Hi, my name is James Crawford, and I’m running for the OpenStreetMap US board.

About me

I’m a regular editor from Auburn, Alabama. I mainly contribute by editing TIGER road data, importing from external sources, POI surveying, street level imagery coverage, and backcountry trail details. I’ve been active on OSM for over 2 years, and I love keeping in touch with the US community about mapping efforts across the country, and I like seeing community leaders that are active in public forums, and are willing to mingle with their mapping peers.

My current priorities for OSM are as follows:

1: Encouraging the coordination of importing high quality data from external datasets. There are numerous datasets from government agencies in the United States with permissible licensing for use with OpenStreetMap. These datasets provide useful information about a variety of objects mapped in OpenStreetMap, and save huge amounts of time over having mappers collect the data redundantly. It is important to be in touch with the community when coordinating data imports, and it is important to be in touch with government agencies so that we can be more aware of available data that is free to use.

2: Prioritizing focus towards what OSM is useful for. OpenStreetMap defeats commercial competitors in the predictable niche- where there is a demand for geospatial data but no lucrative monetary return. Trails and public land data make a good example. Outdoor enthusiasts have a demand for accurate and low cost map data, but large scale commercial map providers have no commercial incentive to allocate resources towards maintaining this kind of data.

I’m a big fan of outreach, and I’m not a fan of the idea of serving on the board without having meaningful communication with the community. I manage a local community myself, and I love keeping in touch about mapping activities!

Thanks for the consideration,

-James