# OSM Community Building Guide ## Starting out An OSM Community is a group of people in a particular geographical location, either Global, Regional, Country, District, City or University that contribute to OpenStreetMap or use its data. **0. Learn about OpenStreetMap** To start with first educate yourself with what OpenStreetMap is, it is a volunteer led collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. It is important to understand from the start that this is a volunteer project, and it is around this idea that a community will be built. There are many resources out there to help you learn about OpenStreetMap. Before you start a new community it is important to first understand properly what openstreetmap is and principles on which it is built. **1. Find out if there is an already existing community** To start on OSM community, first decide up to which level do you want to create one. If it is a country wide OSM community first check whether there is a group that already exists. If there is one, its better to join an existing group rather than creating a parallel one. **2. Organize the first meet up**. Don't create a community and then ask people to join you, instead mobilize people to come together who are interested in OpenStreetMap and then collaboratively form the community. Agree on what the community goals are with the rest of the team, and then develop a roadmap for establishing and growing the community. Everything should not be done in one day, it will be like building a house, start with the foundation, then slowly add the other parts. The foundation is really people interested in OpenStreetMap and understand that it is a volunteer project. It is okay if the people who join you at the beginning are new to OSM, get training and share resources to learn or even request for external help from the wider OSM community, there will always be people who are willing to give you a training for free. **3. Establish communications channels** After organizing several meetups, you will realize that the people who are really interesting in being part of the community are the ones that will keep on coming back. These will form the core team around which the community will continue growing. Now its time to share some roles among which is communications, which will be important to share your activities and also mobilize more people to join. Decide which communications channels you are going to use, depending on the local context. Below are some of the examples of platforms and communication channels used by OSM communities. * Gmail account - This will be useful to help you set up other social media accounts like Twitter. You can use a convention like osmnamibia@gmail.com * Mailing list - This is the official mailing list channel for OSM communities, set up one for your OSM community for exampale talk-namibia@openstreetmap.org . Here is the overview of all existing osm mailing lists https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo - after setting it up invite your osm community members to subcribe, they will use this to discuss any topics, but also other people will use it to reach out to the community. The good thing with the mailing list is that, any incoming communication will be seen by every member of the community in transparent way. * Logo - now its time to set up your OpenStreetMap logo. If your community is at country level, you can modify the OSM logo to create one of your own which has your country flag. Something like this https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_OpenStreetMap_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire.jpg * Twitter account - Twitter handle like @osmnamibia * Facebook page - Facebook page like @osmnamibia * Facebook group - Facebook which is open and anyone can join, you may ask people their osmusernames so you can check to make sure those who join are really part of the community * Website - This can take a long time and may require someone skilled within the community to build it and continously update. There are always examples you can look at that are openly available on github * Telegram group - A telegram group that is open for everyone to join is a great way for mobilizing and keeping the members engaged, again ask people their osm usernames when they join to avoid spammers * Whatsapp group - in some countries people prefer whatsapp to telegram, the only limitation to whatsapp is that it is limited to 256 people There is tons of applications you can use for communications and community engagement, but it really depends on which one is easier for your community members to access and use, if most of them are already on Telegram for example, then it makes sense to create a telegram group than a whatsapp group. **4. Community engagement** Set up activities that can help the community members become more active. These can be trainings, mapping parties, mapathons, webinars and conferences. This is where you need to mobilize resources to make the events happen, for example to organize a mapathon, you need a space with chairs, tables and internet. You may approach a univesity, a government office interested in maps, a tech hub, a humanitarian organization like Red Cross or any other organization that can be willing to give you the space for free. If you have funds you can also think of hiring a venue. You may also need snacks and soft drinks for the participants. These help spice up the event, but they also cost money. So as you build the community and organize events and activies, also think about ways to raise money to support your activities. **5. Volunteer Management** When building a community around volunteers, its also important to think of making sure the volunteer needs are met, so they can continue participating in the long run, its okay if some drop out, but its also important to have members who stay involved for years. One important mistake to avoid from the beginning is not to build the community to be around one person, this is not sustainable, it is important for members to feel that they have a say in how the community is organized and have a say in decision making. The best way to achieve this is through distributing roles, so they are different people leading on differnt things, and the roles can rotate around different members. Some of the roles you can think of for your OSM community are * Communications * Event coordination * Data quality lead * Partnerships lead * Trainig lead * Finance person * YouthMappers liason **5. Community Sustainability** Now this is the most important part, it is easy to start a community, but it takes even more effort to sustain one.