[HOT] contacting local mappers through their OSM accounts during HOT campaigns

[Hugh Barnes]

On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:47:24 -0800 (PST), Mikel Maron
<mikel_maron at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks, good suggestion to contact the local active community in an
> activation. 
> There's so many ways OSM communities connect, we should have them all in
> mind.
> 

It started about mappers, but just at the end I realised the community at
large (community groups) is worth researching and reaching out to. There's
such a fantastic community here, I'm sure they would have jumped on this
right away:

* http://lyttelton.net.nz
* http://www.volcanoradio.co.nz

(these sites do hokey engagement, but you see the point)

> I don't think it needs to go as far as automated though. Check the
History
> tab. 
> Also very helpful is ItoMapper
> http://www.itoworld.com/static/osm_mapper.html. 
> Also useful is owl_mapper, which filters out big edits from History 
> (http://matt.dev.openstreetmap.org/owl_viewer/). These all can give a
> quick 
> picture of who the active and top mappers are.
> 

Whatever works, that's great. I also think, HOT or not, if I was about to
make a large number of edits in an area with active mappers, it's just good
manners to get in contact.

> For activation, HOT really needs guidelines  and documentation of the
> steps that 
> need taking ... what conditions for an activation, defining affected
area, 
> notifying and activating local mappers and international hotties,
> requesting 
> imagery from providers, locating existing data sets for import, active 
> generation of outputs for responders and partners, etc.....
> 
>  

+1 too. I went to make a stub for this and found things similar enough
that I stopped [1], including lots of Google Docs links (wtf), one of which
is protected!

I would be more comfortable if someone else, more involved in setting up
these particular wiki resources, gets this into a suitable shape to
accommodate these guidelines. If this doesn't happen, I may start an orphan
page and post the link.

Cheers
Hugh

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/HOT_Package