"Building OpenStreetMap Higher Education Communities." By: Mike Thompson. >> Believe it or not, it is not yet time for lunch. The only problem speaking after lunch when everyone is in a food coma. Is this thing on? >> Is before lunch, but please stick with me. I have to compliment the people who organize this event because Drishtie Patel's presentation is very common to mine and connected in hooking our presentations back-to-back. So the next 20 minutes or so, we -- you and I explore how we can grow on our community, the OSM community not only today, but make an investment that will fuel the growth in the future by working with higher education communities. This talk is broken down into three seconds. Why, why, and how. [Laughter] So why from the OpenStreetMap community? Why should we want to work with higher education communities? Why from the higher education communities? Why should they want to work with us? And finally how? But you've already heard some of that from Drishtie but some practical lessons that I've learned by working with these communities, these colleges, universities, professors, and students. So first why from our perspective? Is it because as George Mallaro infamously said about Everest simply because it's there. This is yet another rule we should, could, and as you heard from Drishtie and already are reaching out to. Or is there something special about this group? What do you think? Anyone? Dale? If you don't say anything, I'm calling on you. And we all get to lunch. I think there's something special beyond the numbers that this the higher education community can bring to our community. Now, to I will elevate that, I would like you to take a little journey with me, a long, long time ago to a galaxy far, far away. Believe it or not, even I was once a student. I consider myself a lifelong student. I actually enrolled in a university at one time or two. Now, to show you how long ago this was, this product was introduced when I entered university. This original Macintosh shown there running a very early version of. Now, the reason I use this example to illustrate my advanced age is because my university signed an agreement with Apple Computer that allowed us students to purchase these Macintoshes for tremendous discount. Now, why would they do this? A fantastic product, it was selling fairly well, why cut the price? >> Market penetration. >> Market penetration. Anyone else? Get to lunch faster. >> People use it in school, they use it professionally. >> Exactly. If people will use a product, a software, some data in school, then they'll go out into the real world and their boss says, hey, Mike, we have this problem, what do you think we should do? Buy a Macintosh or, hey, Mike we have this problem, what do we do? You need to use OpenStreetMap data, and you may give back to the community as well. Now, we're not selling anything, but there's a lot of other examples of we just had the Republican convention, we're going to have the democratic convention, both Republican and Democrats have young Republicans, young Democrats. The Sierra club had a student organization. Now, maybe these organizations are simply looking to boost their numbers. Students vote, they can attend rallies, write letters. But maybe they're developing the future leadership of their parent organizations. I think that OpenStreetMap can benefit from both the product side, obviously the data is free, you can't discount it anymore. But we want to promote its use and hopefully then people will get back to the community as well as develop future leaders of our community. What wonderful yet unknown things will students of today do in OpenStreetMap tomorrow? Or maybe I should say what wonderful things will students of today do with OpenStreetMap today? Think about all the wonderful things students have done. You heard from Bill Gates earlier. Bill dropped out of Harvard to create a little company in this part of the company called Microsoft. You might have heard of them. Steve Jobs, a couple years after dropping out of Reid college to create Apple Computer. Elon Musk dropped out of Ph.D. program at Stanford to create zip to, which he sold to create PayPal, which he sold to create SpaceX and Tesla and solar city. And Steve Coast was a student when he created OSM. Not advocating that anyone drop out of school, but if they do, or if they graduate, we want them to be part of our community. I would like to claim that I sat down a couple years ago and thought this all out in such a logical fashion today and make a decision that reaching out to the higher education community was a good thing. I wouldn't have done that fashion. So I didn't plan things out that thoroughly. I made any first edit to OpenStreetMap in 2009. I didn't have a GIF of that, so this will have to do. That was in pot latch. Graduated @pot latch and eventually to JOSM, but I never really got involved in the community. Either as participant making the edits or as in building the community. And then about a year ago, the gauntlet was thrown down. A challenge. I don't know if that -- throwing the gauntlet down is kind of an idiom in American English meaning someone gives you challenge. And Drishtie talked about geo week. So I was on the technical advisory panel to Colorado state University in their geo spatial centroid sitting around planning the week's events and professor said we're going to have a mapathon. And you ever get that feeling, you know, when you feel that you are expert in something you're passionate about something, and somehow brings you've got to open your mouth. You've got to say something. So I ended up coleading that event. When it came to organizing events, I was always afraid. Like, what if nobody shows up? What if people show up and they're a lot smarter than me? And I look like a fool. What if we get a venue. Go up to a bar or restaurant, we're going to have a map of what? Despite my great worries, it turned out to be a great event, and we had 20 people attend. We did map 1,600 buildings, and I think most important part is everyone had a good time. Mike, when are we going to do this again? Thanks for organizing it. And this is a map that I made of our edits, which I sent out afterwards to keep the enthusiasm going. So subsequently -- a positive reaction, well, maybe we can do this somewhere else. So we had events at University of Northern Colorado and front Range Community College, University of Wyoming, and even an event at a public library, which that which that was interesting because of -- teach new community, you have to kind of learn their culture and their style. And do it differently. It's just a matter of communication. Folks are busy. And you can't assume that because someone doesn't respond to your e-mail that they don't like you or they're not interested in your project, you've got to give them the benefit of the doubt. Why from the higher education community? Why should they want to work with us? Any ideas? >> It's free. >> It's free. Yeah. Students need data for their projects, their research. So here are some things that I've been told by educators, by professors. Other staff members. They want to expose their students to OpenStreetMap. They want to promote their institution or their program, they want to recruit students to their program. They want to reach out to the larger community and the people in their city. They want to reach out to the profession associated with their program. So in many cases that will be the GIS professionals. And their why will drive your how. The why drives the how. So what do I mean by that? So if they want to reach out to the larger community and promote their program, you better let somebody know outside the university that you're doing an event. If they want to promote their program to students, if they want to get the freshman that haven't declared a major yet to move into their program, better promote the event on campus. All right. How? I put this quote in here from Ralph Waldo Emmerson. There's no limit to what can be accomplished. If it doesn't matter, who gets the credit? Be prepared to give up control but take responsibility. Give up control, take responsibility. This is their rodeo. You can't go in there and assume that you're going to -- that, you know, you know everything, and you do it your way. You've gob to be very cognizant of their why, what are they trying to accomplish, and make sure you cater to that. And, again, don't -- if people don't respond to your e-mails, you know, in two or three hours, don't freak out. Professors have midterms to grade, students have papers to write, they're busy. They have real jobs. You and I have real jobs as well. We've chosen to make OSM our hobby, our passion, and they have not in those cases done that. They coordinate with your OSM community. You may have another fellow mapper, OSM already working with university or maybe they'll help you. Don't do it alone. Make a list. You probably would be surprised the number of educational institutions in your immediate area. You think of the big ones. But what about the community colleges? What about the ones in the next state over maybe an hour or two drive for you. I just did a Google search, and this is what came up for colleges in Colorado. And the list scrolls on over to the -- off to the side there. You know, obviously I can get some institutions aren't targets. Aren't candidates for mapping activities. Make a connection. We need to find someone within that institute of higher learning, that community that you can work with a professor or student, another staff member. So one way to do that, you're going to ask them to participate in your event. You're going to ask them to participate in the OpenStreetMap community. Why not first start to participate in their community? Colleges and universities are always looking for professionals, for outside experts that come in beyond advisory panels, participate in career nights, attend social events, network with students, be part of their community first. And in doing that, you'll meet people, make connections. If that fails, use your -- does anyone have a Rolodex? No one has one still. Christina, right now? Her to attend a event at Colorado state University, telling her how great it was, and, oh, by the way, do you know anyone at the University of North Carolina? Will you hook me up. And she made an introduction about a month later, we had an event there. Don't know anyone, don't have any contacts, make a cold call. Go for the department chair. Sent this to professor at University of Wyoming. Got a response within a day. Build your team. You don't have to do this alone, professors, staff members, students. I'm sure many of you know Russ, Russ, are you in the room? Fellow OSMers. Pick an activity, a mapathon, going to be a field survey? I use humanitarian mapping. I think Russ came up with this server. Humanitarian mapping is a gateway drug. Being from Colorado, I was going to be geo put a different symbol up there, but I think this is going to be published. But people in the U.S. that I've talked to, oh, you want me to map my neighborhood? Why? Google already has it. I know we can make the case for it. But if you say we're going to fight malaria in Africa, they're all over that. People love to give. Americans in particular love to give. I know people around the world do as well. But -- and people love maps. But test-drive whatever you have to do, test-drive it first. You don't want 50 students in a room, and it doesn't work. Publicize. I'm going to skip through some of this stuff. Write a press release. If your whys are exposed to the press release, get the student to write a press release. >> Professor were on a morning talk show, for 20 minutes we were interviewed about mapping. One of the whys to promote the institution for the radio to promote for 20 minutes? It was awesome. And that was a post to Chad. Most because we did a press release in Wyoming, they sent a recorder to our event. Most newspapers you can sign up and put your event for free on community calendar. And we actually have people show up at events and said I saw this on the newspaper, so I'm here to learn about it. One of the whys is to reach out to larger community, things like this. Make a poster, poster on campus. Reach out to the local red cross. So I have a lot of luck with this. I just call -- or sent an e-mail to the local director. Hey, we're doing a mapathon, humanitarian mapathon, will you help publicize it? Great response. Again, that's if you're doing a humanitarian event. I put question mark. I think the motivations can get mixed up. This is an event in Colorado and holy cow. Like 50 people showed up. Like, professor, how did you do this? I gave extra credit. You might want to discuss that beforehand, talk about maybe validation and minimum level of contribution. People show up at the last minute, where can I sign in at, as you're packing up. Like bicycling, OSM is a participating event. Sometimes I've seen professors, student leaders. Oh, you know, I don't really know how to do this, so I'm going to stand over here and supervise. Get everyone to participate. And have fun. And follow up with some type of follow up. Say, hey, look what we all did. So my time is up. Any questions? Everyone wants to get to lunch. [Laughter] >> Any questions for Mike? >> Yeah. I have a question. I actually work at a university. At a library-based GIS center. >> Where. >> Actually I just transferred. I was working in Miami at FIU, Florida international, but now I work at ASU. Arizona state in Phoenix or Tempe. So I've been there about two and a half weeks, and I'll definitely be reaching out to you to kind of hopefully set something up. But it's a library-based GIS unit. And as maybe most of you already realized, traditionally the academic interest in geo spatial technologies is house within a particular discipline, geography, geology, et cetera, et cetera. So being based in the library, which is a more neutral space, which has many, many disadvantages, it's kind of like a neutral territory open to all disciplines, how would you recommend -- well, two questions. How would you recommend people based in library centralized of GIS centers if you will that are more service centric as opposed to for credit academic degree program offering disciplines or units? And that's kind of one question. What's your view there? And then if you can contextualize, how do you get into this and the academic pursuits? Thank you. >> So the question is what if it's not academic discipline -- do you have a comment relative to his question? It's more central-based. And that's actually the situation at Colorado state University. It's called a geo spatial centroid and more of a service cross discipline center. So I would just reach out to the director or the staff members there and see if they're interested. >> And your own background with making this relationship? >> Well, because I'm a GIS geo spatial professional, and I was serving in the advisory role to the geo spatial center at CSU and Malinda through down the challenge so to speak, I picked it up and ran with it. Dale. >> Yeah, Mike, thank you, first of all. We love mapathons. So one for things all of you academic folks in town or just even local folks, we will gladly buy pizza to help you build your OSM community. So if you want to start a college mapathon, talk to Mike, talk to Steven over there. They are fantastic George Washington University, and come talk to me, and we will buy you some pizza. >> Yes, ma'am? >> This will probably be our last question for the session before you all break for lunch. I do want to let you know that we're going to do a group photo at 2:00 right after lunch in front of the library. >> Hi, my name is Maria Gonzalez, I come from OpenStreetMap Mexico. So the dissertation I think I'm on the right track because without knowing everything that you have done, I tried to -- what I'm finding is that the Mexico OpenStreetMap they are research about assistance of the tool and they are really looking forward to know more and also when we start, like, going there for events and workshops, they are so excited that they tried to get more knowledge, tried to go to super level. So also would be like tried to engage a lot of people in the beginning and then two or three months tried to get an agreement with Mapbox to get another tool. And similar things with OpenStreetMap data and get more engaged, more engaged, more engaged. And also pizza for Mexico if you want -- [Laughter] People come to Mexico and so maybe a conference because we have some very good that they would be so happy for the knowledge. >> Wonderful. Thank you. Yes, I've learned so much here and that's something I took out of one of the earlier presentations is the ticktock. They do something with the data. So I'm going to take that back. That's a good point. >> Thank you very much, Mike. [Applause] Again, just a reminder that after lunch at 2:15 in front of the library there will be a group picture.