apm-wa

Mapper since:
March 01, 2014
Last map edit:
October 15, 2026

From December 23, 2019, to December 11, 2021, chairperson of the OSM Foundation board of directors. Currently one of five moderators of the osmf-talk and talk mailing lists as well as the general, general:tagging, and foundation channels of the community forum on Discourse.

From 2022 to 2025 I was on the board of directors of American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, a Virginia-based non-profit devoted to music education. I continue to serve as a trustee of that organization’s endowment.

I am a retired U.S. diplomat previously assigned to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, for 4-1/2 years. Equipment includes RealMe 8 5G and Samsung Galaxy (both Android) with Mapillary, CoMaps, and Organic Maps for mass collection of ground-level imagery and data; GoPro Max2 360-degree camera with 256Gb SD card; GoPro Hero 7 Black with 256Gb SD card; Garmin nüvi; and a Wintel desktop PC platform that includes Igor Brejc’s Maperitive program for generating both wall maps and street atlases. I also have a collection of Soviet-era military maps of Turkmenistan for researching municipalities, route numbers, and topographic features. SOTM 2019 voted me the Greatness in Mapping award for that year.

For those with a half hour to kill, my presentation on mapping in Ashgabat to SOTM 2016 in Brussels can be seen on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t5DxV7cXgQ&list=PLQNy8KsDknCr92fIXYcOKL42U35wRAV9Y&index=3

My banquet speech on mapping in Turkmenistan at NACIS 2019 can be seen, with slides, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpHLulm-Wq4

Dermot McNally interviewed me in 2020 and the recording of that is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC0J_mIwm4E

GeoMob’s first podcast interview of me on OSM Foundation issues is here: https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-29 A second interview, on the 2021 community survey, is here: https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-63

My address “Winds of Change” in OSM to SOTM 2020 is here: https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/RRVNAM/

My keynote address to SOTM Europe 2023 is here: https://youtu.be/1BH78gnXLwc?si=BpLu7kZF2_ujS9mH

You can see my contributions to OSM here: https://hdyc.neis-one.org/?apm-wa The OSM heat map is here: http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/?apm-wa

You can see my contributions to the OSM wiki here: osm.wiki/Special:Contributions/Apm-wa and here: osm.wiki/User:Apm-wa If you are interested in helping map Turkmenistan, please review this documentation for some helpful information, and also take a look at the over 800,000 ground-level images collected so far using Mapillary.

An interview with me by OSM Belgium is here: https://openstreetmap.be/en/motm/2018/08/10/allan-mustard.html

A short video plugging OpenStreetMap on the U.S. Embassy Ashgabat Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/usembassy.turkmenistan/videos/2318943831524653/

Latest Diaries

Diary Entry transliterating Cyrillic script to Latin script

It occurred to me that some users of OpenStreetMap data cannot read Cyrillic script, so maps lacking name:en variables (or others using Latin lette...

0 comments October 14, 2026

Diary Entry transliterating Cyrillic script to Latin script

It occurred to me that some users of OpenStreetMap data cannot read Cyrillic script, so maps lacking name:en variables (or others using Latin lette...

0 comments October 14, 2026

Diary Entry OpenStreetMap and the Garmin nüvi GPS navigator, redux

I have uploaded updates to Github of my personal scripts and style sheets for making Garmin-compatible IMG files out of OSM-origin PBF files (thank...

0 comments October 12, 2026

Diary Entry mkgmap and the seashore

It seems that in fact mkgmap still requires boundary files, even though they are no longer available on the mkgmap website. After puzzling over the...

0 comments October 10, 2026