Hi Chris. I wasn’t aware of MapRoulette. Checking it out now.

Alfred

@Harry: Thanks for the comments and review of the slides. I will update them. I know @pmbatty quite well. At different times we have worked together and other times at competing consultancies :) But I always enjoy visiting with him. You know what they say in my industry... "It's a Smallworld..." Thanks for setting up the Wiki link. I will start filling out the page soon and then promote it in the Smallworld community.

@daregusta: Thank you for the points to ponder. I appreciate your suggestion of the two applications.

The big companies I have worked for are predominantly in the gas and electric space. And they all seem to have the same problem with their underlying landbase data. They get data from a vendor (e.g., Navteq, Teleatlas) and then get updates periodically (ever year or two). In the meantime, these utilities need to update the landbase with new estates, subdivisions, roads, etc. That all works well until they get the annual update from their landbase provider. Now what... how to integrate the landbase provider's new data with the new stuff that the utility is aware of. Maybe it made it into the new commercial landbase... maybe it didn't. So there is always a big integration effort whenever a utility wants to update their landbase. That daunting task often drives utilities to delay the landbase upgrade for years and only makes the inevitable upgrade even more painful. I see OSM as a great way to have a single source of data where utilities can add their local knowledge together with the knowledge of citizen mappers. At the end of the day, the utilities are not in the business of mapping landbase. They are in the business of maintaining their electrical/gas/water facilities. At least that is how I see it... trying to get the utility to leave management of non-core-business data to OSM.

Anyways, I do appreciate your comments. As I discuss this with more utilities and learn what their actual use cases could be, I will publish more about it. I think I might start a Utilities page on the wiki to track use case ideas.

I haven't created any pages on the wiki yet, so if you have a suggestion for page name or category, I would appreciate it greatly.