What should go into an OpenStreetMap community building playbook

Kateregga1 · 2022-08-15T06:14:48.158Z

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There is a need for an OpenStreetMap community building playbook, that would act as a guide for anyone trying to build a community either at the national or sub-national level. To answer questions around volunteers engagement, governance, data quality, organizing events, resource mobilization, diversity and inclusion, tools, partnerships, fundraising, etc

We will be discussing this at State of the Map 2022 and we would like to get your ideas here and also keep the conversation going. What would be the best approach to take to create an OpenStreetMap community building playbook, for the community, by the community? What topics would be the most important to include? How should it be structured, and where should it be hosted? What good examples of playbooks are out there from open communities that we can copy a leaf from? Please join the discussion by sharing your thoughts here…

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-08-15T08:36:46.419Z

Kateregga1:

What would be the best approach to take to create an OpenStreetMap community building playbook

Remember to make it openly licensed - using one of standard licenses. With editable format being public and available to anyone. Not necessarily making it editable to anyone, that would be different. Preferably using some standard place to cooperate. Make it easy to contribute.

Try to build on existing work rather than start from scratch. Has anyone tried to make such guide already?

dkbenjamin · 2022-08-20T08:21:41.966Z

Do you think that an OSM community would include not only mappers but also OSM technology enthusiasts and developers? Should the playbook include topics for that type of engagement as well?

suricata88 · 2022-08-20T08:24:03.693Z

I think that good thing to have in a community building playbook are games, workshops and other activities already prepared to take and use in events.

AwezGeo · 2022-08-20T08:53:57.349Z

A community playbook should include some data ethics guideline for field activities,

It should make room to prioritise active volunteer base in times of projects/paid activities,

It should have some targets to be met once established (organising activities/impact) so people do not just set up communities in vain

nyampire · 2022-08-21T11:28:42.959Z

Just as a starting point, I have tried to come up with a chapter structure for the Playbook I want.

This is just “what I want”, so I’m sure it doesn’t cover all your needs

What do you think?

What is community?
Kickstart the community
  Make a Core
  Identifying local community issues and outcome
  Small start
  Communication inside
  Stock and flow of information (OSM wiki page and chats)
Build capacity
  Training
  Accompany the newbies
  Localization
  Tech and gadgets
  Ethics and securities (OSM ways (copyrights and having fun!) and field activities)
Expand the community and the fringe
  Making `Allies` (Identifying stakeholders. e.g. locals, students, companies and so on)
  Approaching Open Source (nice) guys
  Encourage voluntary / fostering their motivation
  Visualize and promote the map outcome/results
  Events and workshops
  Expand the core
Iteration or Management (sustainability?)
  Resolving conflicts
  Organize a corporative body (chapter or something)
  Fundraising  
Tools
  OSM tools, communication tools, management tools and so on.

nyampire · 2022-08-21T12:04:19.074Z

Thinking of this, it could be added some lines like…

measuring activities (number of members, activity (output) and impact (outcome))
approaching government guys (depends on countries, so might be replaced by “compliance”)
why community? (after the “what is community”)

dónal · 2022-08-21T15:10:14.413Z

I think that good thing to have in a community building playbook are games, workshops and other activities already prepared to take and use in events.

This is something MSF have done quite well for their Missing Maps mapathons. Definitely things that can be learnt from their approach.

SynneMarion · 2022-09-07T08:22:42.969Z

Fantastic initiative! One of my reflections after State of the Map taps into @dkbenjamin question: it is my impression that quite a few of the community members seem to have more than one skillset or knowledge (sometimes including a technical skills of some sort, incl. data science or software development), but perhaps more importantly, the interest in, and knowledge of, the various (HOT)OSM tools and products are impressive! It would therefore be very interesting to better understand how we can better facilitate for these ‘hacktivists’ to take part in the enhancement (and future) of the tools that enables the community to make an impact. Here, I am also including identifying problems or issues and/or bringing forward ideas as important part of this line of work.
cc: @Petya_Kangalova

SynneMarion · 2022-09-07T08:23:27.055Z

On a practical note: one approach to consolidate reflections, learnings, mindsets, methodologies, approaches and tools that I personally keep going back to in whatever project or job I have worked on/in is IDEOs toolkit: www.designkit.org/methods. Perhaps this approach could be of inspiration? If not directly using the website as an inspiration, I can highly recommend using their methods on how to stay human-centered in the co-creation of a Community Playbook:)

grin · 2023-09-19T10:34:26.882Z

Let me share one important point (at least based on my experience):

From the beginning there shall be a definitive amount of energy spent on keeping the community friendly and encompassing, in mood and nature. This sounds trivial, I know. Small communities are often don’t even see why this is important.

As a community starts to grow some typical problems arise: senior members start to feel superior to newbies, they start to keep quality by reacting more and more harshly to the mistakes and inexperience of new members, the community may go in a direction where the “rules” are more important than talking about the problems and (preferably proactively) resolve them.

Keeping healthy mood requires some dedicated people to keep giving feedback to people diverging from the expected open attitude, to prevent escalating it to “moderation” and “bans”. Sometimes it requires lot more time expaining the problems and trying to find a resolution than to “block” the problem (administratively or technically). It worths noting that spelling out positive core values in the beginning helps remindig community members that they really shall spend energy on staying positive.

I do not want to cite bad examples, I am sure many people could think of some. For me OSM community is a good example, and I hope it stays that way. It needs work to keep it that way.

ZeLonewolf · 2023-09-19T11:30:10.777Z

I gave an OSM US Mappy Hour talk about “building and growing an open source community”. You can watch it here:

That was about starting a technical project, but there are many parallels to building an organization. Creating a positive environment that people want to be a part of is no accident – you have to work at it.

Negreheb · 2023-11-15T12:32:03.281Z

That also should be included are ideas for events, like a regulars’ table or a mapathon vor workshops for example. Just a quick outliner on what should be included and common pitfalls and so on.

@nyampire
Did you expand your chapter structure? The whole playbook sounds like it should be in the wiki - it can be edited by anyone.