Polyglot is a Belgian network administrator who’s hobbies are changing a bit over time: learning languages, cycling, horsebackriding, and oh …. OpenStreetMap became a major time sink!
How did you discover OpenStreetMap?
Apparently, it’s been eight years already. I wanted to give something back to the free software world. I’m not a real programmer, so for a few years I contributed to the English Wiktionary. However, at one point it was more fighting against vandalism than bringing in new and interesting data about words and translations, so I gave up on that.
OpenStreetMap had the advantage that, on the one hand, it’s an outdoor activity, and on the other hand you get to use a computer in interesting ways. Every time you enter the surveyed data, you sort of relive the itinerary you followed, which intensifies the experience.
Since I discovered Mapillary, my way of mapping/surveying changed again. Taking a huge amount of pictures, which serve as source material, became a goal in itself. I produce so many of them now that it is no longer feasible to process all of the data I collect myself. Before Mapillary I just took pictures of what I was going to add on OpenStreetmap. This process took about the same amount of time as the surveying itself. Nowadays weeding out the failed pictures from the thousands I made is work enough as it is.
