CWG meeting 2013-01-07

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Meeting of Communication Working Group on Monday 7th January 2013

Topics

  • Million users
    • Press release
  • LocationTech
  • Campaign ideas
    • New mapper docs and overlap with learnosm.org

Attendees

  • Harry Wood
  • JonathanB
  • Richard Weait
  • Richard Fairhurst
with guest appearances from
  • Blackadder (Andy Robinson)
  • tmcw_ (Tom MacWright)

IRC log:

21:02 harry-wood: hi JonathanB
21:02 harry-wood: Maybe we have RichardF too
21:02 JonathanB: Evenin'
21:02 harry-wood: How's it going? Good christmas?
21:04 JonathanB: Not bad. Tiring having all of the kids around all of the time, and doesn't leave much time for emails etc.
21:05 harry-wood: I thought I'd missed a bunch of CWG emails
21:05 harry-wood: but then realised I had them in gmail
21:05 harry-wood: ...and there weren't very many of them :-)
21:06 harry-wood: Everyone taking a christmas break. I had a busy christmas of parents visiting etc
21:06 JonathanB: I have OSM and allotment society stuff to catch up on -- all spread across at least three mail accounts
21:07 harry-wood: We probably should've written a press release about the 1 million users news
21:07 harry-wood: At least I managed a couple of blogs posts
21:08 harry-wood: Not sure if it's worth doing at this stage
21:10 JonathanB: Hmm, maybe. Sometimes these things find a quiet period and sneak in
21:10 harry-wood: We can still say that the project hit 1 million users "this week"
21:10 Blackadder: If I get time I'll update the graphs tomorow
21:11 harry-wood: Ooh hello Blackadder
21:11 Blackadder: evenin
21:11 harry-wood: We can use the same hackpad link to write a press release
21:11 harry-wood: maybe I'll do it
21:12 harry-wood: I did get into an email exchange with Anna Powel Smith about this kind of thing, and she's given me a contact at the BBC
21:13 harry-wood: I guess press releases can re-use a lot of bullet points about OpenStreetMap each time too
21:13 JonathanB: "Information for editors"
21:14 harry-wood: There was conversation about it yesterday with RichardF in which we argued that blog post was probably the main thing
21:14 harry-wood: Shall we pimp the story on facebook & g+ too?
21:14 JonathanB: Yes -- if the information's out there, then any hacks who are interested will pick up on it anyway
21:14 JonathanB: Yep
21:15 harry-wood: you want to be in charge of that? Mr social media :-)
21:15 JonathanB: Yeah, oK :)
21:16 : rweait [~purple@69.158.94.164] entered the room.
21:16 harry-wood: hi rweait
21:16 rweait: What did I miss?
21:16 harry-wood: We were talking about the 1 million news
21:16 rweait: AH.
21:17 rweait: I liked your post on OGD.
21:17 harry-wood: I think I'll compose a press release too
21:17 harry-wood: bit late
21:17 harry-wood: but maybe worth doing still
21:19 harry-wood: here we go rweait. discussion so far: http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/CWG_meeting_2013-01-07
21:19 rweait: Thankyou.
21:19 JonathanB: Are you live blogging this, harry-wood ? :)
21:20 harry-wood: hehe yup
21:20 harry-wood: Sorry. I should've arranged to kick off CWG a bit in advance
21:20 rweait: anything else planned for the agenda today?
21:20 rweait: and no RichardF?
21:20 harry-wood: not so far
21:20 harry-wood: other agenda items? errm
21:21 harry-wood: The idea of a new campaign
21:21 rweait: okay, may i add a couple?
21:21 harry-wood: RichardF was keen on a campaign, so I guess it could wait
21:22 rweait: WE've got "Report to MT", and "LocationTech"
21:22 harry-wood: Ah yeah. Was there an MT meeting in the end?
21:22 rweait: There was an MT meeting.
21:23 rweait: They had no time for our report. So I wasn't able to share our plans with them.
21:23 harry-wood: Yeah I think the main plan was to discuss the future of MT etc
21:24 rweait: So we'll have to be ready to report next time they schedule, as well.
21:27 harry-wood: What *did* get discussed then?
21:27 harry-wood: is there minutes somewhere?
21:27 rweait: I don't recall.
21:27 rweait: :-)
21:27 rweait: Meta-MT stuff for the most part.
21:27 JonathanB: ...which is fine. Governance needs attention.
21:28 harry-wood: did you have another agenda point?
21:28 harry-wood: for CWG today I mean
21:28 rweait: Yeah, do we have an update on LocationTech?
21:28 JonathanB: I haven't done anything for two reasons -- Christmas, and uncertainty about the membership requirements.
21:29 JonathanB: Do we need to sign the forms to take any kind of part at all?
21:29 rweait: Is there anything that we can discuss and resolve, or should we drop this / pass it elsewhere?
21:30 harry-wood: forms? do we just need to reply to them saying JonathanB will attend? was that the plan?
21:30 rweait: Would you like to talk to LcoationTech directly?
21:31 JonathanB: If I look at Andrew Ross's email of 28th November, he says we need to "fill in the forms". Some of these involve making agreements I'm not comfortable with making for the whole of OSMF without board approval
21:32 harry-wood: aha
21:33 JonathanB: OK -- have subscribed to the mailing list without needing any approval, so I'll also drop Andrew a note saying I'm back in business, but that OSMF being a member of Eclipse is more involved
21:34 harry-wood: it does seem ...involved
21:34 harry-wood: completing and scanning agreements. What a hassle
21:35 harry-wood: (just dug out the email)
21:35 JonathanB: As I say, I'll chat to Andrew and explain the current position, and see if there's any need for something more formal that we can push up to the board.
21:35 RichardF: hello, sorry I'm late
21:35 harry-wood: JonthanB very happy to leave you to it :-)
21:36 harry-wood: Hi RichardF
21:36 RichardF: (sorry, unexpected family visit :) )
21:36 JonathanB: RichardF: Move further from the family :)
21:37 harry-wood: RichardF I promised everyone you'll be doing something equally as awesome as switch2osm this year http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Harry%20Wood/diary/18354
21:37 RichardF: heh :)
21:37 harry-wood: so you have to do it now
21:37 RichardF: harry-wood: yes, I saw! I think we've got a real opportunity to do something cool around the launch of new stuff
21:37 RichardF: basically "it's now easier to contribute your local knowledge to OSM than ever before"
21:38 RichardF: "...and because of switch2osm, it'll make a difference to _all_ these sites..."
21:39 RichardF: so spend some time over the next week thinking of ideas for how it might work :) a tagline would be good, too. so far I've come up with #mapyourass which is probably not going to fly.
21:40 rweait: "#mapyourassoff" was too long?  :-)
21:40 RichardF: isn't he one of our Russian users, Igor Mapurasov?
21:41 harry-wood: Did you mean "Map your ass" or is this a hashtag like #susanalbumparty ? :-)
21:41 rweait: "Map your local" "Think Globally, Map Locally", "Local is cool"
21:41 rweait: "See it map it"
21:41 JonathanB: Was yesterday official "1m day"?
21:42 harry-wood: Yesterday we logged the first >1m stat on the early morning stats run yes
21:43 JonathanB: OK -- trying a Facebook feature.
21:43 RichardF: rweait: ooh, I like some of those. #seeitmapit really gets to the heart of the OSM attitude: verifiable, and survey-is-best
21:44 harry-wood: So the campaign is ... broadly speaking ... about encouraging mapping?
21:44 harry-wood: thinking a documentation site like switch2osm.org focussed on that theme?
21:45 RichardF: about encouraging people to register as mappers to add their local knowledge.
21:45 RichardF: doc site could be one part of it, certainly, depending what happens with learnosm.org etc.
21:45 harry-wood: yes. was thinking how will it related to learnosm.org
21:46 RichardF: learnosm might be a bit wordy for this campaign though - really we want a three-picture "do this, do that, do that, bang you're done"
21:46 harry-wood: There's quite a lot of documentation and attempted documentation about using editors for beginners
21:47 RichardF: indeed.
21:47 harry-wood: I've been trying to imagine a way of pulling together different documentation, and allow good quality docs to be "near the top"
21:47 RichardF: I think if we try and do "one project to rule them all" we'll fail.
21:48 RichardF: switch2osm took a different approach - "a simple site for the most common use-case". don't explain everything about developing with OSM, just explain how to set up a tileserver.
21:48 rweait: Perhaps we can look at the simplest mapping case. "There's a pub. Add it (if it isn't already there.)"
21:49 RichardF: any campaign really wants to only mention newly-launched iD (and maybe Pushpin); not P2, not JOSM, and certainly not QGIS or whatever bizarre thing learnosm thinks is important
21:51 harry-wood: Yeah. Well learnosm.org has been put together with HOT training courses in mind mainly. So it's not necessarily the best place for the first time mapper it's true
21:51 RichardF: yep.
21:52 JonathanB: From an osm.org/OSMF PoV, one of the most useful things we can probably do is a triage page
21:52 harry-wood: triage?
21:52 JonathanB: "Mapper? Start here. Web site owner? Start here. Coder? Start here. (etc)"
21:55 harry-wood: So directing people to pre-existing resources?
21:55 JonathanB: Yep
21:55 RichardF: yeah, tmcw_ has been doing some of that with the /Develop page on the wiki (as per EWG)
21:56 JonathanB: looks
21:56 harry-wood: him and Ppawel
21:56 JonathanB: Yes -- just one level higher
21:57 RichardF: to some degree I wonder if that _could_ be served by the wiki (and by standard nav links on osm.org)
21:57 RichardF: I mean, that's really what the wiki front page should be there for
21:57 JonathanB: RichardF: Yes -- it's a design thing, not a technology think
21:57 JonathanB: The wiki is, after all, just one kind of CMS
21:58 RichardF: nods
21:58 tmcw_: heh, it's a bad kind of cms yes
21:58 harry-wood: Well triage idea needs involve classifying docs for different audiences, and also I think, rating the quality of docs.
21:58 tmcw_: the redesign of learnosm aims to nail the 'just editing osm' use case much better than the site does currently
21:58 tmcw_: > http://hotosm.github.com/learnosm/en/
21:59 tmcw_: the three initial directions, etc.
21:59 : pascal_n [~Adium@ip-95-222-230-87.unitymediagroup.de] entered the room.
22:01 RichardF: yeah, the redesign's nice. copy-wise, I think there's room for something concise that doesn't involve steps such as "Be sure that your computer is on and you are connected to the internet" though ;)
22:01 harry-wood: so we discussed learnosm.org above. Because the site is HOT oriented, it's JOSM oriented and includes QGIS information, which is not what RichardF would choose as key topic areas :-)
22:02 harry-wood: Kate and the other minds behind learnosm.org would welcome more input I'm sure, but steering away from JOSM and QGIS would be a big change.
22:03 tmcw_: harry-wood: eh, really?
22:03 tmcw_: I don't think that hot oriented -> josm + qgis is necessarily true or something that you should view as unfixable in such a way as to duplicate the site
22:03 harry-wood: yeah maybe not maybe not
22:04 tmcw_: ind
22:04 tmcw_: indeed, so, it's better to ask or volunteer, rather than writing it off
22:04 JonathanB: has to go
22:05 harry-wood: Yeah. So the start of the discussion was... What would make a good campaign focus and new site to launch, along similar lines to switch2osm this year
22:05 JonathanB: Will report back next week on LocationTech
22:05 : JonathanB left the room.
22:05 harry-wood: Thanks JonathanB
22:05 tmcw_: JonathanB: good luck, don't wear a tie
22:05 harry-wood: missed him :-)
22:05 tmcw_: sent into mordor
22:05 rweait: I guess we're done, then?
22:06 RichardF: yep, think so
22:06 rweait: Cheers
22:06 harry-wood: ok let's wrap this up
22:06 harry-wood: think about the campaign focus
22:06 harry-wood: and the point tmcw_ is making
22:06 harry-wood: there's a danger of too much overlap with learnosm.org
22:07 RichardF: don't get wrapped up with the idea that "the campaign is a docs site". the campaign doesn't even have to involve a docs site.
22:07 RichardF: what matters is that there are good docs we can point towards.
22:07 RichardF: right now there aren't.
22:08 harry-wood: ok. let's leave it at that for now?
22:09 : pascal_n left the room (quit: Quit: Leaving.).
22:10 harry-wood: See you next week?