[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Jeff Meyer]

Oh, sure... drag me into the fray.

In general, I agree with Paweł, Hans, and Cliff - there are a variety of
services we could offer on the front page of openstreetmap.org that would
make visiting it a much more rich experience and more inviting to newer
users.

For example, I'd like to use OSM for my routing, but I'm not sure why I
have to go anywhere other than osm.org to do that.

Another example: there's nothing that says simply, "You can map your local
area - learn how!" or "Add your business to this map," or "Start mapping."

Perhaps the real question we should ask is, "Why should the casual visitor,
who looks at our current home page after knowing about Google Maps, Bing
Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc. ever come back to osm?" Do we care? I think many of
us have plenty of good reasons, none of which are obvious from the home
page content.

- Jeff


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us>wrote:

> I agree. We have so much good data, we just need to improve the map
> interface so more people come to OSM first.
>
> My friend Jeff Meyer just commented the other day that he wondered why we
> don't have an easy way for businesses to add their establishments to OSM. I
> know that Yahoo and Bing have it.  Last year I helped my local gym out.
> They moved two blocks. Of course, OSM was fix on the day of the move. Bing
> and Yahoo had an easy web page to enter the new information. But if he had
> to go through the process of making the change in OSM it would have never
> happened. We can and shouldn't expect everyone to have the same interest in
> learn how to map. But we should make it easy to add and update data for
> businesses.
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 3:04 AM, Paweł Paprota <ppawel at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> Hello Clifford,
>>
>> Very interesting e-mail. It seems that as the project grows, there is
>> more and more people feeling like there should be some kind of "next
>> level" that OSM as a project and community should reach. I agree with
>> that.
>>
>>
>>  It seems to me that OSM needs a full time staff that can work with
>>> the community to build OSM for the future. I would think that at the
>>> rate we are growing, we need to be planning for a much bigger
>>> future.
>>>
>>
>> Just a few days ago I replied to a mailing list thread about OSM's
>> "market share" with my thoughts on precisely this topic you mention in
>> the quote above:
>>
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/pipermail/talk/2013-**
>> January/065555.html<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-January/065555.html>
>>
>> I am a developer so my area of interest is technical but I am sure that
>> in other areas like working with the community, communication and
>> "advertising", data (handling vandalisms, imports) there is a similar
>> need for more involvement.
>>
>> Sure it would be great to have the project run on volunteers - money
>> (some people being paid) thrown in the mix always causes problems at
>> some point - but I think it's becoming clear that OSM cannot reach that
>> next level without some sort of push... After all, it's normal in other
>> large projects/organizations that some people are working full time on
>> it. Perhaps OSM needs to evolve a little bit more to embrace such model?
>>
>> The other problem is much simpler - where do you get the money from? I
>> thought about OSM Foundation getting involved and trying to get some
>> funding for the project. Not sure how that would work legally but at
>> this point there has to be a way to get money for development - it's
>> clear that many stakeholders and users of OSM want to see the project
>> moving forward and I'm sure some of them are willing to donate money.
>>
>> Paweł
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
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>> talk at openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talk<http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Clifford
>
> OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
>


-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
jeff at gwhat.org
206-676-2347
www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer
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