Loomio
Thu 12 Oct 2017 9:32PM

Reflections on our first two case studies

R RobJN Public Seen by 410

At our meeting today I took away an action to dig out the context behind why we are doing case studies. This context having come from the initial "Just keep asking why / root cause analysis" meeting.

The reason for this was because a couple of us are unclear as to the aim of the case studies.

Here is what I found:

Case studies came up in the following areas:

Provide case study examples / have a central repository of who is using or contributing to OSM.

  1. of organisations that have released data and the benefits to them
  2. of organisations that use OSM data
  3. of organisations experience with the OSM licence
  4. successful data releases and FOIA releases.
  5. of work by OSM users/community

Full text from the "Keep asking Why" session:

Case studies came up in the following areas:

  • Apps for contributing data (either case studies or a top 10 list of apps)
  • Promoting the use of OSM daat. We noted that Switch2OSM doesn't include any case studies explaining why companies would want to switch to OSM as it is focused on techical deployment once you have deiceded to make the switch!
  • Facilitating the release of data - Why? Because organisations holding data are frightened of legal issues. They feel like they are on their own. This is where case studies can help.
  • Cases of where releases of data have successfully been integrated in to OSM.
R

RobJN Thu 12 Oct 2017 9:42PM

My view is that the case studies work best on the commercial side (points 1 to 4) above. I feel that point 5 is reasonable well covered by blogs/social media/etc. If an OSM member has helped deliver something then we can include this but should emphasize the commercial work.

@brianprangle did you receive my emails related to proposed alternate text for the second case study? I ask because @spiffy didn't (do I have a problem with my email account).

I think the vast majority of the text is fine but a few bits can be tightened up to make it more suitable for a business audience that may be unfamiliar with OSM.

If we can agree the aim of the case studies then myself and others can provide better feedback at draft stage.

It would also be good to get some of these printed too so comment on my (second) PDF template would be much appreciated.

No rush - whenever you have time. Just wanted to open this before I forgot. Oh and I'm happy to work on this as I know you already have a lot on your plate :-)

BP

Brian Prangle Mon 16 Oct 2017 6:15PM

Hi Rob

I think it's best to leave it as it is because I've already engaged with each of the site owners with a back and forth on reviews to agree text, with a final sign off by them To send another now in my view would slightly undermine our credibilty as an organisation and risk losing some valuable allies. I think peopel will take what they want from the case studies and it's not worth aligning too much to objectives - it's just basically telling a story. If you want to alter the procedure for future case studies happy to look at that but let's not get too prescriptive and bureacratic.

Brian

R

RobJN Mon 16 Oct 2017 6:54PM

Hi @brianprangle. I was under the impression that you were undertaking interviews and writing up how you seemed fit (like the mappa mercia interview with OpenCage data). I hadn't realised that the interviewee holds the pen.

I'd prefer us to align to our aims otherwise this seems too much like a blog which is not a niche that requires filling.

I agree that we don't want the bureaucracy however although this is zero cost it should be reviewed on it's potential value. There are some ways to reduce bureaucracy so I will lay these out in a separate post.