Is 2012 the year of OpenStreetMap?

If you’ve been paying attention to online mapping in the last few months, you’ve noticed some big news related to OpenStreetMap (OSM). The biggest news came in February, when foursquare announced that they’re adopting OSM-powered maps on the website portion of their service, which now has more than 15 million users worldwide. Shortly thereafter, folks discovered that Apple is using OSM data as well. The way I see it, 2012 may well be the year of OSM, the year that more people than ever use and contribute to OSM. While the OSM community has toiled away for years on building up a formidable database of roads, cities, and other geographic features, it has never been easier to put these maps to use in fast, beautiful web applications.

A number of teams and organizations have been instrumental in pushing OSM out to a large audience, including (improbably) MapQuest. Another group that has played a major role in accelerating the widespread use and adoption of OSM is Development Seed, a DC-based team that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. The hard work and creativity of Development Seed and their Mapbox brand of open source mapping tools have made it easier than ever to leverage OSM data to create visually appealing, data-rich maps that serve a variety of purposes, from supporting foursquare’s check-in service to helping us understand U.S. census data to making it possible to do in-depth analysis of Afghan election results.

I’m excited about OSM because while working in the developing world I’ve attempted to use commercial mapping services like Google Maps to analyze development data, manage operations, and understand the geographic context of my work. In many places, the data offered by Google Maps is woefully inadequate for those tasks or, worse, simply unavailable. In some cases, OSM offers superior data (a number of people have favorably compared OSM to Google Maps in places like Kabul, Port-au-Prince, Cairo, and Kibera in Kenya). In other cases, where OSM data is incomplete, we see the difference that OSM can make in the world of online mapping.

Instead of waiting for a massive corporation to acquire and integrate data in the places we care about, thanks to OSM we have the ability to add the data ourselves. The results are impressive: the data is better, everyone can use it for free, there are no onerous or expensive terms of use, and the addition of data doesn’t benefit one corporation competing against others (it benefits everyone). One of my concerns with OSM has been that the tools for adding new data to OSM are built for mapping enthusiasts and technical specialists rather than the general public. To contribute to OSM, individuals must have a high degree of computer literacy and the patience to work through OSM’s toolset. In the developing world, this often means that rigorous training is required before local individuals possess the knowledge and skills to contribute data.

Fortunately, Development Seed is hard at work on this problem. They’ve submitted an application to the Knight Foundation that details their plans for creating contribution tools for the average person. It is my belief that these tools will help accelerate the contribution of data to OSM, much in the same way that Development Seed’s Mapbox ecosystem has helped accelerate the adoption of OSM in mainstream consumer web applications. With TileMill, they’ve lowered the barrier to creating maps. With these contribution tools, they will lower the barrier to adding data to OSM. We’ll all benefit.

I encourage you to take a look at their application and to support them by getting the word out via social media. Help make 2012 the year of OSM!

A Week With CoopCoffees and CoopSol in Chiapas

I’m wrapping up a fantastic in Chiapas, Mexico, where Ariel Chait and I participated in the annual meeting of CoopSol. Small scale coffee producers from around Latin America got together with the roasters and retailers of Cooperative Coffees to talk about the current state of Fair Trade, best practices in Fair Trade and organic coffee production, and where the future of specialty coffee is headed. Based in San Cristobal de las Casas, we held meetings at CEDECI, a training center for local indigenous people; in the mountains near Acteal, the home of Maya Vinic coffee; and around the picturesque city of San Cris. For Ariel and me, it was a great opportunity to meet a lot of good people and talk about Acopio Movil, the project we’ve been working on at Cal.

Check out the gallery below for some pictures from the week and a video featuring fellow participants.

Video:

Cafe Campesino and FECAFEB in Chiapas, Mexico from Paul G on Vimeo.

A short conversation with Tripp Pomeroy and Elias Chocanapi in the coffee fields of Maya Vinic near Acteal, Chiapas, Mexico.

Early Results from an Acopio Survey on Coffee and Giving

Here at Cal I’m working on an exciting project called Acopio. Acopio, which means “harvest” in Spanish, is creating and deploying tools that employ leading information management practices to increase the profitability and influence of agricultural producers in the developing world. At the moment our team is working with several coffee cooperatives in Latin America to pilot test software designed to help cooperatives manage data collected during the harvest process. The software runs on PCs and mobile phones and we’ve designed a data workflow that does not rely on connectivity, as internet connectivity is often unreliable in the locations where cooperatives work.

We see a range of opportunities made possible by this technology, including the possibility of sharing producer data with consumers that buy the coffee at retailers elsewhere. We’re very interested in knowing what people think about their coffee, how much source information they’d like with their coffee, what specifically they would like to know more about, and so on. We’re also considering how we might create a mechanism (an online platform of some sort) to allow consumers to contribute more directly to the farmers that produce the coffee that they love.

In November we launched a small survey to begin to gauge opinion on these questions. We used e-mail mailing lists and social media to get the word out and offered no reward for completing it. More than 135 people responded to the survey and though the sample size is small, we believe some of the findings reaffirm our suspicions about people’s love for coffee and thirst (ba-dom-chh) for more information about it. Below we’re sharing some of the key findings.

First, though, a profile of our respondents:

• The majority (80%) of respondents are between 26 and 35 years old.
• The majority (83%) of respondents have some graduate level education.
• The gender breakdown of respondents: 52% male – 48% female.
• On a scale of 1-5, 87% of respondents said their coffee knowledge could be ranked between a 2 and a 4.
• 60% of respondents said they had between 6 and 15 coffees a week. 12% said they had more than 15 cups a week.

Selected findings on coffee generally:

Talk on Mobile Data Integrity

Yesterday I spoke on a panel about mobile data integrity. The idea was to have a conversation about how international development projects using mobile phones for data collection can ensure that the integrity of the data they collect isn’t compromised in any way. Many people in the information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) community are focused on security challenges related to technology: phones that can be remotely wiped, devices that help you avoid government detection, and so on. These are hard engineering problems and deserve attention from computer scientists right now.

At the same time, there are many use cases where people are implementing these projects in contexts that aren’t politically or socially repressive, where they aren’t necessarily under surveillance or participating in anti-government protests. They need guidance on how to implement their projects safely, guidance on how to use today’s tools right now.

During the discussion I focused on how to think about data integrity during program design, training, and implementation. A few key themes from the talk:

1. Design for openness: begin the design process with the default position of open. Taking this approach will force hard questions about what should be protected, what can be in the public domain, and so on.
2. Find the right partners: select partners that have a genuine stake in the outcome of your program. An MoU or partnership agreement will help lock up organizations and teams, but at the end of the day you want partners that understand your long term objectives and take the integrity of your data as seriously as you do.
3. Expose your data: use today’s wide variety of free and open tools to expose and visualize as much data as you can. You’ll spot patterns, uncover vulnerabilities, find mistakes, and catalyze action.
4. Document everything: define terms, document processes, describe everything from the workflow to the icons. This is critical for the longterm sustainability of the project.
5. Iterate: don’t stop improving. The best actors in the software development / web development communities relentlessly improve their products. International development should take M&E a step further by importing this mentality and continuously surface and improve their projects.

More below. Audio to be released in the future via FrontlineSMS and Internews.

Map of America’s “Techiest” Cities

Today at lunch I read that DC is one of the geekiest cities in the country. Now that I’ve spent a couple months with Development Seed I can’t help but see one of these “top 20 cities” lists (or any other list) and wonder where the data comes from, if it’s open, and what I can do with it. It turns out that the NSF data driving that list is released on their Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010 site. I grabbed the data, ran it through TileMill, and uploaded the map to TileStream Hosting. Now I can see the NSF’s data in a more geographic, visual format that I think is easier to digest.