[OHM] Time Machine Conference 19 notes

[Jeff Meyer]

Hi all -

I just attended a very interesting conference - Time Machine 19
<https://conference.timemachine.eu/> & wanted to share a bit of what I
learned there.

As background, the Time Machine Europe project is an ambitious effort to
create an immersive (a la VR), integrated history of Europe over the course
of a decade. While that might seem like an overly grand vision, there are
several local organizations (Amsterdam, Budapest, Barcelona, Bruges/Ghent,
Mainz, Padvoa, and othes) already making impressive strides toward that
vision. And, they have almost 500 affiliate organizations, almost all
academic or civic heritage preservations, in 40 countries.

Obviously, I wondered what opportunity this might hold for OHM. : ) While
it might seem competitive in some ways, I feel our scope is a little more
focused and manageable in the near run. And, there is interest in what
we're doing and how some cities could use something like OHM. What follows
are my high-level thoughts:

Appeal of OHM to this community:
- Crowdsourcing / citizen cartography is hot, particularly for:
  -- Enrichment of academically-sourced data & contributions/complements to
those efforts
  -- Validating the output of AI models
  -- Creation of test data for further AI models
- OHM's noncommercial focus is critical
  -- There is overwhelming distrust of Google and public sector for
participation
- OHM's affiliation with OSM is fantastic - existing tools, people know them
- The tasking manager is a critical value-add for them
  -- That's almost as of much interest as the platform itself
  -- MapRoulette is also of interest for help with crowdsourced efforts

Concerns about OHM from this community:
- Data model is questionable, as is the lack of unique identifiers
- We need better LOD interfaces and integration (Sparql)

Opportunities:
- Data sharing is a big deal for them; I think we could get some of them to
contribute their data to display in OHM, even if they aren't using it as a
primary system
- Several cities requested a follow-up, including Amsterdam, Budapest, and
Barcelona.
- UBISoft was there (Assasin's Creed game series publisher) and
demonstrated impressive historical modeling of New England, medieval Paris,
and ancient Rome. They are leaps and bounds ahead of anyone in the world in
the creation of high-fidelity historical environments. Of note, they have
over 30 historians on staff. I asked if they would be willing to share at
least building footprints and street vectors and they indicated it wasn't
out of the question. I'll be following up.

Key takeaway:
- OHM needs more help. Everything everyone is doing is highly valued, but
we need more cooks in the kitchen. There's plenty to do. If you or anyone
you know would like to play a bigger part in getting this platform off the
ground, please speak up!

Thanks,
Jeff

-- 
Jeff Meyer
206-676-2347
osm: Open Historical Map (OHM)
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map> / my OSM user page
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer>
t: @OpenHistMap
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