[OHM] OHM Hangout - 18 Dec, 8am PT US / 4pm London

Thu Dec 18 12:58:22 UTC 2014

Hi Karl,

Some good talking points here.

Some tentative & rambling responses before the hangout:

Although OHM uses the OSM technology stack and most of us are OSMers, it is
functionally & organisationally (not that it has much of a formal
organisation) independent from OSM, and the OSMF.

So far in discussions over the past year I think our approach is slightly
different from OSM: at least in part because Susanna's initiatives have
been funded by Wikimedia. One aspect of this is (I think) a general view
that OHM should be federated with other types of data (specifically
wikimedia commons and wikidata), but Susanna's recent focus on storytelling
shows that, particularly for local history, it is desirable to link to
other kinds of non-map data. Specific examples of the sort of data which
would probably make OHM too complicated are town name changes, and
population figures.

We have also discussed the possibility that a focus on specific projects
(perhaps local history based) which can stand-alone and are suitable for
support by funding bodies could be a good way to develop more generic OHM
technologies. I'm firmly of the belief that having a useful set of examples
will both a) help showcase our ideas & objectives; and b) help focus on
resolving specific technology issues. In this model funding would be for a
given project, but technology developed would become part of the generic
OHM stack. Therefore funding would be likely to fit the relevant model of
whichever funding body which was approached (in my case I've been thinking
about the UK Heritage Lottery Fund).

Your mention of ORBIS is I think highly relevant. Having looked at Orbis I
added some of the Roman roads in Britain to OHM. Using the OSM format means
that this data can immediately be exported into routing engines such as
Graphopper and OSRM (a set of suitable LUA transforms may be needed). The
big thing I notice about projects such as ORBIS is they nearly always use
CC-BY-NC licences, and, speaking for myself only here, I think OHM would
want to continue with the much less restrictive licensing used by OSM.
(CC-BY-NC licences effectively allow only private use under recent German
case law). If we could either continue adding Roman roads to OHM (I want to
avoid stepping too heavily on people's toes) or perhaps choose another
historical period to (try and) demonstrate the type of broad applicability
for historical routing you talk about. One thing I'd like to do is have a
go at replicating the time of travel diagrams from Braudel
<http://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/301ModernEurope/Space-Time%2016thC.html>.

I do think that OHM will need some kind of 'go to' body at some point
because of funding, but also interaction with the academic and GLAM
communities. At the Nottingham seminar it was apparent how important the
potential life-time of any given technology might be for funding bodies. No
one wants to pay for a project which is not accessible shortly after (this
was a big consideration for the Edinburgh MESH project, and it was OSMs
size & longevity, as well as its openness which swung them to OSM).

Whether OSMF ever seeks funding is a moot issue: I suspect the current
board is divided, and it certainly needs a step change in administrative
procedures before it does so. My current view is that perhaps some kind of
umbrella NFP body, say "OSM Research", might be a more appropriate vehicle:
particularly because many people who can contribute are individuals or
SMEs. I used to run large scale EU funded research projects, and I know
that many OSM technologies are a good fit for the technology programmes;
OHM type projects would be applicable to work funded by other
Directorates-General under the Framework Programme.

Regards,

Jerry

On 13 December 2014 at 18:48, Karl Grossner <karlg at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello OHMers,
>
> I'm planning to join the upcoming hangout and have a few questions I
> thought I'd put out in advance...
>
> The discussion of going for an NEH grant has me confused. I'm wondering
> how a large(ish) federal grant and the various norms for that sort of thing
> squares with OSM/OHM approached to development so far. For example, grants
> have submitting institutions, and PIs who formulate phasing and technical
> plans for deliverable work products and are then responsible to taxpayers
> for results; key staff are named, etc. etc.
>
> My impression of OSM development (no expert, though) is that it has come
> together ad hoc, dev decisions arrived at collectively and so on. Is that
> the case?  Has OSM Foundation received government or foundation support in
> the past? If not, is OHM charting a different course? Is anyone "lead" or
> co-lead" from a grant perspective? As OSM Foundation is a UK corporation,
> is it even eligible for NEH funding? Also, it strikes me that "mapping
> what's on the ground" is different from mapping what's on old maps in some
> important ways, with some key research-y questions ahead.
>
> Separately, my own interest is in putting together an "Orbis Initiative"
> to build a global historical transport network data repository and some
> tools for ingest, creation, search/browse and analysis. So that limits it
> to settlements and inter-city data for the most part (plus maritime) and
> includes some network analytic tools. I plan to seek big(ish) funding and
> it would happen in a university research/library setting. I fully support
> the idea of OHM and hope for strong connections if not integration in the
> future. As I put this idea together I want to keep you all informed and
> welcome feedback/reaction.
>
> cheers, Karl
>
> -------------
> Karl Grossner
> Stanford,CA US
> www.kgeographer.org
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Hi all -
>
> How about we hold OHM Hangout on the 18th? (Or, the 19th as a backup?) at
> 8am PT (local times here
> <http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Open+Historical+Map+December+Hangout&iso=20141218T08&p1=224&ah=1>
> )?
>
> Topics would include, but not be limited to:
> - NEH ODH grant discussion
> - Tools update (e.g. feature query tool)
> - OHM 2015 goals?
> - Updates of any known OHM projects
> - Any other topics of interest
>
> Let me know what you think!
>
> Thanks,
> Jeff
>
> --
> Jeff Meyer
> Global World History Atlas
> www.gwhat.org
> jeff at gwhat.org
> 206-676-2347
>
> OpenStreetMap: Mapping with a Human Touch
> osm: Open Historical Map (OHM)
> <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map> / my OSM user
> page <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer>
> t: @GWHAThistory <https://twitter.com/GWHAThistory>
>
> f: GWHAThistory <https://www.facebook.com/GWHAThistory>
>
>
>
>
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