Mapper in the Spotlight: Dave Swarthout (USA/Thailand)

Who are you?

I might start by saying that at age 72 I have a very nice life, especially now that I’m retired. I’m an American who lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for about 8 months of the year with the reminder spent in the United States. I met a fine Thai woman named Nut during my first visit and we’ve been together ever since. I have children and grandchildren living on both the east and west coasts of the U.S, in North Carolina and Oregon, while the rest of my immediate family is in New York State. I spend summers in the little town of Homer, Alaska, where I moved in 1983. I dearly love tennis and often play three of four times per week. In fact, it was my love of tennis that motivated me to exchange Alaska’s cold, dark, and notoriously long winters for the warmer climate of Thailand five years ago. I have many friends there and Alaska is a fantastic place to be in the summer so I simply cannot leave it behind permanently. That’s also why I settled on AlaskaDave as my OSM nickname. I was trained as a chemist and got a BS degree back in 1971 but I became disenchanted with the corporate world and left it behind in 1975. Since then I’ve been a carpenter, school teacher, bread baker, radio announcer, computer programmer, web designer, librarian, and commercial fishing broker. During the summer I continue to work at a business I helped start and whose website I designed, Alaska Boats & Permits, Inc., a commercial fishing brokerage. The website is simple by today’s standards but it has served us well for many years and continues to do so: http://alaskaboat.com

Mapper in the Spotlight: Dave Corley (Ireland)

I first saw DaCor’s avatar on the help-site, where he gave friendly and detailed answers. Later on, I saw him doing the same on the Irish mailing list. After seeing Jo Walsh’s presentation (video) in which he is mentioned at the end, I knew I would love to interview him.

Mapper of the Month: Olivier Roussel

Olivier Roussel, or Dagou on OpenStreetMap, is originally from Brussels, but lives for the moment in Arlon. He got a PhD in chemistry and works in a research and developement lab of a private company in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. OpenStreetMap is really a hobby for him.

When and where did you discover OpenStreetMap?

Mapper in the spotlight: Clifford Snow (USA)

We have been interviewing Belgian mappers for a year now.Since westill like the concept, Marc took the initiativeto extend it outside our little Belgian communit. From time to time hewill interview amapperfrom somewhere inthe world. He hascompiled a list of 30 mappers (for now) of people that hemet on different mailing lists and fora. And from time to time hewill contact one andask her or him to answer a few questions. The focus will be on indivudual mappers, unlike the very interesting interviews conducted by OpenCage, that focus more on developers and country profiles.

Mapper of the Month: Vincent Van Eyken

Vincent Van Eyken recently got his civil engineering degree, specialism architecture. With this background, it is not surprising that he has an healthy interest in topics such as urban planning and public space landscaping. But he also has a long lasting and strong passion for geography and cartography. Therefore it is almost natural that he ended up in the OpenStreetMap world. He maps under the nickname QuercE, which is derived from the Latin translation of his family name; ‘quercus’ (adj. ‘querceus’) is latin for ’eik(en) / eyken’. Eik is the Dutch word for oak.

Mapper of the Month: Matthieu Gaillet

Matthieu Gaillet(Pagaille) is a technical electrician and is now responsible for the technical aspects in a cultural center. His motivation to map comes from his passion for collaboration in map making and his intensive use of maps for cycling and hiking trips.

Where and when did you discover OpenStreetMap?

Just like everybody else probably: by accident, in 2010 :-) I immediately liked the concept of a map created by collaboration. But at that moment I was not completely convinced that the project would become popular and accepted enough to compete with Google maps. Since then I started using open source based servers and software and the virus got me. It was not before 2013 that I started using OpenStreetMap and my first contributions with JOSM are also from that time.

Mapper of the Month: Marc Gemis

Marc Gemis is a 48 year old software engineer for a multi-national in Mortsel. His largest passion are his dogs, which he walks every day. His nickname, escada is the name of one of his dogs.

When did you discover OpenStreetMap?

Marc and his dogs during a survey I have always walked a lot with the dogs. Until 2011 this were often the same walks, or walks that are described in the Lannoo-guides. We did not walk every weekend or evening because I also trained for and participated in agility-trails. Unfortunately my competition dog got injured and I had to stop with the sport. This meant that I would have more time for walks. Since I wanted to discover more of Belgium, I bought an outdoor GPS-device.

Mapper of the Month: Joost Schouppe

Joost Schouppe is a sociologist. He followed those studies because in his opinion, they are the least specialized that exist. He works in a social studies research center that covers a wide range of subjects. Most of the time the projects have both statistical and geographical aspects, trying to convert data hidden in databases into knowledge. This gave him the opportunity to study data processing in SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences )and made him discover the fascinating world of ArcGIS. A lot of his there is published on the neighborhood monitor of the city of Antwerp, a geostatistical platform. Besides his job, Joost loves being in nature and is fan of atlases, encyclopedia and travel guides. He prefers them in an open and digital format, but does not neglect the others.

Mapper of the Month: Brice Maron

Brice (eMerzh) lives in Jette. He is 30 and programmer in a small start-up in Brussels that is active in social analytics. He is passionate about open source and everything around it. For his job he works on Archlinux + KDE and his preferred OpenStreetMap editor is of course JOSM!

Mappers of the Month: Josefien & Ruben

Josefien and Ruben (M!dgard) are 20 and 19 years old. Between their mapping activities, they are going to college. In high school, they were best mates; and now they walk the streets of Blankenberge and neighbouring villages with their self-made OpenStreetMap badge. Ruben is more interested in the technical aspects, while Josefien spends her free time to design and make two OpenStreetMap T-shirts to wear during their surveys. They love to help others, e.g. they give blood plasma every two weeks in Ghent.