ironically i have been working on a large mapping task management system for government and i was able to use some of the ideas from HOT and the tasking manager to achieve this goal.

Regrettably i was unable to contribute to any Ebola mapping tasks in West Africa as i had sever pressures on my time throughout most of this year although i would have loved to contribute and i’ll continue to push myself to make at least a minor mapping effort in the future.

Sincerely,

Sam Larsen

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team