Each year HOT organization members should review their contributions to HOT and the OSM communities and look forward to their goals for the coming year.

This past year I participated in mapping and contributed (in some way ;) to coordination of all the activations and many of the non crisis mapping projects.

As a HOT board member I attended a few international conferences and meetings to promote OSM and HOT. Most importantly to me personally were the sprint and fall International Working Group of Satellite-based Emergency Mapping organizations meetings in Bonn and via teleconference in Vienna. The other major highlight was the Missing Maps meeting in Toronto. Two amazing groups of people it was an honor to work with!

In that same area of working with amazing people, I was the HOT liaison to the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN).

And of course helping organize and attending the first ever HOT Summit which provide the opportunity to meet so many of our community members.

I had the privilege to participate in all of the currently active HOT Working Groups and see first hand how dedicated and talented the HOT/OSM community is. As many people know, Tom Taylor, one of the chairpersons of the Training Working Group passed away at the end of 2015. He will always be an inspiration to me for how he faced the end of life and his dedication to his family and humanitarian work.

I also served as Vice President/Treasurer of the HOT Board of Directors which allowed me to work very closely with HOT’s new ED Tyler Radford and the amazing staff people HOT has been lucky enough to have work for our organization.

I was an Outreachy mentor, but luckily Rekth was good enough that she quickly surpassed my limited expertise and created a great UI analysis of the Tasking Manager.

I was a participant in the activation coordination sprint that helped lay the ground work for Russ’s and Mhairi’s activation protocol and curriculum work.

I made a few cosmetic tweaks to the Tasking Manager, but probably just annoyed Pierre Giraud and Dražen Odobašic more than anything. (I promise in 2016 I will learn how to squash my commits).

I have done a few other things along the way, but for me these are the things that stand out.

It is just not possible to list all of the incredible people my HOT community membership has allowed me to work with this past year. I said to Tyler recently after a meeting with a regional UNOCHA head and local government officials: “How lucky are we that we get to work such amazing people every day?” It was really a humbling moment. When you couple that with the incredible people on the ground, both local and people doing field work, that we get to work with… It just leaves me speechless. There is no way to describe how lucky I feel to be a part of the HOT and OSM community.

For 2016 I hope to continue most of the same things I did in 2015, but with a special emphasis on application development and community building.

Cheers and thank you to everyone in the OSM and HOT communities for the opportunity work with you all.