User:Adamfranco/OSMUS Board Election Statement 2022
My name is Adam Franco. I hail from Vermont and have been an OSM contributor since 2008 (OSM user page). I'm an open-source software developer by profession (not in the geography space) and got heavily into OSM a decade ago while writing software to analyze the geometry of OSM roads in support of other hobbies. As a geography nerd I'm fascinated by the intricate connections of the world and find myself mapping on many topics, from trails, to land-cover, to sidewalks, and addresses. As a contributor to and benefactor of open source software and open data I love that OSM is a project through which people of all skills and abilities can collaborate to build a global resource that can directly and beneficially impact people the world over.
During the past year I've returned to my interest in highways and had the privilege of working with a number mappers around the country on a project to update the classification of highways in the United States Highway to a connectivity-based hierarchy. Through this process I've come to learn the power of consensus building and outreach above and beyond individual mapping contributions. As we slowly make progress in sorting out the complex and contradictory practices which span our Federalized highway system the edits have proven to be much easier than the discussions and consensus-building. Through state-by-state analysis, discussion, and collaboration we are now for the first time developing the background material and guidance that can ensure that our map's highways make sense to both mappers and data consumers while avoiding the churn and edit-wars that have plagued this topic for years. I see OSM-US as an important piece in our national mapping community, providing forums for mappers from around the country to gather and tackle these stickier topics, building human relationships and understanding in in the process.
In addition to gathering mappers together and performing important outreach activities, I believe that OSM-US has a significant role to play in supporting the technical infrastructure needed for our community and its projects to thrive. The OSM-US Slack has been a fabulous example of this kind of infrastructure support to date, allowing real-time discussions in a way that were never possible with the mailing lists. In the future I would love to see OSM-US help support a map rendering that speaks to the expectations of American users and helps support projects like the Trails Working Group by providing mappers with concrete visualizations of their mapping activities in ways that aren't possible in openstreetmap.org's main rendering.
If elected to the board I hope to support and continue the good work OSM-US has done so far while looking for opportunities to support mappers, support collaboration and connection, and grow the impact of OSM in the United States.