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.