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Outreachy 2015

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Mhairi O'Hara edited this page Mar 23, 2015 · 54 revisions

Outreachy 2015

This year the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is recruiting an intern for the [Outreachy] (https://www.gnome.org/outreachy/) program (formally known as the FOSS [Outreach Program for Women] (http://gnome.org/opw/) OPW) in partnership with, and generous support from Mapzen. This is part of HOT's larger goal to foster further diversity in its community and organization.

From the Outreachy website: "The program aims to help people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. We provide a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations."

The upcoming round of internships is open to women (cis and trans), trans men and genderqueer people, and all participants of the Ascend Project regardless of gender. There are plans to expand the program to more participants from underrepresented backgrounds in the future.

People considering being mentors or proposing projects should read the Information for Mentors section of the Outreachy Program website.

Google Summer of Code

OpenStreetMap separately is [participating] (https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2015/openstreetmap) in Google Summer of Code. We ask all Outreachy applicants who are both students and coders to review the OSM projects and consider [applying for an OSM Google Summer of Code project] (https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2015). Student applications open on 16th March, and you can apply for both programs, but can only be selected for one. Most Outreachy projects do not qualify as GSoC projects, but some of the HOT GitHub projects listed as GSoC could be considered as HOT Outreachy projects if you are not eligible for or interested in the OSM GSoC projects.

Important Dates

Getting Started

Visit the Outreachy website for information on how to apply Outreachy.
The main places that HOT discuss things are on our mailing list and IRC:

As the interest from candidates is coming in, we are getting requests for how they can start to contribute to their selected projects listed below. We have now compiled a list of items that we would like the candidates to add to their application, along with and most importantly a completed task that is to be a small contribution to the project:

  • A short paragraph explaining why you are applying and what involvement, if you have had any, in open source projects.
  • A simple resume showing previous activities and experience. And please feel free to include work that are not necessarily open source related.
  • A draft outlining a proposed time schedule of your availability for the project, incorporating the expected 40 hrs per week from the 25th May to the 25th August.
  • The completed task that was set out by the project mentor.

The details of the tasks can be found on the respective GitHub project issue. Please remember that you may and are encouraged to ask for help from the project mentor while completing the task. Everyone has moments when they get stuck, and it is better to work through it together and see what can be accomplished.

Applying

Please submit your application for the project via the Outreachy website by the 24th March 2015 19:00 UTC. When submitting your application make sure you select "OpenStreetMap" from the organisation list:

https://outreachy.gnome.org

Selected Project Ideas

This page contains a list of finalized ideas that have have been selected for the current Outreachy program. Propose new ideas through the issue page tagging them with the Outreachy2015 label.

If you want to participant and are interested in a particular project, please get in touch through the dedicated issue page, which every project idea listed below provides a link to:

Improve help documentation of HOT Export Tool features on Homepage

Proposed by: Mhairi O'Hara (link to proposal)

Summary: The HOT Exports home page provides some help information on how to get started, but new users could really benefit and get mapping a lot quicker if there was more detailed information, that is clear, direct and extremely easy to follow step by step.

Skills Required: Attention to detail, organised, good written English, basic knowledge of Export Tool ability to communicate with open source community, JQueryJavascript library, HTML.

Possible Mentors: Mhairi O'Hara (@mataharimhairi)

Notes: The HOT Exports Homepage would benefit from updating the 'How to Get Started' section, perhaps linking to a more detailed page for those that need more assistance. Something along the lines of what has been done for the Visual Tag Chooser help page, which is listed on the Homepage at the bottom under the Expert Functions. This help page contains screen shoots of the steps, which is always helpful to a new comer to the tool. The help pages for the rest of the Expert Functions on the Homepage ---> Preset Files, Tag Transform SQL Files, Translation Files, and New Upload will also have to be addressed.

Usability Testing for the HOT Tasking Manager User Interface (UI)

Proposed by: Mhairi O'Hara (link to proposal)

Summary: Enhancements are currently being made to the Tasking Manager interface. Once these changes are made, usability testing will be required to determine how easy it is to use the online tool based on the sites flow, navigation, layout, speed and content.

Skills Required: Attention to detail, good communication skills, ability to engage with open source community, empirical analysis, knowledge of UI designs

Possible Mentors: Mhairi O'Hara (@mataharimhairi)

Notes: Usability testing will probably be conducted through a number of methods, including user feedback, mining statistics from the Tasking Manager, and a series of testing.

Promote OpenAerialMap to other Communities

Proposed by: Cristiano Giovando (link to proposal)

Summary: OpenAerialMap (OAM) is an open source platform offering a simple way to host and provide access to aerial imagery. Its purpose within HOT is to facilitate sharing of aerial imagery after a disaster for humanitarian response mapping. The goal of this project is to promote OAM to other communities of potential users outside of HOT. This will be done by creating informational material, making presentations, demonstrating use case examples, introducing the project on public fora, mailing lists and social media. The selected intern should be familiar with open source technology, mapping and aerial imaging. More details about the OpenAerialMap project can be found at https://github.com/hotosm/OpenAerialMap

Skills Required: excellent writing, demonstrated ability to engage through social media, interest in drone/UAV technology, knowledge of remote sensing principles

Possible Mentors: Cristiano Giovando (@cgiovando)

Notes for Interested Students: before applying for this project, please provide two examples of communities or organizations that would benefit from the OpenAerialMap project. Describe what features of OAM would address functional needs in their current workflows or specific use case scenarios. Send your examples along with a short motivation statement of why you are interested in OAM to [email protected]

Create 3 Short OSM/HOT Moodle Courses: Road Mapping, Waterway Mapping, Dense Urban Mapping

Proposed by: Blake Girardot (link to proposal)

Summary: The goal of this project is to create and deploy 3 self-paced, short courses focused on learning to map 3 specific OSM features correctly according to HOT guidelines. The courses will consist of video and text content, with student evaluation modules and will award OpenBadges for each specific skill learned at the completion of a course. The Moodle Online Learning Management System will be used to present the courses.

Skills Required: Technical writing, graphic design, online course design and tools, OSM mapping, basic video editing.

Possible Mentors: Blake Girardot (@bgirardot)

Notes: [Moodle] (https://moodle.org/) is a free, online Learning Management system enabling educators to create their own private website filled with dynamic courses that extend learning, any time, anywhere. These courses are not intended to be very basic how to map courses, they will be targeted at mappers with some experience mapping. Their goal is to make sure mappers know exactly how to map, tag and validate challenging or vital map features, not teach basic mapping. Course outlines and design should be completed before the project begins by the mentors in consultation with the Training, Community and Activation WGs. The editor of choice for these courses is JOSM. A person very experienced with Moodle could, time permitting, help us to customize our Moodle installation as well.

Improve LearnOSM Content and Organization

Proposed by: @althio (link to proposal)

Summary:

  • Review content and improve organisation on the website (guides, sections).
  • Mark outdated content (vs. software and other projects upgrades)
  • Compare current content (website) with previous content (googledocs)
  • Identify gaps (missing content and sections, available as googledocs or not written yet)
  • Review and propose hierarchy/organisation for logical progress between and within chapters
  • Identify links or labels to be improved
  • Propose design for front page
  • Build a roadmap for corrective actions

Skills Required: Documentation writing, knowledge of OSM basic mapping and HOT activities desirable, web design

Possible Mentors: Nick Allen (@Nick-Tallguy)

Define and Implement a Translation Workflow for LearnOSM

Proposed by: @althio (link to proposal)

Summary:

  • Improve translation, easiness to contribute, delivered quality
  • Refine, define and document translation workflow (online/offline, GitHub/Transifex/OmegaT, crowd-sourcing/collaborative)
  • Possibilities for using non-technical tools
  • Study feasibility of Translation memory "shared glossary" with other HOT/OSM projects

Skills Required: Computer-aided translation [CAT], documentation writing, basic knowledge of crowd-sourcing and open projects

Possible Mentors: @althio

Define Guidelines and Workflow for Images in LearnOSM

Proposed by: @althio (link to proposal)

Summary: Images are now a big task in LearnOSM. They are very important for tutorials and guides. They take up a lot of memory space. Sometimes they need to be localised, sometimes they don't. Some of them are outdated or not used anymore but still in the repository folder. Some actions for this project:

  • Define a workflow to create and add images -- taking into account easiness of method, site structure, localisation/translation and any other considerations
  • Look into possibilities to optimise images size and loading (eg. thumbnails, click to full-size, crop/zoom…)
  • Define method to organise repository, folders and file names
  • Document guidelines to create, add and organise images -- for current repository clean-up and future contributions

Skills Required: Documentation writing, graphics software, web design, attention to details

Possible Mentors: Nick Allen (@Nick-Tallguy)

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