Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap.

The OpenStreetMap, what's possible when geographic information is shared?

Nate Olson interviews Steve Coast via email May 12-21, 2007

Steve Coast is a London-based programmer at the helm of OpenStreetMap (OSM), one of the Web's premier collaborative mapping projects. OpenStreetMap is billed as "a free editable map of the whole world... made by people like you." Anyone can use a GPS device to map his or her home neighborhood, upload it to OSM, and see the data included in the main user interface. The results are available for re-use under a Creative Commons license--a key selling point of OSM, which Steve created largely as an alternative to the kind of restriction-laden geodata used by Google Maps and similar applications.

Nate Olson: Do you consider "crowdsourcing" to be a distinct phenomenon? If so, how do you see it evolving over the next 1-2 years?

Steve Coast: Most definitely, and hopefully it's going to turn some business models upside down. I think of it more broadly than just building commons a la OpenStreetMap or Wikipedia. If you consider zopa.com (the peer money-lending site) as crowdsourcing, then you can start to see some really powerful things happening. They give savers with little capital access to high interest rates, and [also give] borrowers access to better-than-average [repayment] rates while doing interesting social stuff on the side. All while removing this big "bank" concept. You could think of Skype and Joost similarly--no need for expensive cable distribution networks when you force your users to do the bandwidth for you (they're both p2p apps).

Q: What do you think motivates people to contribute to OpenStreetMap?

A: I think addiction is pretty high on the list, followed by fun and then curiosity of being able to map your area.

Q: Is there really "wisdom in crowds?" If so, what's the clearest example you know of?

A: Yes, but it's not always easy to get at or separate it from the madness of crowds. Within OpenStreetMap there are many examples, such as people knowing the quick routes about their areas. Taxi drivers and other specialists have had this kind of knowledge for a long time--distributing it is going to be the challenge.

Q: What has surprised you the most about OpenStreetMap?

A: The lack of overt hostility from within the traditional industry. Wikipedia got slated all the time by various content makers, but we've not really seen that (yet?). I think that geodata is a more fast-moving business and that people 'got' the idea fairly early, and it's more of a question of what to do about it.

Q: Give us a snapshot of OpenStreetMap's actual mapping progress. What countries have the greatest coverage already piped into the system? In what two or three locales do you see the most progress being made over the next year?

A: The greatest OpenStreetMap countries right now are the UK, Denmark, Holland and Germany. In the UK it's because that's where I founded the project, so it has the most traction. It's where the reason celebre is--the Ordnance Survey [Britain's national mapping agency]. The other countries came later. Germany had several mapping projects and open source pieces of software like GPS Drive, which allows you to plot your location much like a TomTom or Hertz NeverLost device. Only the data is expensive... and so OpenStreetMap found a natural place.

[Denmark's OpenStreetMap involvement] is through the efforts of a heavily involved contributor who has completed most of Copenhgen. The Netherlands have taken a massive leap forward since we received funds from Digital Pioneers, a Dutch government grant for projects which bring the country forward in its digital aims. Since then many mapping parties have been run around [Holland] and have advanced the state of mapping there.

Q: As OpenStreetMap continues to draw more GPS contributors worldwide, how difficult will it be to scale the project in terms of the technical infrastructure?

A: The technical backbone of OpenStreetMap is intentionally simple. It leads to more people being involved and greater simplicity in management, and so scaling in general should be relatively simple. There will be distinct challenges of course, but these are not so much technological than a problem of resources. We certainly need more hackers to be involved in order to move the project forward.

Q: How about the "people skills" needed to manage the community of programmers, GPS contributors, and end-users?

A: The dark secret of many open source projects is that it isn't 1,000 people spending one minute working on things, it's one person spending 800 minutes, one spending 100, one spending 50... and so on, and the majority reaping those rewards. So it isn't so much about large scale people skills, it's about connecting and engaging those few who will take the project forward.

Q: This July will witness the first "State of the Map" conference, bringing together various geophiles to discuss OpenStreetMap and related subjects. The preliminary programme looks pretty cool. Is a conference this formal and far-reaching a sign that OpenStreetMap has reached a sort of tipping point in gaining mindshare? What does the gathering mean to you as a benchmark of how far you've come?

A: We have reached a real tipping point. We have maps you can argue are as good as Google's in certain places. We have a certain maturity of toolchain and of community. We have rough edges of course, but we've grown incredibly quickly--and silently--compared with Wikipedia. But we have an aim which is more far-reaching and has more business implications than Wikipedia's. A Free map of the world is going to be more shocking and important than almost any Free dataset before it.

The conference itself will be a step in this process and bring together many in the persuit of our aims, but it will be more importantly a rallying cry for the movement for free geodata.

Q: Anything crucial we've overlooked?

A: Mapping parties are an oft-overlooked backbone of OpenStreetMap. The social implications of many mappers gathering in one place to map an area exhaustively are important, and explain much of our growth. Your readers should attend and/or organise one.

Another quick update: I've completed my email exchange with Steve Coast. Just need to make basic edits and add the introductory bit. I'll be back along with that later today... --Nate

In brief: I have made contact with Steve Coast, and he has agreed to the interview. I sent him the first round of questions by email the evening of 12 May 07. He is swamped with conference-related travels at the moment, having just left Canada for another presentation in Paris. We nonetheless are hopeful that we can squeeze in two rounds of questions within the next 48 hours or so.

I will post another update here if Steve's travels cause further delays. Results of course will be published here, too.