User:Derick/manifesto
Hi!
I'm Derick Rethans and running for the 2011 Board elections. I've been with the project for about two years and an active contributor and participant of the London "user group". I prefer going out mapping outside over tracing and bickering on mailing lists about licenses. Licenses are important, but in the end, we want a highly accurate map that everybody get to use as easily as possible, and that can only be done by doing real survey work on the ground.
I would be interested in finding out how we could OpenStreetMap more active by mappers, as well as data consumers. This includes making it easy to embed OpenStreetMap data and maps into web and mobile applications, but also looking and what we can do to make the mapping itself more attractive instead of contributing to closed databases such as Google's.
As a frequent speaker at conferences I am in the position of advocating OpenStreetMaps to web developers, which is an important group to convince to use our data and map tiles over other sources. As I find developer communities very similar to the OpenStreetMap community it is also a great group to enlist for improving the map.
On the board I will try to represent that people that contribute to the map, as it's us that makes this project such a useful resource. I would like to see the OSMF to be the organisation that support the mapping effort by education and promotion. Of course, whether this is wanted is up to the specific local charters/user groups. I also believe that responsibilities for specific areas such as hardware should belong with the respective working group (OWG in this case), as those working groups consist of the people with the skills to make the proper decisions.
cheers,
Derick
Email: osm@derickrethans.nl
Twitter: derickr
Weblog: [1]