User:PeterIto
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OpenStreetMap activity
I have mapped for OSM since November 2006, mainly in my hometown of Ipswich, but also in the Gaza Strip and various cities in the USA, including San Francisco and Washington DC. I have become a bit of an expert in tagging of water-related features and have helped sort out rivers, lakes and the coastlines in various parts of the world. I have been involved with the Open Data License, legal and Foundation matters. I established the Talk-transit email list and am one of its administrators. I was involved in the project that raised funds to purchase aerial photography for the Gaza Strip in January 2009. I am keen to see better tools to detect and respond to vandalism and set up a GB revert request log in response to some persistent vandalism mainly in the UK, but also in Germany and Spain. I have done quite a lot of work on the OpenStreetMap wiki generally to make it more current and usable, see my recent contributions for more details. I am currently promoting a User:PeterIto/Stop Place model for general use in public transport systems.
ITO World Ltd
I am a co-founder and CEO of ITO World which works with public transport data from many sources and actively supports OpenStreetMap. ITO is lead industrial partner in Ideas in Transit, a research project looking at to user collected data and user innovation in the transport field. This project, funded in part by the UK government has supported a number of OpenStreetMap-related initiatives from ITO including the development of OSM Mapper, an online service to help improve OpenStreetMap data, the creation of OpenStreetMap 2008 - A year of edits some work on UK Administrative Boundaries and creating articles for local authorities in England. Joss Smithson has contributed to the wiki and to OpenStreetMap while working for ITO.
ITO has also contributed in a significant way to Wikipidia articles that relate to Future transport schemes in the East of England as part of a research strand into how effective open information sources are in comparison to official information sources. As part of this work we are developing better links between the Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap and many of the related Wikipedia articles now have OpenStreetMap maps on them. The relevant features in OpenStreetMap also now often have Wikipiedia tags. Joss Smithson has contributed to many of these transport articles under the username HelioSmith while working for ITO.
Foundation board
I am standing for election to the OpenStreetMap Foundation board at the 2009 AGM.
During the year I would be focusing on:
- Communications: Improving communications between the board, working groups and the wider communities. This has got a lot better over the past year but still has a way to go. I have already been doing work on this subject as a regular foundation member over the the past year - I have updated many wiki articles that relate to the foundation or to foundation-related work (such as the license and reminding the board to publish minutes promptly).
- Legals: The foundation needs to have firmer legal footings. We need to complete the license, update the articles of association and be able to offer proper legal opinion on some matters raised on legal-talk. I have being doing a lot of informal work on this over the past year.
- Finances: It is clear to me that foundation should be able to raise funds as long as we can clearly say why we need it. Things that might need money include paying for administrative support for the foundation, paying for legal advice, paying for servers. This is potentially a very controversial subject and one that will need good decision-making and democratic structures to avoid unnecessary conflict.
- Working Groups: Over the past year the work required of directors appears to have been considerable and probably unsustainable - three hour conference calls seem pretty unattractive and are very difficult for people who's first language is not English. I believe that the role of directors should be to ensure that the necessary work gets done but to then ensure that the appropriate working groups are formed and are functioning well. The role of directors is then to support those working groups as required. Much progress has already been made in this direction.
Biography
A bit more about myself to help people make a decision. I am 50 yo computer science graduate. I worked for Acorn, writing two top-selling computer games for the Acorn Atom and worked on the operating system for the BBC Micro (writing to sound software) in the early 1980's. I started Micro-Robotics Ltd in 1986 - a company making process control equipment, educational robotics and also controllers for film special effects including Babe and the Teenage Mutant Nynja Turtles. In about 1994 I wanted to leave and I converted the company into a 'company limited by guarantee' (ie I transferred ownership to the staff and took no money out of the business). I am pleased to say that company is still going 23 years later. I started a new company making real-time information systems for buses which was then bought by ACIS where I was technical director from 1999 to 2005. The company grew from 20 staff to 120 staff during the period when I was director which was challenging. I co-founded ITO World Ltd in 2006 which has raised venture-capital funding and is developing nicely. ITO is lead industrial partner in Ideas in Transit, a 5-year UK government-funded research project and in that project we work with our co-partner, the Ordnance Survey. I support a number of social ventures and have assessed many grant funding proposals from young not-for-profit organisations as a member of The Network for Social Change, an organisation that gives away about £1 million per year to good innovative social causes each year. I live in Ipswich, Suffolk in the UK, am married and have various step-children who are all in their early 20s.
Other relevant activities
Cycle Campaigning
I am active member of Cycle Ipswich, a cycling advocacy group in my home town.
Transport Data Standards
I have been on working parties for a number of official public transport data standards in the UK and Europe including IFOPT, NaPTAN and SIRI.
