[Osmf-talk] seeking feedback on needs summary

[Jeroen Carelse]

Hi Mikel,

I work on a project that uses OSM and have jumped through quite many hurdles the past year regarding financing and partnerships to get the project up and running. Now I have found a partner company and start small and try to grow more organically. The possible grant/financing yo mention looks very interesting and promising, maybe more grant but that is probably obvious.

Here some quick comments...
On 21 Mar 2010, at 18:36, Mikel Maron wrote:

> 2.    Anticipated social impact
> 
> 
> Geographic data underlies almost every activity on Earth. OpenStreetMap is aimed to be as big or bigger than Wikipedia in this regard. An open, up-to-date map available to all for zero cost. This will both revolutionalise access to such information and the mapping industry itself.
Maybe "bigger" in itself is not the aim. Perhaps OSM could become a service (is already partially) that is widely used by non-profit and for-profit organizations, because it is free, "up to date" and reaches out to areas not covered easily by commercial entities like MS/Google/Yahoo.

OSM is advertising free could be an interesting point to make.

The is an aspect of feeling free when using OSM, we "know" the data we get is politically neutral and without any commercial bias. I have no good data on whether this is an important or not important issue but once and a while I come across this sentiment that certain commercial providers leave out or alter the map (street names or whole areas). 
> 
> •    Solution (describe value proposition)
> 
> OpenStreetMap is as its name implies open. The unique solution it embodies mirrors wikis in that any individual or organisation from it's 230,000 member (and growing exponentially) userbase anywhere can contribute, edit and fix map data anywhere on Earth using the simplest open source tools possible.

I would like the site itself to be more accessible and I absolutely do not complain about the great job by all the volunteers to make it what it is today :-)

But last week during my weekly class (Dynamic Information Visualization) I realized my students had a hard time to get the idea and to get involved. So videos, animations, tutorials and the likes could be part of a next step. For this we need money as although we probably have skilled and experienced people on board, we all need to eat. Additional funding could give these people already involved and new ones small projects and get paid for this.

Also media packages, something that can be sent to media outlets as an example is needed I think. Make it easy for these organizations to included OSM in their TV shows or in printed media. Allow them to easily export a map in vector format (for use in Illustrator/InDesign), or in 16:9 HD quality to name 2 options. There is a lot that can be done here.

Funding for mashups. There are so many blogs and sites run by small organizations that could use a map to show where something has happened. A simple "mashup builder" could be interesting to think of. 

> 
> •    Business model
> 
In addition to what you wrote I believe all the money and effort that is poured into OSM becomes available to a much wider public. A relatively few people build an infrastructure that can be used by all. So the return on investment is in that sense quite big.



Hope this helps and if not, you know where the trash is :-D

Got to go back to work.

Jeroen