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OSMF Chairman Sweepstake

So as my three-year term as chairman comes to an end, let me give you a run-down of the leading contenders to not succeed me in this important role. It’s important to know who the lucky guy will be with the accolade of coming second in the ballot and you can bet there’ll be no other topic of conversation at SOTM. Well you can bet if you like. You haven’t seen what I’m announcing in my keynote yet.

While we’re on the subject, let me point out that the recent dramatic increase in OSMF membership in the Ukraine is because those guys are so enthused about mapping. Ballot-rigging just isn't in their nature, they know of nothing but free and fair elections. Anyway.

The candidates

Peter Miller. Almost certainly formulating a Use Case for chairmanship of OSMF as we speak. Would change O in OSM from Open to Ontology. Leadership posters to be pasted on bus stops across Britain. 6 to 1.

RichardF. Would impose socialist five-year plan on OSM. Likely to duplicate most OSMF positions, not intentionally but due to a bug in Potlatch. Liable to go postal if elected to Licence Working Group. 20 to 1.

Mike Collinson. Probably also a socialist. Never trust anyone with the PD symbol on their wiki page. Especially not:

Frederik. Thinks he can rely on the support of the German masses to assure him of the position, fortunately no longer the case thanks to our recent hearts and minds mission (in short: appeal to the hormones of 17-year old Linux freaks by sending over CM HOT BABES). 5 to 1.

Iván Sánchez Ortega. Knows his way around NMAs, smart on copyright, good coder, really nice guy. Would make an excellent OSMF chairman. Therefore, far too sane to ever consider standing. 200 to 1.

Andy Blackadder. Showing dangerous signs of independence recently. Appears to be allied with the insurrectionist Sustrans faction in OSM - what is it with those guys? Memo to Nick: throw some more mapping party work his way. 10 to 1.

Nick?

Hello?

Shit.

Nick B. Why didn’t I see this one coming? Don’t the backroom brains behind the organisation always try to take over? What if our German expedition was secretly researching how best to organise a putsch? Shit.

This is starting to hack me off

So Nick wants feature requests for our products. I've got a request - fix the damn routing already. This is getting expensive.

Do these mapper guys not realise that Admiral Insurance don't accept "way 987345 and 8653425 were mistakenly joined without a layer tag" as a valid reason for driving your car into a river? Trust me, they don't.

Trolling, moi?

I'm deeply hurt by the suggestion that OSM people have been trolling the Google Mapmaker discussion group. You certainly wouldn't catch me doing something like that. Perhaps some other OSM users can help me in trolling^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H refuting the allegation.

Update: HARRY PWNS GOOGLE

Last damn time I trust CM routing

(thx FakeMapGuy)

New CEO appointed

Hey.

So I’ve not blogged much recently but that’s because at CloudMade we’re doing moar stuff ftw than ever before (I must stop stretching these memes, it’s getting painful). Obviously it’s all super-secret stuff that I can’t tell the community about, but I figure the loyal readers of this blog are entitled to a preview. So:

• Our editor is almost ready. Really. Having distracted RichardF with API 0.6, Frederik with ODbL, and the Merkaartor guys with Stefan de Konink, the three incumbents have been in feature stasis for months now which means we can blow them away with a mere flick of the toolbar. We’ve actually hired the People’s Map guys to write our editor - we wanted people who really understand the user experience. But more on that at Where 2.0.
  
• Location is everywhere. It's all about pervasive geocontext. CloudMade is dedicated to pushing the boundaries so we have 30 people working on geocontext. We don’t actually know what it means yet but we’re determined that when someone invents it, we’ll be there first.
  
• We don’t just aim to reinvent mapping. Oh no. We set our sights high and so we also have a plan to reinvent the Internet. The existing infrastructure is just not fast enough for the increasing demands of the 21st century (e.g. cycle-map tiles, Map Features page, long anguished e-mails about ODbL) so we need a speedier replacement. Our new Internet will solve this. All packets will be delivered by shaunmcdonald on his bike.
  
• Midnight Commander is not just meant to look like the Matrix. It is the Matrix. It’s set up in my basement on a 40in plasma screen and I do have a five-year plan for world domination. “No, Mr Ramm, I expect you to die” - you know the drill.

But I realise that, even for someone like me who is able to be in three continents at the same time - oh did I mention we were working on that too? - this is a bit of a stretch. Take this posting for example - I set myself a deadline of midday for this and I’ll only just make it. I have to give something up.

Also some of our wonderful community has been muttering (in German) about conflict of interest, or as Google Translate has it, “blitzkrieg of hobby”. Personally I don’t agree but I'll let it pass in the interests of community cohesion - as you know shitting on active members of the community and telling them they're worthless has never been my style.

Also I need to take some time out to instil discipline in the troops, what with Matt and Andy promoting insurrection on legal-talk and ymca-discuss and who-knows-what about ODbL. The shtick to the investors that “we need ODbL because it gives us certainty” kind of wears off when our own super-intelligent techies keep posting that they don’t understand it.

So I’m stepping down as Chairman of OSMF at this year’s elections - my three years are up and I’ve decided not to seek reelection. Instead we’ve decided to replace the Chairman post with that of CEO - paid staff for OSMF is one of our top priorities and this is the obvious place to start.

Now you’d be A Fool if you did this without any succession planning so I’m pleased to announce our preferred candidate will be SFan00. Those of you who don’t read #osm might not be familiar with him but I’m sure you’ll find his enthusiastic style will ingratiate him with you immediately. Indeed Mr Fan is equally intelligible in every language so the German guys will love him right from the off. He even says “ftw” now and then although we think this is probably a spelling mistake for something else. It’s going to be an exciting time.

The Future of Communications is Happening Here

I've been blogging about the cool things we're doing at CloudMade. (Our editor is almost ready. AS3 FTW!) But as the chairman of the board of OSMF, I am often asked: "Steve, what are the cool things in the OSMF pipeline? Any surprises in store for us on the community side?"

Now I can't of course share our full 5-year plan of world domination with you (Nick came up with the fashionable OSM 2014 tag for it) but a key pillar of this is going to be a radical communications revamp. You have already seen how we're gradually replacing mailing lists with telephone conferences. But there's more! I have heard your complaints about the Wiki and they are all true - the hardware is meagre, the software is crap, and the users, well, I've promised Nick not to throw the talk-de trouble makers any more bones. The good news is, we're going to replace the Wiki with a full-colour, monthly membership magazine that is delivered to your door, free of charge, courtesy of CloudMade sponsoring! I have three CloudMade designers working round the clock on this assignment and their beta results are awsome. You'll absolutely love the centrefold design they came up with. I'll let Nick be the editor-in-chief and he has promised me space for a monthly philosophy column.

And before the naysayers complain: There's absolutely no reason to be worried. We will carry at least half a page of letters to the editor. In each issue. Promise.