Hello everyone, my name is Matthew Gibb and I appreciate the opportunity to be considered for the Board of Directors for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. For the past two and a half years I have been a member of the GIS team at the American Red Cross.

I vividly remember my first time mapping in OpenStreetMap. Typhoon Haiyan had just made landfall in the Philippines and a colleague in grad school introduced several of us to HOT and the Tasking Manager. She got us set up with JOSM, taught us how to map, and you might say the rest was history. Alas, it was not. It was probably another year before I mapped again, and then another six months before I started mapping my hometown and surrounding areas consistently on my own.

Having worked previously in disaster response domestically in the US, I was accustomed to having all the GIS data I needed, from federal to state to local level. It wasn’t until joining the American Red Cross that I was able to see first-hand the incredible impact that this community has in disaster response and engagement of local communities throughout the world. Through our work with the Missing Maps project, I’ve had the benefit of working with volunteers, literally putting their community on the map, and often times creating a perspective for their community that they did not have before.

My own adventure in joining HOT is a long way from a Pulitzer-worthy story for sure, but it has shaped how I believe I can continue to contribute to HOT as a member of the board:

• I’ve been able to recognize that engaging mappers doesn’t have to end after a first mapathon, but through continued engagement and ensuring that everyone can see the impact of their time spent volunteering. I want to continue to share the stories of the great work community members are doing, to encourage volunteers to return and contribute.

• As HOT continues to grow, data quality and validation will continue to play an important role in not only how we as an organization continue to support the work we do around the world but also that other organizations recognize the value of this inclusive and dedicated community. I would like to continue working on growing our validation footprint through encouraging volunteers to validate and through the use of tools created to help identify issues sooner.

• Explore new avenues of engagement. It’s been amazing to see the variety in which new mappers come to HOT: an individual walking into a mapathon, a university, a corporation, a government agency. We all need to be advocates for engagement and growing the community and working through my own network to contribute to our growth will be point I wish to make. There are many members of our community who work tirelessly to engage volunteers, making sure they have support where needed is important to me.

• While working with the board on strategic planning, having the previous experience of working with a large humanitarian organization I believe provides me with a good perspective on how these organizations function, especially as HOT continues to grow and have a larger impact.

Collaboration is hard. Reading through email chains, Slack, and working group conversations can sometimes be a tough pill to swallow, but what inspires me is how deeply everyone involved with HOT cares, not only about the mapping, but as members of a community. How we approach our Strategic Plan will set the tone for the future. There will need to be collaboration with private, public, and non-profit partners alike. Finding common ground with such a diverse community may not be simple, and to be frank, I hope it’s not. A community that can disagree on topics yet still treat each other respectfully and as decent humans, means we have the opportunity to share together in the longevity of HOT.

As HOT continues this process, working with the board, voting members, and staff provides a unique challenge that I am excited to collaborate on, regardless of whether or not I am elected to the HOT board, because know the people of the HOT community will continue to respect each other and expand our impact.

As this is also my last week at the American Red Cross and I look forward to continuing to work with the HOT community, because at the very least, I’ve got a lot #ValidationFriday tweets that need to be tweeted.

I thank you for your consideration.

Matt “Giblet” Gibb