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News — 13 April, 2022

hot_tech_talk | Mar 22

Back once again, and we have connected in real time, in real life, with real people. Read on >>

Tldr;

  • We finally got some real life in-person meets!

  • Welcome to Emilio. Our new Sr Engineer!

  • We are hiring! We are on the hunt for a new Senior front-end designer/developer.

  • New TM deployment false start. New deployment Wed 12th April

  • Mobile mapping ‘ease of use’ experiments are underway.

Happy days, all!

Back for yet another month and wow did that month fly by! Literally, I boarded a plane for work purposes for the first time in 2 years!

First stop, Dakar, Senegal, where a few of the tech team members supported the launch of the new West and Northern Africa Open Mapping Hub. It was super exciting to see the way the hub will be leading with OSM community needs and how our tech can support.

In between, we also had our new Sr Engineer, Emilio, join our team. This has been a long hunt finding the right person and it was totally worth the wait. Emilio is a passionate OSM tech contributor, passionate about free and open software and a volunteer firefighter/first responder. The only other unicorns like this I know, are the ones that are already on our team.

HOT’s Senior Management Team were also put to the test, literally, as they picked up their mobile mapping tools during in-person Team meeting. meeting to test a range of mobile apps that hot_tech is eyeing up for ease of use enhancements. At the same time, on the other side of the planet, our mobile engineer, Kristen, was running the same test in Zanzibar.

Our Open Tech Collective Faciltator, Petya, pulled together the Tasking Manager collective and started to plan for the return of the tm_collective meet up. This will be the first of many more to come, so if you care about TM and want to contribute to its future, come join the collective (you can read more about it at Petya’s blog ]here »](https://www.hotosm.org/tech-blog/welcome-to-the-tasking-manager-collective-how-to-join-and-contribute/)!

We closed out the month preparing for the next quarter, putting together our Objectives & Key Results (aka OKRs) to prioritise what matters most to us for the next three months. Tldr; version. We are going strong on Underpass, mobile, and collective work.

Kindness,

Bo Tech/ >dir

#Announcements:

## For the NetHope AI Working group this month, Christopher, our current Masters student will be talking about developing AI models that could lead to community-trained MA/ML models.

## I (Bo) will be presenting at Global Digital Development Forum (GDDF) workshop on meaningful engagement for women and girls in AI in May. We will be running a workshop to gather inputs for an open repository for use by orgs that’s will be released later in the year.

#Events & Opportunities:

## Galaxy Working Group > Tue Apr 19, 1600UTC / Wed Apr 20, 0900UTC

## We are hiring! > Senior front-end designer/developer opening up soon. Keep an eye out!

#Project updates:

## GALAXY

Our goal for this quarter is stabilising Underpass data source for statistics and raw data:

  • On the statistics side, we are working towards Underpass being the primary data source for mapathon, hashtag and user group statistics. This involves validating the existing statistics by comparing it against the Insights data source and frequent, iterative updates to the C++ processing script to ensure the right data points are captured and data points are captured right.\

  • For raw data storage and extraction using Underpass, we made a proof point with Asia and Africa data. Next step is scaling up for the whole planet. Export Tool will serve as the frontend for the Galaxy raw data extraction. So our team is also working towards data source changes within the Export Tool codebase.\

  • For the website:\

    • There are continuous improvements to the existing pages.\

    • We are working with Harvard Tech for Social Good Team on website’s user navigation and data representation for Team & user statistics.

## TASKING MANAGER

  • We have been actively collaborating with the Kathmandu Living Labs team as part of the Tasking Manager collective. The team has been working on a number of issues that will make it in the next release, including small additions like adding a cheat sheet, a service desk button, as well as improving error messages and the long awaited RapidID integration. We would encourage everyone to check the new changes once they are live!\

  • The KLL team and HOT’s Tech Collective Facilitator talked about the TM collective at the Asia Pacific Hub Map and Chat hour at the end of March and also held the first Tasking Manager Collective Meet Up on 6 April! We had great participation in two sessions, including an interactive Jamboard session. We want to thank everyone who joined. More details about the next meet up will be shared shortly.

## OAM

  • The Kontur design team conducted a round of interviews with OAM stakeholders, including representatives from local OSM communities and drone pilots. The results were reviewed along with ideas and issues that have been collected in the OAM Github over the years, and translated into a series of initial problem statements and user personas.\

  • Three virtual workshops are now being organized and will involve a larger group of stakeholders across all regions to generate ideas on how to solve users’ problems. These ideas and key problem statements will be guiding the following phase of design sprints, after which the Kontur team will provide wireframes and prototypes of proposed solutions to HOT and OAM stakeholders.\

  • You can read more about the design process here and get in touch with Cristiano or (DK)[mailto:dk@hotosm.org] if you’re interested in participating in the workshops.