All I Want for OpenStreetMap is Social and Attention

OSM is Social

OSM has changed
Our social tools have not

(Not) Finding Communities

There are many social tools, but they are fragmented and only kinda work

Tools

Communication

• mailing lists
• forums
• social media
• websites
• wiki projects
• IRC
• Google Groups
• User Messaging
• JOSM Geo Chat

Profile

• OSM.org User Profile
• Diary
• User Location
• How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap?
• OSM User Stat Suite

Activity

• History Tab
• OWL
• http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries
• http://osmranking.altogetherlost.com/
• ItoMap
• Overview of OpenStreetMap Contributors
• OSM Weekly Summary!
• Wiki Calendar

Meeting

• SOTM
• Mapping Party
• Editathon
• Mapathon
• Hack Weekend
• Pub Meetup
• "Community Forum"
• Geo and Open Source Conferences

Facebook

• Profile
• News Feed
• Groups/Places
• Events

Don't like Facebook? Forget I mentioned it!

Scratchings

Technical Architecture Riffs

osm2stats Triggers:

• OSC
• OSM.org activity (user reg, new group, friending, diary, meetup)

Profile

• 1 time stats compile
• From OSC, update user stats by edits.
• 20k per month
• Manageable.

Example activity:

• OSM "Birthday"
• First Edit in Mission Bay
• 1000th edit
• 1st Mexican restaurant
• Attended State of the Map
• Threw a mapping party in Congo

{
    "username": "lxbarth",
    "project_days": 506,
    "active_days": 104,
    "mapper_type": "heavy",
    "activity_area": { "type": "Feature",
       "geometry": {"type": "Point", "coordinates": [-77.015, 38.894]}
    },
    "created": {
      "nodes": 33742,
      "ways": 4856,
      "relations": 18 
    },
    "modified": {
      "nodes": 5739,
      "ways": 2738,
      "relations": 19 
    },
    "deleted": {
      "nodes": 1496,
      "ways": 290,
      "relations": 0 
    }
}

News Feed

• Based on friends, groups, interests.
• Each OSC, user triggers.
• Big(ger) analysis and cache problem.

Events

• Define time and place
• People can join event
• Before / after map images
• Build stats on activity (top contributors, kind of features)
• Communicate after the event
• Show off your events on your user page

Some questions:
• How to filter and cache smartly?
• What's the best db structure for ongoing user stats?
• For group/places, do you have to be a power mapper? what's the process to "garden" places?
• What social feed infrastructures can we crib?

Core Social Tools Have Not Changed, Are Fragmented, Only Kinda Work

We can work on a serious technical infrastructure for Social