[OSM-talk] What do you wish you'd known?

[Milo van der Linden]

I wish I'd known that you shouldn't ask the community for help to set up 
a team to develop something marvelous but DIY! Alone!

You need to go sit in the basement, blind the windows, block IRC and 
e-mail, completely ignore the internet, sleep during the day (or better, 
don't sleep at all) and build something extremely smart you are sure 
everyone wants. Then after a few months when you finally come out; near 
blind, pale as the moon and showing symptoms of scurvy. You reach out 
and say "Behold! O community of loyal fellas I am back! To donate my 
project as open source to you! Because I knew you would be waiting for 
it! Because I, and I alone am the greatest!"

And the community will burst out in tears of joy, embrace you, love you 
for ever and trust you to be its Saviour, they will signal the press who 
will be upon you with microphones, cameras and lots and lots of 
beautiful women will suddenly want to go out with you. You will be hired 
by some Larry, maybe a Sergey, or a Steve J or B and they will pay you 
millions! And you and your superior skills will make the world turn 
counterclockwise!

Teamwork? Yeah right.. I am a University IT student. I don't need 
others, just bits and bytes and they will make me rich! I don't care if 
my source is open or closed, I care about me! I don't care if code would 
get better if I collaborated, no code can be better then mine, no one 
else can understand the excellence of it!

(Any similarities to real people or events, are unintentional and are 
for purposes of Wednesday evening fun only)

Giacomo Boschi wrote:
> SteveC ha scritto:
>
>   
>> What are the thing or things you know know that you wish you'd known
>> when you started with OpenStreetMap?
>>     
>
> How can I use the data!
>
> Or, paraphrasing a famous JFK quote: "Tell me not what I can do for OSM, 
> tell me what can OSM do for me."
>
> When I was a beginner, I didn't know that I could search an address 
> (Nominatim), I didn't know I could get directions (openrouteservice) 
> and, until a couple of months ago, I didn't know that I could update a 
> Garmin GPS with an OSM map.
>
> Now I know that all this stuff is well documented in the wiki and 
> discussed regularly in the mailing lists, but a beginner is not 
> interested in browsing the wiki or subscribing a ml. This happens later, 
> when you have already decided that you like the project and you want to 
> know more about it.
>
> The "How to use" part of OSM should be accessible from the home page 
> with a single click.
>
>