News — 08 January, 2021
Introducing the HOT Community Team
Over the past few months, HOT has assembled a six-person community team to support humanitarian OpenStreetMap community growth across 94 countries. Meet the members and welcome them to the HOT staff team.
In December, HOT launched a new pillar of work under the name “Transformation and Community.” This pillar will be formed of six teams: four regional hubs, the community team, and the communications team. The Transformation & Community pillar exists to reorient HOT’s work and to serve humanitarian OpenStreetMap communities, individuals, and organizations worldwide. Facing the task of supporting humanitarian OpenStreetMap community growth across 94 countries, over the past few months we’ve established a Community Team, taking the opportunity to welcome exciting (and some familiar) faces into the HOT staff team.
Introducing:
Arnalie Faye Vicario - Online Community Engagement Lead
Who are they?
Arnalie has been advocating for a more diverse and inclusive OpenStreetMap community since she first became involved in 2016. She is passionate about building inclusive spaces in the OSM community - where the communities that we serve and map are prioritized, listened to, and are able to voice their concerns. Her professional background is as a GIS specialist, using OSM for projects supporting disaster risk reductions and management in the Philippines (e.g., Project NOAH - WebSAFE and ISAIAH), and OSM for social welfare and development (e.g., the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s MapViewer and MAPAbabae). Alongside OSM Philippines, she is a member and supporter of various local mapping collectives in the country, such as GeoLadiesPH, Ministry of Mapping, UP Resilience Institute Youthmappers, Mapbeks, and Mental Health AWHEREness.
What are they working on?
Arnalie will build engagement with many groups that collaborate in the humanitarian OpenStreetMap (hOSM) online space, including HOT’s staff and Voting Members, Working Groups, Youthmappers, national/local mapping organizations, and online volunteers. Her priorities for the first months/year of work in HOT will focus on increasing participation of diverse communities/individuals not only in terms of mapping/”edits” contribution, but also in involvement in conversations relating to the future of OSM and hOSM.
Geoffrey Kateregga - Community Manager, East Africa
Who are they?
Geoffrey has worked building OpenStreetMap in Africa since 2015 and has worked on mapping projects in person in four African countries and remotely in 32. Geoffrey is passionate about open data and building online communities. He is an active member of the OpenStreetMap Africa community - a network of local OpenStreetMap communities from all over Africa that organizes the State of the Map Africa conference and joins hands to share resources and collaborate to grow and produce a complete and well-detailed map of Africa on OpenStreetMap.
What are they working on?
Geoffrey’s role is to support the development of OpenStreetMap communities in all 21 countries the East Africa hub serves through providing community support, training, and mentorship to communities looking to grow. In the first year, his focus will be localizing community support through the East Africa hub, supporting the growth of sustainable OSM communities and making the microgrant program more exciting, collaborative, and impactful.
Mikko Tamura - Community Manager, Asia
Who are they?
Mikko has been at the LGBT forefront of the mapping community in the Philippines. He is the founder of MapBeks, an online community of volunteers advocating for LGBT representation on OSM and other mapping platforms. He has also been working and volunteering with various NGOs such as the Philippine Red Cross, The Asia Foundation, UN-Habitat, and Cordaid in the past years, training and mapping the most unmapped and remote areas of the country. He has been an OSMF and HOT Voting Member since 2020 and is well known for his approachable, funny, and high-energy demeanor.
What are they working on?
Mikko is now the Community Manager for Asia and its Pacific neighbors. He will be part of the team that will empower, build on, and capacitate new and emerging communities in the world’s most populous continent. He is a strong believer that the key to achieving our Audacious goal is putting the spotlight on the OSM communities and the contributors and that there is always heart in whatever we do! You can expect a few jokes and laughs when talking to him, but he can absolutely assure you that he will get on top of any concern.
Pete Masters - Head of Community
Who are they?
While working at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Pete was part of the team that set up and ran Missing Maps in 2014 and MapSwipe in 2016, before heading up a medical research and innovation team. He is a HOT Voting Member, has spent three years on the HOT Board, and is an active member of the London Missing Maps community. Pete’s experience means he has worked extensively with OSM data creators in multiple countries and with humanitarian OSM users. His best mapping experiences have been in Lesotho (remotely) and Kamrangirchar, Bangladesh (on the ground).
What are they working on?
Pete leads the new HOT Community Team, and his role includes guiding HOT’s evolution from a project-led NGO to a community-centric organization that supports the mobilization of OSM contributors in places of high humanitarian need. The team is developing support for individuals, organizations, and communities working to solve local problems through open data, tools, and community and building stronger connections and collaborations between HOT’s staff teams and humanitarian OpenStreetMap communities. In the first year, this will focus heavily on understanding communities’ needs and ambitions and piloting and testing new models of community support and approaches to building local and regional sustainability.
Rubén Martín - Community Strategist and Research Lead
Who are they?
Rubén has a long history of 16 years supporting open source communities. He drove and implemented strategies and initiatives for Mozilla’s product and technology teams, including Mozilla Support, the data-crowdsourcing project Common Voice, Firefox, Pocket, Addons, and Localization. His work resulted in a significant cost reduction, expanded reach, aligned collaboration, and increased contributors’ satisfaction.
What are they working on?
Rubén joined our team this week! Given much of his experience from Mozilla, part of his early role in the team will be to help us get to know ourselves better. For a data organization, we have nowhere near enough data about HOT and humanitarian OpenStreetMap work. Part of Rubén’s mandate is to create a HOT & hOSM network snapshot and help us better measure and monitor community health moving forward, using this data to propose strategies and initiatives that can boost our Audacious goals in the coming years and ensure strong community sustainability in the long term.
Sophie Mower - Community Support Manager
Who are they?
Sophie’s background is in community development and inclusive innovation, and she’s been contributing to HOT’s mission as a volunteer since 2017. Over the past six months, Sophie has created HOT’s first-ever Rapid Response Microgrants program providing Microgrants to seven communities mapping in response to Covid-19, and set up HOT’s Facebook Community Impact Microgrants, serving five communities to date.
What are they working on?
Sophie’s key priorities are to make HOT’s microgrant program more exciting, collaborative, and impactful, and to support Community Managers in each Regional Hub to navigate the complexities of granting funding to communities. She will focus on application processes, planning, budgeting, due diligence, governance, monitoring, and reporting.
Shared priorities:
All members of this team have committed to another goal: thinking in public. This involves sharing thinking and ideas before finalizing them and creating better listening channels to integrate any feedback. This is now a fully-fledged team with big ambitions. Get in touch with any team members individually or get more involved by emailing community@hotosm.org or joining the #community_wg channel in the HOT Slack.