OMB

Listening to music is great, and in the past I used to spend a lot of time hanging out in online communities, forums and real world record stores, buying music. The challenge for me is that my tastes don’t align with the tastes of most people - I like an eclectic but fairly specialised range of electronic, dance, reggae hip-hop and similar genres. Whatever the distribution of musical tastes is, I’m at the thin end of it. That’s great when you have a lot of time to dedicate to finding the music - a lot of the enjoyment comes from the time spend trying to find something. But as my time has become increasingly pressured by work and other professional commitments, I just don’t have the time to search for music to fit my tastes.

I’ve always believed that people will consume media through the most convenient channel available to them. The success of iTunes, Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, Last FM or torrent communities like Oink is all to do with providing people with content which is relevant to them in a convenient form.

Personalization, Relevancy and Convenience

iTunes tackles relevancy and convenience by attacking the mainstream market. They deal with relevancy by offering choices that most people want. Somewhere on a wall at Apple’s HQ are 8 personas of music buying consumers whose needs are addressed by the offerings of the iTunes store. The offerings are relevant to most of the consumers who contribute to the $2.9 billion per year digital music sales market.

Convenience is what Apple have really got right - its so simple to buy music and add it to your Apple device its not worth going into.

What Apple have not been great at is personalisation. The recently added Genius Sidebar is supposed to make personalised recommendations based on your listening habits. The feature has met with mixed reviews from consumers. One of the problems with Apple’s Genius Sidebar, when compared to Last FM’s recommendation system is that the recommendations are tied to the user’s own library. The system does not aid discovery to the extent that Last FM does, and most download sites like Amazon MP3 or JunoDownload do, by letting consumers preview tracks before buying.

Discovering New Things

Illegal download sites like Oink were popular because they allowed users to discover new music in a low friction atmosphere. To the users of sites like this, they really weren’t about piracy: they were about hanging out in a friendly community of people with aligned musical tastes and discovering new things. To Oink members, the free download was the icing on the cake. It was not the secret sauce.

Bring Together Relevancy, Customization, Discovery and Community

There is space in the still growing, emergent digital music market for a new kind of music store. The front-end stores would be highly customised by musical taste. A consumer could go to a website and give that site their musical taste history - maybe by uploading their iTunes library listing, or connecting to their Last FM profile, or by answering a short questionairre. The central site could then spawn a customised store-front for that user. It would offer tracks for download that were relevant to the user’s taste in music. It would aggregate forums, blogs, events and other community elements that were relevant to the user. It would produce podcasts that were customised to the user’s tastes and then push them to the user. The 30 minute, low quality podcast is free, but if you want the full album, or the unmixed singles in higher quality, click through to the store front.

The system would further facilitate discovery of music through a Last FM style live recommendations system and an Amazon like “customers who bought this” system. Better yet, the system could simply plug into Amazon and Last FM - there may be no need for anything other than a meta-network - a customisation and aggregation layer that takes the offerings of people like Last FM and Amazon MP3 and delivers it to consumers in a relevant, easy to use way, whilst skimming off the top of sales.

There are lots of ways to achieve a system like this, and no-doubt Amazon (the kings of customization) are looking at this kind of thing right now. For me, a member of a desirable demographic that marketeers are desperate to attract, the sooner this happens the better. I’d happily increase my spending on music by 500% per week - if only someone would make it as friction free and effortless as possible. I’m sure I’m not alone.

The Local Chapters working group met earlier this week. We reviewed some comments to the current Local Chapters agreement that came from early consultation with some OpenStreetMappers around the world. Based on early consultation, we’ve set up a provisional timetable for completing the process of setting up local chapters which is included in this post.

What are the issues?

The idea of local chapters is quite simple: an official body can become a federated member of the OSM-Foundation and can represent the OSM-F on official business - things like talking to journalists, dealing with local or national Governments or companies, or organising conferences and mapping parties.

The part of the agreement that needs the most attention is around termination. The OSM-Foundation is granting the right to use its name, its standing and its reputation to a local group. Though unlikely, the Foundation needs to be able to revoke this right if the local group starts jeopardising the reputation of the Foundation by acting illegally or unethically, or if the Local Chapters acts against the aims of the OSM-F. For example, it is the opinion of the OSM-F that tracing roads from Google Maps constitutes copyright infringement and also breaks the terms of service. This view is not unanimously shared within the geo community and the OSM-F would not want a Local Chapter to be infringing copyright and breaching Google’s TOS under their name.

The challenges faced by OSM-F are not unique. Community organisations like the Java Community Process, or Mozilla have dealt with similar issues.

If you’ve been involved in an open source project or another organisation that has dealt with these issues, please get in touch.

For reference, here’s an FAQ I mailed to the OSM List this morning.

What are local chapters?

A Local Chapter is an official group of OSMers within a specific territory that is able to officially represent the OSM-F.

Why do we need local chapters?

Over the last 12 months many OSMers, especially those outside of the UK, have expressed interest in setting up official, local groups so that they can represent the OSM-F when talking to journalists, dealing with companies and governments, arranging mapping parties and conferences. From the Foundation’s point of view, establishing Local Chapters will help to spread the load of work and will lead to the growth and development of OSM in new territories.

Who can set-up a local chapter?

A Local Chapter will have a similar organisational structure to the OSM-F. It will consist of a board of directors who should be democratically elected by the memebership. We’ll let you know more details as they are decided, but for now if you are interested in setting up or being involved with a local chapter, please drop me an email (nick@osmfoundation.org)

What is the timeline for setting up local chapters?

All dates are approximate and depend on the number of review cycles the agreement goes through.

* Draft Local Chapters agreement in place for OSM-F viewing by 22nd Dec (OSM-F Board Meeting)
* First draft available for public comment in early Jan
* Review comments Jan-Feb
* Present revised edition to OSM-F for approval - Feb
* Setting up of first local chapters, driven by local chapters themselves- Feb

Who is in the Local Chapters Working Group?

Nick Black (Chair) - nick@osmfoundation.org
Mikel Maron - mikel_maron@yahoo.com
80n - 80n80n@gmail.com
Henk Hoff - henk.hoff@osmfoundation.org
Simone Cortesi - simone@cortesi.com

Want to help out? Got something to say?

Please email nick@osmfoundation.org or reply to this thread.

I’ve been doing some research as part of the Foundation’s goal to establish a framework for local OSM chapters to be Federated to the Foundation. The idea is that a local or special interest group will be able to set up a formal relationship with the OSM Foundation, allowing them to hold local mapping parties, events, conferences and so on under the broader banner of the Foundation. Federated groups or chapters will also be able to represent themselves to other official bodies - Governments and media organisations being two examples.

Quite a bit of work has already been done on this by the OSM-F Board, lead by 80n, so I’m not starting from cold. Most of the research I’ve been doing today has been into the Mozilla Foundation, who have been recommended as a good template for a central Foundation with federated members. The next step is for me to contact some local OSM leaders and present the OSM Foundation’s current proposal to them to get some feedback - I’ll be doing this over the next 7 days.

More info on the OSM Wiki. As always, if you have questions or would like to be involved with the work of the OSM-F, get in touch

We’ve just released the call for venues for the State of the Map 2009. The conference will be held on the 11th - 12th July 2009, so book you time off now. We want this years conference to be even better that last years, which is why the Foundation started working on the organisation in September.

If you would like to host this year’s event, take a look at this post. I’m going to be on holiday next week, so I won’t be doing any Foundation work. I’ll be catching up with Foundation emails as soon as I return.

One of the things I emphasised when standing for election to the OSM Foundation Board was the need for transparency and communication of Board activities to the membership. This is something I’m going to be working on consistently over the next 11 months. This post is the start of the first phase of the work. I’m going to keep a record of the work I do for the Foundation and try and communicate my work as clearly as possible. A lot of the work happens in bits and pieces - I grab 20 mins on a train or plane to read and write emails, draft press releases and so on. I’ve also set aside 2 hours on Thursday mornings for OSM-Foundation related work, so I’d anticipate these updates following those session.

Lets get going. Today I’ve been working on:

• Drafting a press release for the GPStoGO program’s first unit loan. I’m aiming to get the release out by the end of the week.
• Drafting an announcement for the call for venues for the State of the Map 2009. The announcement should be out by the end of the week and will invite proposals for venues to host the 2009 event.
• Catching up on Foundation emails, particularly regarding the License work, which is an ongoing effort for all of the Board members

Upcoming actions next week include getting up to speed on the process of setting up local OSM Chapters. I have a call with some other Foundation members tomorrow, after which I’ll be getting in touch with some OSM people around the world with the aim of getting local OSM chapters set up.

You can subscribe to my posts about my OSM-F work by clicking on this link.

For all Foundation related requests or info, please email me at nick@osmfoundation.org

I’m standing for election to OpenStreetMap Foundation this year, here is a manifesto of sorts, what I want to achieve as part of the OSMF and how I’ll go about it.

I’ve been part of OSM for about 2.5 years and over that time I’ve been involved with lots of aspects of the project including mapping, coding, salvaging servers, administering websites, helping to organise the State of the Map conference and representing OSM at conferences and exhibits in Europe and North America. This year I want to become more deeply involved with the day to day work that goes on to make OSM run smoothly, so I’m standing for election to the OSMF board.

Over the last 18 months my main role within OSM has been helping to organise the SOTM conferences, along with other OSMF board members. I was involved with the planning of the most recent conference, starting in January 2008, taking the specific role of finding speakers, timetabling their sessions, collecting presentations and generally making sure everything ran smoothly. Organising the conferences has been hard, challenging work, but lots of fun too. With OSM growing so quickly, both in terms of absolute numbers and the number of countries covered, next year’s conference will become bigger and require more organisation from OSM volunteers. As an OSMF board member I would volunteer myself to look after the organisation of the conference - from the call for venues to the conference itself. Having an OSMF board member who is committed to helping organise the conference will help to make SOTM09 even better than the previous two year’s events, promoting OSM within the a wider community of open source and open data projects and attracting new mappers to our project.

Of course I would also be involved with OSMF’s other projects and activities which include promoting OSM, dealing with legal issues and funding servers and hosting. I’ve been deeply involved with the geographic industry for the last 5 years, giving me a lot of exposure to the mapping world. Working in surveying, GIS and software development has taken me to conferences, jobs and events around the world where I’ve loved promoting OSM to anyone who will listen.

Here’s a summary of what I would aim to achieve over a year as an OSMF board member:

• State Of The Map organisation. Help the conference grow by supporting the community in choosing a venue, organising logistics, helping with call for papers, helping with website set up and anything else needed by the hosts
• Accountability for OSMF. Helping OSMF to be more accountable to its members, publishing updates on the main things being worked on by the Foundation
• Promoting OSM. Representing OSM at conferences, shows and developer events around the world and most importantly helping to support other OSMers in their promotion of the project

If you have any direct questions, drop me an email or on Skype.

The OSMF Wiki Page has the following information about the elections:

Nominations for this election will close on Monday August 25th, 2008 and the vote for each position will be called and counted at the AGM on August 30, 2008.

If you want to vote, you need to be a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. You can join the OSM Foundation here. Membership costs just £15 for a whole year and entitles you to vote in the elections as well as helping to support the Foundation in its work.

Finally, thanks to TomH and Dutch for proposing me.

Apple are all over the “Enterprise” shop with Active Sync support in the new iPhone 3G. Crackberry addicts are seriously considering making the switch to a sweeter flavour of opium. I was lucky enough to place an order for an iPhone on the morning the 11th July release date was announced. O2’s mastery of ecommerce has allowed them to debit the £160 odd fee from my bank account. Sadly, I’ve been chosen for a random security check, which involves spending an hour on an 0870 number to tell someone my passport number and debit card number. See some inconsistencies emerging?

Why? I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have time to talk to O2 for an hour. Want to capture the “Enterprise” market? Don’t dick us around.

FAIL

Read more here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=514266

Update

It gets worse, I just got this text from O2:

Sorry your experience on Monday wasn't great if you were trying to order iPhone 3G. Go to http://shop.o2.co.uk/info to find out the latest details.


My experience on Monday was fine its the arsing around now that’s killing me

Update 2 : Live blogging the less glamorous side of the iPhone

08:01am - Call the security verification line on 0870 4444713, half an hour before the published opening time of the line, just in case.

08:22am - Give up on the previous call. Get ready for the real opening time at 08.30am

08.30am - Call the number, dialling

09.01am - Still on the call. Dialling, no music, no “You are in a que”. Just ringing.

09.14am - Still ringing. Skype Credit down to £1.07 from £6.00

09.25am - Run out of Skype Credit. Auto-top-up FAIL for Skype, which has never happened before. Just wasted 57 minutes of my life. Still no iPhone.

We might have high taxes, bad weather and risk averse investors, but Burritos can now be crossed of the list of differences between California and London. Tortilla are a Californian style burrito house who’ve just opened up in Angel, north London.

Vanessa loved her burrito:

I loved mine too:

This close up shows you some more delicious details:

The burning question, of course is if London’s Burritos are as good as California’s. The short answer is no. The best burrito I’ve had was from a store near Sunnyvale. This wasn’t as good as that, but it was significantly better that the surprisingly OK burritos in Detroit airport.

Admittedly I’m no burrito expert - I throw down the gauntlet to burrito aficionados Mikel (who made me my first burrito), and Steve (who likes burritos a lot). Will be waiting to hear what they have to say.

India’s Tata Motors has the People’s Car, and the Isle of Man’s Peel Engineering has the P50. Spot the difference?

Searching for “google” from maps.google.co.uk fails to return Google’s London HQ, instead it gives this set of results, which shows their Manchester and Zurich locations, as well as a paid listing:

View Larger Map

Google’s real location is here.