[OSM-talk] Strategic planning for OSM (History)

Richard Weait richard at weait.com
Mon Feb 4 03:09:57 GMT 2013


There is a Strategic Working Group, now dormant, in the OSMF.  It was
created with the intent of planning for the future and providing
recommendations to the board and management team.  Those interested first
met on line on the strategic@[2] mailing list in May 2010, then in person,
at State of the Map - Girona, in July 2010.

Minutes from SWG meetings[3] exist from November 2010 to December 2011,
along with attendance and irc logs.

The major accomplishments that I recall from SWG were the guest tile
policy, and the AoA subcommittee.  SWG established a method by which tile
sets (rendering styles, from a non-OSMF server) could be evaluated for
inclusion in the layer switcher on osm.org[4].  This was a matter of some
interest on the mailing lists, at the time.  The AoA subcommittee examined
the foundation articles of association for revision and refinement.

There were discussions of various other topics, including "what do do about
the osm.org web page".  That's a topic that was hardly ever discussed,
before, or since.  :-)

The future SWG will face some of the same challenges as the previous
version.  IMHO.  Firstly, OSM can mean different things to different
people.  We are a diverse bunch.  SWG is unlikely to put every diverse
interest as first priority in their planning and advice.  Secondly,
attendance will continue to be a challenge.  Thirdly, the work is without
glamour and for little reward; advice from those non-first priority
interests will be offered vigorously and often.  Fourthly, the worthwhile
accomplishments will be more time-consuming.

The members of future SWG will see the same benefits that members of other
OSMF Working Groups see.  Firstly, they'll get regular contact with
awesome, committed, thoughtful, clever, OSM contributors from diverse
backgrounds with diverse interests.  Secondly, they'll get to collaborate
with those people on interesting questions and to provide worthy,
thoughtful potential answers.  Thirdly, they'll get to learn and share
their experiences.



[1] http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Strategic_Working_Group
[2] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/strategic
[3]
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes#Strategic_Working_Group
[4]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strategic_working_group/New_Tile_Layer_Guidelines
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20130203/c35de2dd/attachment.html>


More information about the talk mailing list