Episode 28
What "OpenStreetMap US" is with Maggie Cawley & Alyssa Wright
March 13th, 2020
37 mins 30 secs
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About this Episode
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Maggie Cawley
OpenStreetMap US
Alyssa Wright
OpenStreetMap US | Open Source Collective
Show Notes
In this episode Justin and Richard talk with Maggie Cawley, Executive Director of the American OpenStreetMap US and Alyssa Wright, current Board Member of OpenStreetMap US. If you’ve never heard of OpenStreetMap US you will learn all about what it is, how you can use it, how you can edit it (YES, it’s editable like Wikipedia), and how it differs from Google Maps.
1:40** What is OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap US? How are they different? The ladies also share how many people are all together in the OpenStreetMap world in their biosphere and how many contributing editors there are.
04:41 Justin wonders how the map data is licensed and was it a hard sell to the community or an easy one?
08:24 OSMF and OSM US are slighty different. Richard is interested to know what Maggie and Alyssa are doing for each one and how do they see them growing.
10:43 Richard wants to know the Code of Conduct and was questioning if it was just started or did it change.
12:40 Justin wants to know what percentage Craig, from Craigslist, give to their annual budget. Also, regarding sustainability, the discussion of what it costs to run OpenStreetMap as a service is answered.
13:34 Maggie talks about who is involved in their membership which is made of many different people.
17:00 Richard wonders if anything is difficult now and what does sustainability look like and if there are any problems. The ladies talk about all the challenges there have been.
23:09 Why would people use OSM vs. Google Maps? Empowerment is a big factor with OSM.
27:18 Justin wonders how Maggie and Alyssa deal with possible misinformation from bad edits, especially with the earthquakes or tornados or if there have been any issues.
32:04 The ladies answer some questions from Richard regarding what sustainability means for OSM and how do you make sure everyone is working on the same product, doing it with the same intention, but with the same sort of guidance.
Quotes
05:43 “ODbL, it’s a unique license.”
15:15 “I always point to my phone, it’s like, you know, this is essentially a map that we’re carrying around with us constantly and whether we’re talking about data privacy in our location, movement, or crime statistics or this Coronavirus, this is grounded in space, and we’re grounded in space.”
21:08 “Billions of people in this world do not have an address. So, without an address that means you don’t have a legal right to your land.”
23:17 “It’s very well known that Google is going to map where they have commercial interest.”
Spotlight
- 34:07 Justin’s spotlight this week is Dracula PRO-Episode 27.
- 34:40 Richard’s spotlight is Leaflet JS.
- 34:57 Maggie’s spotlight is QGIS project.
- 35:17 Alyssa’s spotlight is PostGIS community.
Links
State of the Map U.S. Conference
Craigslist Charitable Fund Donation
Support Sustain