[Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US

Sat Jul 20 02:10:35 UTC 2013

Hello all,

         While I agree with Clifford that more publicity is essential 
to grow the organization, another strategy that might be effective is 
to work through organizations that could have a use for the maps or 
for mapping as a teaching exercise. We don't have direct access to 
large audiences of potential members, such as students or business 
people, but we could work with their organizations to reach them.
         Groups, such as science teachers, could add OpenStreetMap to 
their lesson plans. They could be reached through their national convention.
         Local business can be reached through groups, such as the 
Chamber of Commerce or Jaycees. Articles in their national 
newsletters or presentations at their national conventions could 
reach large numbers.
         I'm sure you all can think of other examples of 
organizations that might work this way.
         Of course, in cases such as this we would have to reach out 
and establish relationships with their national organizations. This 
is the kind of thing that needs to be done in a coordinated fashioin, 
not just someone going out and doing it on their own. But it would be 
a lot more cost-effective in reaching large numbers than trying get 
to individuals directly.

Charlotte

At 03:08 PM 7/19/2013, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Most people would agree that we don't have nearly enough people 
>mapping. Clearly, transcending our early adopter types of GIS and 
>open source software people will be needed. However, effective 
>strategies for on boarding the next million people are going to be 
>very different than what was needed to get the first say 100,000 
>people signed up. I know this is very un PC to say, but things like 
>mapping parties/local chapters which were absolutely essential to 
>recruit the first 100,000 people, really will not matter much going 
>forward. Even if you get 100 people per mapping party, its 15,000 
>mapping parties, to get the next 1.5 million mappers! We need to be 
>thinking about things that will scale to lots, and lots of people.
>
>Clifford, of your 4 ideas only getting coverage in mainstream press 
>would probably be effective. Besides working on mainstream press, 
>getting people using our data is *and* understanding they can come 
>in and change it is probably our best hope because it scales.
>
>1. Push back on high volume down stream data consumers that do the 
>absolute minimum on working with us. For example, foursquare, who 
>has 30 million users, is doing an awful job supporting us. They have 
>the OSM credit buried in a blog posting which a bunch of other 
>items. They don't even mention that anybody can go to OSM to edit 
>the map. Shame on them!! Cragslists, does a much better job. They 
>have an OSM link on the bottom of the map and have a way of 
>reporting problems on the map from their interface via our notes 
>features. I am sure Cragslists has been drivings new mappers into 
>the project. Other high volume consumer need to look more like 
>Cragslists, and not foursquare, or Apple.
>
>2.We just had a big thread on this on the main talk list, but we 
>need to support using our main web page for using our data for 
>finding stuff, getting directions, and for mapping verticals 
>(hiking, golf, bike, trains, hunting, etc).  Just today we took a 
>step in this direction, and enabled the ability to use the location 
>services to find your current position on the main web site! Our 
>second fund raising round, includes a computer for router, and more 
>tile servers. It looks like we are moving in this direction.
>
>3. Last bit, which we are also doing, is to improve our conversion 
>rate. The new ID editor is pretty nice and I think will help.
>
>Its coming, I'm optimistic about our direction. But, we do need to 
>understand that the project is at a new phase now. Even though it is 
>lots of fun, getting together for mapping parties is not getting us 
>the next 1.5 million people.
>
>Thanks
>Jason.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Clifford Snow 
><<mailto:clifford at snowandsnow.us>clifford at snowandsnow.us> wrote:
>We have over 200 mappers contributing to OSM in the US driving us to 
>second place, but way behind Germany. Look at OSM Stats for the 
>details. 
><http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries>http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries
>
>Second place is good, but I wonder what we could be if we made it 
>our goal to increase the number of active mappers. When you look at 
>our numbers against our population, there is a lot of room for 
>growth. See the chart of the top 10 below. The data was taken from 
>osmstats along with population data from Wikipedia.
>
>Rank Country Population Mappers Nodes Created Nodes Modified Deleted 
>Nodes New Nodes Per Mapper Mappers per 1M Population
>1 Germany 80,493,000 564 72992 40981 7174 129 7.01
>2 United States 316,278,000 202 62036 18103 23815 307 0.64
>3 Russia 143,400,000 191 84192 17872 3008 441 1.33
>4 France 65,684,000 182 116333 14463 13497 639 2.77
>5 Italy 59,704,082 116 42873 10047 2603 370 1.94
>6 United Kingdom 63,181,775 113 36210 4111 2233 320 1.79
>7 Poland 38,533,299 91 37578 4271 4112 413 2.36
>8 Austria 8,464,554 77 18564 4414 948 241 9.10
>9 Spain 47,059,533 70 25214 3745 712 360 1.49
>10 Belgium 11,153,405 52 16430 2201 1670 316 4.66
>
>I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of 
>active mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd 
>like to solicit suggestions and feedback. Lets set some target 
>goals.  I think this is a worth while project to work on.
>
>I'll start by just listing a few of my thoughts:
>We need publicity!
>Increase diversity of mappers by attracting more women and minority mappers
>Support for local groups
>OSM Ambassadors (Like Fedora Ambassadors if you are familiar with 
>the linux distribution Fedora)
>
>
>Cheers,
>--
>Clifford
>
>OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
>
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Charlotte Wolter
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