[OSM-talk] Cloudmade: "We are the Wikipedia of maps"

[Nick Black]

This is coming from me as a long-term OSM contributer and CloudMade founder.
First, its great that the overall tone of this thread is positive.  It
sounds like lots of people have experienced journalists misinterpreting
things.  In fact, the problem isn't journalists - I explain OSM, and
particularly OSM + CloudMade to people everyday.  Its quite a complex
message to get across the first time.  From a CloudMade perspective - we are
absolutely looking at how CloudMade people represent OSM + CloudMade to the
public and the press.

There are two things I want to draw attention to.  First, I really don't
like the suggestion that anyone from CloudMade is mis-representing the
situation.  That is just not true.  If anyone in the community feels that
OSM is being mis-represented by anything anyone from CloudMade has said or
done, then email me (nick at cloudmade.com) Steve (steve at cloudmade.com), Andy (
andy at cloudmade.com) or Jim (jim at cloudmade.com) and we'll look into it and
let you know the outcome.

Second, the fact is that CloudMade as a company is, and has been doing a lot
to help OSM over the last few years.  For the last two years, a large amount
of both mine and Steve's time has been spent building and enabling OSM.  For
example, API 0.4 was developed largely by Steve and then tested and
completed largely by Steve and me.  Countless other OSM
server improvements have been made possible because CloudMade people have
found ways to make it happen.  Multimap sponsorship (
http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=109), RightMove sponsorship (
http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=204) and countless other hours of OSM effort
have been made possible by the efforts of CloudMade people.  The huge number
of talks, meetings and conferences that CloudMade people have participated
in have been overwhelmingly positive for OpenStreetMap.

This started with Steve and me and now includes the work of Andy, Matt,
Shaun and Harry - all CloudMade developers who are working on API 0.6 in
CloudMade time.  Everyone at CloudMade is well aware that the community is
the most important part of a project like OSM.  So to help support the
community we host OSM hack weekends, mapping parties in the EU and US,
conferences (not just SOTM, but FOSS4G, Society of Cartographers and others)
provide free hosting for CycleMap tiles that are heavily used by OSM and
third party sites and donated significantly to the new OSM server.  Because
Steve and I knew that we couldn't think of everything to help OSM ourselves,
we even set up a grants program to invite people ask for any kind of help
with OSM projects.

In addition, all CloudMade's commercial products like routing, geocoding and
tile serving have been offered to the OSM-F for free use on
OpenStreetMap.org.

As for mapping parties, we have a team of 5 Community Ambassadors - Sarah,
Russ, Hurricane, Dirk and Matt -  who are working on overdrive to map the
US.  If you saw the passion and dedication of this team - not only for
CloudMade but for OpenStreetMap and everything that the OpenStreetMap
project stands for, you'd be amazed.

What I'd ask is that the OSM community, particularly community leaders, look
beyond slip-ups like the quotes in this article, and look at
the enormous benefits that the involvement of organizations like CloudMade,
GeoFabrik, ITO, AND and many of the other for-profit companies who are using
OSM data can bring to the project.  Hold these contributions up with the
contributions of the other OSM leaders - the super mappers, coders and OSM-F
members how pour unknown hours into creating OSM.

I'd also really ask that anyone who has any questions, doubts or suspicions
about CloudMade's role in relation to OSM speak to CloudMade people
directly.  There are a lot of us!  We'd be happy to talk over email, Skype
or even better meet in person.

Happy mapping,

Nick
nick at cloudmade.com
twitter.com/nick_b












On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>wrote:

>
> Stephen Hope wrote:
> > And you can't always blame the journalists, either. Once they
> > send their copy in, the editors can have a go at it as well.
>
> If I may speak up for editors, a lot of journalists could avoid this
> unfortunate necessity by Actually Learning To Write.
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
> (Incidentally, Tim is absolutely right: good, clear 'Notes to Editors' at
> the end of releases are the way to go.)
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Cloudmade%3A-%22We-are-the-Wikipedia-of-maps%22-tp22445658p22452008.html
> Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>



-- 
-- 
Nick Black
twitter.com/nick_b
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