Mapper of the Month: Domenico Calvagna (Italy)

01.08.2022 - Pierre Parmentier

His homepage and his contribution page.

Hello Domenico ! Would you like to briefly introduce yourself to our readers?: I am 60 years old, married and the father of a girl. I live in Ravenna (Italy).
How and when did you get to know OpenStreetMap?: I met OpenStreetMap in 2011 during a Linux party.
How do you use OpenStreetMap?: I use OpenStreetMap as a simple contributor who might need it in some way.
What kind of contributor are you and in which area do you map?: I was a not very active contributor until 2016 while, after that, I had more time on my hands and since 2017 I have been contributing more actively. Currently the main areas I map are the province of Agrigento in Sicilia.
What are you mapping? Do you have a specialisation?: The area I am mapping is the city of Aragona, which was not mapped in OpenStreetMap in 2016. I have knowledge of topography because of my military profession and because I graduated as a surveyor.
What is your greatest achievement as mapper?: Having found that large groups such as Google Maps have sometimes copied my work, I have included errors in some areas (known only to me) promptly reported, subsequently removed them.
Why are you mapping? What motivates you?: I map because I have a lot of free time and for the satisfaction of being useful to those who need it, especially tourists who want to visit particularly interesting areas of Sicily.
Do you have any ideas to expand the OpenStreetMap community, to motivate more people to contribute?: Make a link with data collection applications such as Street Complete, useful e.g. by joggers, for both simple users and leisure associations, Pro Loco and those that generally promote the area.
Do you have contact with other mappers?: At the moment no, if there are any JOSM experts I would be very happy to make their acquaintance.
What is in your view the greatest strength of OpenStreetMap?: The simplicity of contribution.
What are the largest challenges for OpenStreetMap?: Becoming the world’s largest geographic database and being able to innovate in simplicity.
How to do stay on top of news about OpenStreetMap?: It would be good if comments from contributing users were grouped by topic and also translated into Italian.
To conclude, is there anything else you want to share with the readers?: At the moment, I think that will be enough. I remain at your disposal, greetings to the entire OpenStreetMap team.

Thank you, Domenico, for this interview.

Translated from Italian by Claire Muyllaert and Pierre Parmentier with the help of www.DeepL.com/Translator.