(Left: Mapping work I did as part of the OSM Mapathon Right: a map of Africa centered on the area where I made my change)

I owe a lot to OpenStreetMap (OSM). Some of the projects I am most proud of having worked on in my career would not have been as possible or as cool without it. Since OSM is a contribution dependant project, it is natural that I would have the urge to give back. I have been working with OSM data in one way or another since 2010, but surprisingly this weekend, near the end of 2014 was the first time I actually edited a feature.

I think the main reason I didn’t contribute until now was fear of messing something up. The OSM community has done a great job building user-friendly tools and tutorials, but there was still a little fear that my first edit would somehow break something.

So, what was different this time?

This Saturday, Alan McConchie, a fellow Stamen and renowned mapping mensch, hosted a mapathon event in the Studio. He assured us that if we go, there will be patient people and achievable tasks for all. Saturday I arrived and listened to a quick explanation of the editors available to us. At first I was intrigued by the description of JOSM, which is an installable application. Usually authoring tools which you actually install have a much better workflow than ones you use through the web. The cloud is great but I still prefer to load my spreadsheets in Numbers over Google Apps and my Mail in a client instead of a web browser. In this case however, I ended up being a lot happier with the iD editor which is a web application. iD is integrated into the openstreetmap.org workflwow as well as nicely designed and implemented. The options are simple and powerful, which exactly what you need as a beginner. JSOM is packed with time-saving tools and indispensable workflows, but it is not made the novice in mind.

With an editor selected, I headed to the HOT project list. This is a list of manageable mapping tasks which one can claim. Each tasks takes you to a specific place on the map in the editor of your choice, with specific and achievable tasks to complete. If you have been following along, so far I had patient people supporting me, iD empowering me to make edits, and now HOT is informing me on what exactly I can do to contribute. I had come close to editing in the past but it usually ended with me staring at a part of my hometown, or an area where I went on vacation, timidly hovering over a part of a Satellite image of a building or trail. This time I am being welcomed by the OSM community and being given measurable tasks to complete.

Over the two hours I spent on my task, I filled out a number of roads, buildings, and fields in a Kenyan town. This area had not yet been added to OSM and maps were needed for humanitarian efforts. Drawing these roads and buildings brought back childhood memories of taking my toy trucks into the yard as a kid and making roads from dirt and building little lakes and bridges with hose water and sticks. Later on, Sim City brought this kind of play to the next level and I was able to build whole simulated cities. I could spend hours watching them develop. This feels similar in a way only a bit more fascinating because you are tracing the result of actual human involvement with the landscape. This isn’t a simulation, you are tracing how roads and fields actually grew out across this valley in Kenya. Then you get to zoom out a bit and see how your map area interacts with areas others have mapped, as well as the rest of the mapped world.

At the end of my two hour session, Whitney came to pick me up so we could go to lunch. I encouraged her to take a moment to map one building before I shut down my computer and released the rest of my task for others to finish. She was sceptical this would be something she would enjoy and easily pick up. I quickly explained the editor, and a little about HOT, and showed her the outline of a building in the satellite imagery. Within minutes she outlined and classified a few buildings and completed a road I had begun. She committed them under my name and looked really satisfied with what she had accomplished. She said this is absolutely something she would do again.

This event made me so much more optimistic in the future of OSM than I already was. As time goes on we will get even better at empowering, informing, and supporting people to use their idle time to contribute to the worlds open data sources. There are lots of ways to use your idle time for good and some of them can actually be fun.

Originally posted on my blog.