Future
If you know about the current state of affairs, please help keep everyone informed by updating this information. (Discussion)
This page has info on an attempt to start a discussion about OpenStreetMap's future.
Why do we need this?
There has been a lot of discussions on the mailing lists, forums, IRC and other channels about project's direction/strategy/future. Everyone has ideas what they would like to see in the project, what they like or not about it. This initiative is supposed to provide a simple (accessible to everyone) platform to record and further discuss these ideas, merge them into larger topics and prepare a plan for future actions.
See Wikimedia's Strategic Planning website as an example of a similar initiative.
How does this work?
The idea is to discuss various topics using wiki's discussion pages. Hopefully after some time (weeks/months) we will be able to reach a consensus and move forward with more specific actions.
Current goal is to simply get started and define what do we want to achieve with this process/page.
To get started, go to the discussion page.
What this page is NOT
There is already a lot of pages in the wiki with wishlist or "to do" items. The idea for the Future page is to aggregate such ideas into larger topics, discuss why they have not been successfully implemented yet and go further - think about what can we do to implement them in the future.
Future (Working) Group
Ten OpenStreetMappers have created a Future Group (FG). The FG will encourage people and businesses to create a strategy and actions for OpenStreetMap by thinking about the enormous potential OpenStreetMap has for non-professional and professional mappers, developers and users. At present (October 2013) the FG consists of:
- Dermot McNally (OSMF, Ireland)
- DaCor (w) (u) (Ireland)
- Clifford Snow (USA)
- Blanca Mancilla (Canada)
- Taichi Furuhashi (Japan)
- Satoshi Iida (Japan)
- Christian Quest (France)
- Jerry Clough (UK)
- Giuseppe Bilotta (Italy)
- Johan de Ruijter (The Netherlands)
- Andy Mabbett (UK)
Plan is to turn Future Group into the Future Working Group under the flag of OSMF.
Roadmap
- June-October 2013: Brainstorming phase open to anyone who wants to contribute @ discussion page
- August 2013: Future Group assembled
- September 2013: Collecting information and dreams @ SOTM Birmingham
- November/December 2013: Collecting information through a poll, interviews, reading blogs, studying articles
- February 2014: Decision on vision, mission, core values
- February 2014: SWOT detailled and analyzed
- March 2014: Goals defined
- March 2014: Voting process to set priorities
- April 2014: Decision on goals
- June 2014: Decision on action plans for the goals
- September 2014: Presentation of strategic plan and implementation plan @ SOTM
All community members are very welcome to contribute to this process at any stage. The Future Group wil actively seek interaction, for example by these wiki pages, the workshop at SOTM and @talk.