Foundation/AGM2024/Election to Board/Answers and manifestos/Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
How would you promote diverse voices and perspectives from the global OpenStreetMap community? What steps would you take to attract and retain high-quality volunteers and contributors, especially in underrepresented groups and locations? How would you ensure the OSMF is a safe and welcoming place for all contributors?
Craig Allan - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
Drawing in under-represented groups needs to be a conscious ongoing effort, Ideally it is an effort that is designed and guided by existing members coming from those under-represented groups and actively supported by everyone else. Ensuring the safety and dignity of every member is very important, especially so with under-represented groups.
We have a diversity statement which encourages respect, tolerance and encouragement. We have a code of conduct and the first of many lines is “Be nice to each other”. Members are encouraged to be helpful, respectful and welcoming.
Safety is guaranteed by a team of moderators led by Allan Mustard who monitor social media channels and enforce the Code of Conduct. Breaches are usually corrected quietly, to preserve dignity and maintain a sense of belonging, but the ultimate sanction for bad behaviour does exist and that is a ban from all OSM activities.
Brazil Singh - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
I would approach some goals to promote diverse voices and prespectives for example I would suggest to develop outreach programs aimed at underrepresented regions and groups. This includes collaborating with local organizations, universities, and community groups to introduce them to OSM and its benefits. Also we have to ensure that resources, documentation, and training materials are available in multiple languages and accessible formats to reach a broader audience. I would suggest to organize and support events that feature speakers and panelists from diverse backgrounds. We should offer thorough training programs for new contributors to help them get started and feel confident in their roles. This can include online tutorials, mentorship programs, and hands-on workshops, and also we have to provide clear guidance on how to contribute effectively and offer ongoing support to address any questions or challenges that new contributors may face.
Courtney Cook Williamson - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
As a storyteller, promoting the diverse talent and skills of the global OSM community and its volunteers is what I am good at. You can see my work on all of the official OSM social and digital channels online.
Maurizio Napolitano - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
Local chapters must take a central role in outreach and training by creating programs that build on shared experiences. It is essential to provide tools and resources to underrepresented groups, enabling them to contribute effectively, respecting their unique perspectives. We should also explore partnerships with NGOs and companies to improve recognition and support for OSM. Monitoring community dialogue is essential and this should be done in a federated way, respecting the uniqueness of each group. OSM collaborators share commonalities, but also have geographical, cultural and historical differences that cannot be overlooked. High-quality volunteers and collaborators should be celebrated to make them feel more integrated and become examples for all others to follow.
Can Ünen - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
Tied to my answer to the State of the Map question above, all involved should see past their prejudicial views, if any, and should refrain from claiming to have the moral high ground against others. There have been works for community etiquette guidelines, codes of conducts etc. to navigate within the community in order to have any community space open, inclusive, and safe for all. But that unfortunately does not happen all the time. It is not just OSMF’s, but also the wider community’s responsibility to act in accordance with those guidelines, and the first step for that is to let go of the thought of having that moral high ground. Not with our accumulated knowledge, not with our experience, not without the number of changesets or mapping days dedicated to the database. Luckily, maintenance, growth, and diversification of the community have all found place in the strategic plan of the foundation and depending the resources and capacities within the board and the respective working groups, I hope that we can develop programs to record progress towards achieving these goals.
Michael Montani - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
During my experience as a mapper, I mapped and interacted with communities in Africa, as I was mostly involved with humanitarian mapping (interestingly enough most of my activity was not directly related to HOT). But I surely built capacities of new OSM contributors, either directly or indirectly, in Somalia, Kenya, Madagascar, Moçambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Mali, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Romania, Portugal, Poland, Kirghizistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia.
I have been focusing on presenting OSM and how to contribute to it to thousands of people, the majority of which new contributors or data users, ranging from highschool students to military personnel. It is well known and demonstrated by the scientific community that any citizen science or open data project is characterized by a power law distribution of contributions (point 6 of this article, but there are plenty). Meaning that basically in all the cases, whether you are voluntarily mapping on OSM or voluntarily classifying rat's brain cells to advance the knowledge on Alzheimer's, you can expect the majority of the contributors editing the minority of the data and viceversa (usually is from 90% vs 10% and lower).
That is pathological and in a certain way understood: most of the people are happy to approach an open data project, know that it exists and make a small contribution towards a public good, but only a small percentage gets very enthusiastic and starts actively contributing, either attracting new people, developing software, ingesting data or learning about how to map the number of steps of a stair on OSM. In many cases this is even more difficult as in many countries access to Internet and electricity may be troublesome for the average citizen. In other cases, there may not be a "volunteer-first" mentality typical of the EU world, but some see OSM more as a product or a job opportunity, especially if you live in underdeveloped countries.
The approach should then be:
- Move contributors from the 90% pool of novices to the 10% of experts: focus on educational platforms and initiatives to bring non-expert mappers to a more expert level, in order to retain them in the ecosystem. I think this would not be a direct responsibility of the OSMF but rather of any community that would like to have more expert contributors. I can see the OSMF updating a list, promoting and facilitating access to existing educational resources in the OSM world. Also, the OSMF should support educational material being translated or available in as many languages as possible: too many times the language barrier is just enough for a contributor to leave a project.
- Just gather more contributors: despite difficult and time consuming, increasing the visibility to new volunteers has an effect on finding enthusiastic ones, or attracting professionals from the GIS world. YouthMappers in a sense nailed it, as university students are the perfect audience to start contributing time and efforts to an open data project, considering the university may also already offer IT labs, Internet and electricity even in remote areas. (Even if there are notably problems in retention or chapters closing for inactivity). Training highschool or university professors may give a constant influx of contributors over the years.
Regarding representativeness: what and who composes the OSM community at large, and in which size? We know that historically OSM has been mainly driven from tech individuals in Europe, and that reflects on many aspects including semantic classification of the tagging system. But there are plenty of passionate mappers across the world that maybe do not interact with OSMF-related matters at all and whose needs maybe just don't make it through, admitting they can be satisfied at all. Additionally, communications channels are so much and diverse that is difficult to understand the full picture.
I think it would make sense for the OSMF to run and publish recurrent anonymous polls and / or statistics to understand who we are, what we do and where we communicate (not meaning that we do not know already), gathering information from the different local chapters and maybe also understand how OSM data is consumed and by who. This could be help in understanding which communities are less covered and prioritize support in those areas or for underrepresented groups
I think the OSMF can also facilitate and sponsor initiatives involved in reaching a bigger visibility, gathering contributors to conferences and meetings (e.g. helping sponsoring regional SotMs or local chapter gatherings, to the extent possible and focusing on attracting contributors by empowering existing ones) or assisting local chapters interfacing with local municipalities, administrative bodies, educational institutes, NGOs and governments, in order to increase the ability of attracting more contributors (more on this in Q7).
Andrés Gómez Casanova - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
OSMF should invite the communities to organize themselves, have communication channels, and share among themselves. It should also invite them to formalize themselves and build official chapters but accompany them in this process.
Laura Mugeha - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
To promote diverse voices, I would work on and support initiatives that ensure regional representation, especially in global and key discussions. I am also keen to supporting more contributors to become OSMF members and also join and contribute to OSMF Working Groups. The current has done so well in running membership drives this year.
There are so many amazing contributors, communities, and projects, especially from underrepresented regions, that I think we should feature more across our digital platforms.
To ensure that OSM is a safe and welcoming community, we could strengthen our community Code of Conduct for both online and offline spaces.
Héctor Ochoa Ortiz - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
I believe that communication and awareness are the most important tools to reach this goal. For example, events in the OpenStreetMap Calendar are dominated by Europe, and many existing events by local communities are missing, ignoring the diversity of the OSM community and avoiding potential attendees.
The community should be more present in OSM’s core products (e.g., www.osm.org website). By showcasing success stories, news, and events, new community members can feel themselves represented and engaged to continue contributing, and spread the word.
Español
Creo que la comunicación y la concienciación son las herramientas más importantes para alcanzar este objetivo. Por ejemplo, los eventos en el Calendario de OpenStreetMap están dominados por los países europeos, y muchos eventos existentes de comunidades locales están ausentes, ignorando la diversidad de la comunidad de OSM y evitando que posibles asistentes conozcan de su existencia.
La comunidad debería estar más presente en los productos principales de OSM (por ejemplo, el sitio web www.osm.org). Al mostrar historias de éxito, noticias y eventos, los nuevos miembros de la comunidad pueden sentirse representados y motivados para seguir contribuyendo, y difundir la palabra.
Arun Ganesh - Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
As someone who also natively represents an underrepresented group and location, but also well-travelled, I'm hoping to be able to resolve misunderstandings that arise from cultural and language barriers by offering a perspective that balances viewpoints from all sides.
OSM Foundation's board election 2024: official questions
Q01 Motivation and Objectives
| Q02 Conflict of Interest Management
| Q03 Transparency and Accountability
| Q04 Strategic Vision and Sustainability
| Q05 Decision-Making and Collaboration
| Q06 Fundraising and Resource Development
| Q07 Handling Legal and Political Challenges
| Q08 State of the Map
| Q09 Your Community Contributions
| Q10 Promoting Community and Attracting Volunteers
| Q11 Technology and Innovation
| Q12 Data Quality and Protection
| Q13 Perspective on Open Source
| Q14 Perspective on Overture Maps
All board candidates' manifestos
2024 OpenStreetMap Foundation's: Board election - Voting information and instructions - Annual General Meeting
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