Some of you were probably approached by cbittner (Christian Bittner), who is visiting Israel for the next few weeks.
Christian is a PhD candidate in the department of geography at the University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He is involved in a sociological research regarding OSM in general, and our country in particular.
I met with Christian yesterday for a short chat about my personal experience with OSM, and wanted to share my positive impression with all of you. Christian is a well-mannered chap with a lot of commonality with the rest of us. While I am sure he has his own views of many sensitive subjects we discussed here, his aim is to listen and not to be heard. If you are concerned with a provocative approach, your suspicion is misguided
I strongly suggest for active (or past active) members on the IL OSM community to meet with Christian and give him a fuller picture of what we are all about. You can reach him through the OSM messaging system at cbittner.
Three years ago I was in Israel, doing research for my PhD thesis on „social dimensions of web 2.0- cartographies“. During my stay, I met many of you guys for interviews on OSM in Israel and Palestine. Now I finally managed to finish the thesis, which consist mainly of 4 articles (one in german language, the others in english):
(The analysis of the interviews is a main part of the last of these papers)
I whish to thank all of you who have talked to me back then.
!תודה רבה
Unfortunately (and admittedly contradicting the open source ethos of OSM), the last two articles are not openly accessible. If you’d like to have a look at a paper anyways, I’m happy to share a pdf via email: christian.bittner@fau.de
I’m also thankful for any comments or critics.
All the best and keep up the great work!
Christian