Ever get tired of mapping (I can’t imagine that!) but still want to be engaged and help out with the greater OHM community (heck yes!), we have plenty of opportunities and needs for assistance in making our community even better than it already is.
If you or someone you know might be interested in helping in any of the following areas, please let us know - we’d love to get more hands on deck!
Event planning and coordination - for example, local or regional maptimes, meetups, geogroups, historical societies, digital humanities organizations, schools, etc.
Communications - helping with our social media, newsletters (OSM-US), blog posts, etc.; help us spread the word to libraries, historical societies, schools, and the like.
Documentation - we need help! Everything from how to get started, working backward from current data, importing, warping - you name it. All of this could be better documented.
Forum Moderation - it’d be great to have some moderators who’d help shoulder the load of monitoring activity. This might include Slack and Discord patrolling, whatever floats your boat. (too many nautical metaphors?)
Instructors - are you great in front of a room or a crowd or even 1:1? You could be a go-to resource for getting others up to speed.
The bottom line is: we could use help in any way you’d like to help out & we’d love to have you on the wider OHM coordination team.
Hi Jeff
In September 2023 you called for volunteering. Is there any progress in documentation? The documentation I found is very basic. I’m a complete newbee and German. I tried to understand how to work with OHM. The existing documentation - neither English nor German - is not very supportive.
Is there a group of users who are working on this?
My ideas:
Lets think from beginners view. Maybe we need a few personas.
Lets define typical scenarios for this users
Lets create a step by step guide
We should try to avoid a mixture between OHM and OSM documentation. Its confusing beginners, but it may be ok for expert users.
I can add my few cents to the discussion and work on this partially.
Hi,
The sources you’ve linked are very helpful in concrete projects. Editors and groups of editors of maps can use them in a project.
I see great perspective for OHM not only for cartographers and historians. Teachers in schools, colleagues and universities can use OHM for preparation of lessons or assignments. Students can work on own projects in groups, Local hobby historians can use OHM in preparation for exhibitions or local articles.
All of them needs a good documentation as starting point. A cartographer has a professional background and needs onyl additional feature specific doc. A complete starter needs a general overview about basic concepts how to work with OHM.
You’re coming from a great perspective… the kind we like : )… new and fresh and most importantly, willing to pitch in.
I agree with your assessment of our diverse audiences, each of which might have a different entry point. We do have resources on our wiki, but I fear much of this is too techie for the masses.
What did you have in mind? Is there a document or tool you think would be good to start with?
Anyone else out there interested in pitching in? Ralf - I’ll see if we can recruit some fellow doc writers.
Hi Jeff
thanks for your comment and invitation to participate.
A few words about my background. I’ve worked for nearly 50 years in adult education business and for more than 20 years with Moodle Learning Management as a professional partner in the Moodle environment. The Moodle documentation at docs.moodle.org is a great ressource for beginners in different roles. I supported Moodle by localization, wrote German handbooks and published on Linkedin Learning.
OHM is different and as far as I see not so complex.
I will share my ideas in seperate topics in the forum.
I found some introduction videos for OHM and OSM from Anne- Karoline Distel on Youtube: Anne-Karoline Distel - YouTube
The level of introduction is very helpfull for non professionals. She explains features based on OSM und UMAP in most videos but ade also a few OHM videos. My idea is to follow the wikipedia way, including screenshots and perhaps embedded Youtube videos if it makes sense.
Be still, my beating ! I’m also an edtech veteran and have always hoped OHM could be a foundation for educational materials. See my original – and long outdated – concept, the Global World History Atlas.
I see that you answered my other question about the wiki here, which is great. I’m sure that if you coordinated the construction of your outline on the wiki, you could assign sections to others, especially if it’s within a framework, editorial intent, and audience (persons) that you’re guiding. The content could be screen shots or videos.
! I’m also an edtech veteran and have always hoped OHM could be a foundation for educational materials. See my original – and long outdated – concept, 