In developing the code that creates the clickable points, I realised that the OpenStreetMap tagging schema doesn’t cope with the many different types of technologies very well. So I am currently taking a detailed proposal through the wiki process to rationalise and expand the “power=generator” feature – comments welcome! It will go to a vote in a couple of weeks.

As Oliver Kühn has pointed out, data contributors aren’t always aware of the needs of data consumers. The very sparse coverage of energy generators in OpenStreetMap is a case in point; the cluster pictured in this post was a result of a little stroll I took with a friend and Peckham Power founder Anna Plodowski. But across London there are only a few generators visible, out of hundreds or thousands that must exist. I hope this map might spur others to contribute more data.

I am also talking with contacts in the Greater London Authority and Southwark Council about getting data they hold into the public domain, to be imported into OpenStreetMap. Public bodies, and organisations like housing associations, must hold lots of data on their own kit without complex data protection issues that would stop installation companies contributing their data.

In time, it might become an interesting point of collaboration with government and third sector groups, as currently nobody holds any data indicating the extent of low and zero carbon energy generators in London!

Rupert Read has posted some useful thoughts on how the Green Party in England & Wales can build on the historic election of our first MP, and on the rapid growth in membership in recent years. There’s much to agree with, particularly on making the internal systems and finances work. If anything, I think he has understated the importance of finances… even to stay still and retain our two London Assembly Members in 2012, our two MEPS in 2013, our MP in 2015 and over a hundred councillors in between.

Here in London, a lot of thought has gone into our electoral strategy following the near-wipeout in May. I won’t digress into the London strategy here, but Rupert echoes comments from many party members I have spoken to in emphasising the need to blend realism and ambition.

Rupert is also right to ask how we can tighten up our policies, which needn’t amount to a removal of anything radical as Jane Watkinson has suggested. My first concern is that we need to go beyond the dry policy documents to think about how we engage those high-profile elected politicians with changes, so we don’t get (justifiably) bad press like this after so much effort improving policy.

I have provided some advice to Caroline Lucas MP and the office on intellectual property issues, but I can’t be as quick in helping Caroline as I can be in my full-time job supporting our London Assembly members. How can the party provide the politicians with swift responses and germane guidance whilst relying so heavily on volunteers? When researchers employed for the politicians are often restricted in their dealings with other branches of the political party (as civil servants), how can we ensure consistency between offices? More money for researchers in the party office would be a big help.

Though I think Jane’s worries are unwarranted, she is right to ask how we resolve radicalism with realism. My second concern in building on recent success is that our politicians are actually effective, and that we are able to tell the stories of their successes. This is an age-old dilemma for a small party in a big-media world (new/social media are still a bit player when it comes to getting the message out beyond activists).

Trying to be a party of radical politics in Westminster, and one that bucks the “green = environmentalism” label without shrugging off environmental issues altogether, is a tough job. Trying to pick radical policies to advice where there is a realistic prospect of a political gain – i.e. actually changing something – or a prospect of good media coverage to inform the public debate – only makes it harder.

Our Policies for a Sustainable Society run to thousands of words over hundreds of topics. Our 2010 general election manifesto has detailed proposals across most areas of government. Caroline will only be able to notch up limited political gains and big media hits on a handful of national topics; she is only one MP.

Take the Green New Deal, for example, which Caroline is rolling together with an opposition to public service cuts. The current government is going to appear very green to most voters. That is partly because the previous government had such a terrible record; and partly because it is inheriting some fairly radical proposals such as these on energy efficiency. Will Caroline just look like the impossible-to-please nutcase on the fringe, or will she be able to establish a credible line of scrutiny, attack or productive lobbying?

So I am looking forward to hearing at the Autumn conference what she is going to focus on in Parliament, how that will connect with the work done by canvassers and councillors up and down the country, and how the party can continue to forge a distinctive and very focused image for the next tranche of Green voters.

My principal objection to the “do-ocratic” model is that it excludes “those who can’t” from setting the direction of the project, and that as a consequence OpenStreetMap is unlikely to meet the needs of a great many people.

Did I mean that developers are lazily or selfishly ignoring others’ needs? No, I am aware of and indebted to the efforts of many volunteers working to make OpenStreetMap more accessible and usable. Only a handful of community members refuse to engage in grown-up debate.

Do I mean to whine because I am excluded? Not at all. I consider myself to be very technically skilled and sufficiently time rich tohave contributed a lot over five years. I’ve dropped off mailing lists because I’m not that time rich and I’ve not got the skills to develop many tools I’d like, but that’s life.

So do I want developers to be subject to the force of a governing body, to dance to a top-down tune? No, I am a great fan of communities that harness the energy and enthusiasm of people who choose of their own accord to hack on things that interest them.

Do I think OpenStreetMap will fall apart if it doesn’t address my concerns? No, Tom Hughes rightly pointed out that a legitimate path for the project would be to remain a haven for the technically skilled and time rich, leaving others to step in and enable a wider community of enthusiasts or create business opportunities just as MapQuest have recently announced.

Am I suggesting that none of this is being discussed elsewhere? Not at all, I’m aware that some Foundation members are trying to tackle these sorts of issues.

My objection to the do-ocracy boils down to thinking that it’s a shame. I think OpenStreetMap could be much more, and that it stands in danger of being forked or ignored (as it already is) by a great many who would find it useful and add a great deal to the community. So long as key decisions and discussions are dominated by the technically skilled and time rich who can “just fucking do it”, the project will continue to reflect their preferences.

Giving the OpenStreetMap Foundation a wider and deeper remit, putting a corporate fundraiser at the top of the priority list and making an effort to include a variety of Board members from backgrounds other than core OSM hacking will all help. I’m glad that Mikel Maron, Thea Clay, Harry Wood and countless others are actively working to make this happen.

Foundation Board member Henk Hoff (a very nice-sounding chap) was describing the classic technocratic argument that in a “do-ocracy”, those who get on with doing things make decisions by default. Steve must have loved it, you just get on with useful stuff and avoid getting bogged down in pointless debates. Right?

Thea pointed out that in a community of tens of thousands, only a few hundred can “do” stuff like making amazing tools and creating useful maps from the tags they’ve invented. I’m in the bigger mass of people who want to contribute data, see lots of good uses and ways in which OpenStreetMap can improve, but lack the skills to “just get on and do” much that I’d like to with the data. I’ve been at it for five years.

I spend a lot of time involved in local groups trying to improve their town centre, grow food on their housing estate, represent tenants or establish a community-owned renewable energy company. They’ve come up with some great ideas for using OpenStreetMap, but none of us have the skills or money to “just do it”. I’ve tried, for two years, to get others to help with this with very little success. So is OpenStreetMap just not for us? Do I leave them to use Google Maps and miss out on the potential of such an amazing open platform?

Henk’s suggestion that the decisions of the “do-ers” are generally accepted is also just plain wrong. Nobody has ever been able to agree on the appropriate difference between marking a feature as a footway or a path, after years of debate. The same goes for wood/forest and countless other features.

That’s a pretty sad inditement as it makes for even more confusing map detail (the map key is absurdly long, and why should the average map user care if it’s a footway or a path?) that also makes applications like routing needlessly complicated.

Anarchy gives OpenStreetMap real energy and the space for innovation by the do-ocracy elite. But it leads to very inconsistent data and the exclusion of all but a technically hyper-literate few.

Most mappers come from countries run by democratic governance; they use software created by communities with clear and functional democratic structures like this, this and this; there’s a great study on Debian that drives the point home. Many mappers have engaged with the pseudo-democratic process of voting on new tagging proposals. I suspect that most mappers – if you canvassed beyond the extremely vocal elite – would support a more democratic approach to basic decisions about core tags, use of funding, etc.

That won’t stop people “just doing” what they want to do, but it will make the data more useful and the project more accessible for the vast majority of people outside of the technical elite.

Finally, just as we let people who prove their technical skill loose on the technology, why not let people with proven organisational and political skills loose on these problems? An audience member suggested OpenStreetMap was going through puberty. Well as much as teenagers hate to admit it, sometimes authority borne of experience and training is worth listening to.

For these reasons and more we need to hear much more from the likes of Thea and Mikel, and a lot less from techno-junkies like Steve.

Oona King hasn’t impressed me much so far. Her candidacy seems very light on detail, her policy pronouncements full of nice language but no specifics. As Martin Hoscik writes, Ken Livingstone is simply rehearsing his 2008 manifesto, with a few innovations (such as borrowing affordable housing money on the bond market) that are basically unfolding behind the scenes in City Hall already.

But on the BBC Politics Show on Sunday, King did get one impressive point in. Livingstone is basically gearing up for a re-run of the 1980s, when he battled with Thatcher from the GLC. He wants to fight, fight, fight every cut (transcript here). But as King pointed out, once the Mayor gets a cut-down grant she/he can’t do very much about it.

In the face of cuts beyond our control we need to innovate (whilst of course speaking out against the cuts and making them very uncomfortable for Lib Dem and Conservative MPs in London). King cited the example of co-operative home ownership, something I have recently worked on with Jenny Jones. I have also written in the past about opportunities for local communities to regenerate their area without waiting, cap in hand, for big chunks of government funding.

Given that Livingstone has jumped on the bond market bandwagon to raise money for affordable homes I hope he will use the next two years to take up other innovations, as King suggested. I also hope Oona King puts some substance behind her slightly vague but insightful suggestions.

A campaign of positive ideas for London’s very varied communities would be much more interesting, and beneficial to London, than two years of simply attacking the coalition Government’s disastrous budget.

But curiosity and Rob’s enthusiasm got me hooked, and in August 2008 I organised my first mapping party. Here is a blast from the past showing us adding in the first coverage of Reading, England:

What followed were five years interspersed with many pleasant hours mapping parts of Reading and the surrounding countryside, St Albans, Criccieth, south east London, Hackbridge, Shrewsbury, Dumfries & Galloway and countless little excursions for walks.

As a keen cyclist, I particularly enjoyed entering some of the first London data to create a really useful web map for cyclists.

I’ve produced an “ethical map” of Reading, co-created a green map of Sutton (London), dabbled with various custom cartographic styles (e.g. ye olde, waterways) and most recently tried to create links between the community and government, first in Southwark and then across London.

What has possessed me these past five years? Well at first it was a friend’s enthusiasm; then it was an interest in all things free software / culture / data (at the time I was heavily involved with Creative Commons and started one of the first local arts projects promoting it); then I grew to enjoy the practice of walking and cycling around strange streets getting to know my local town or suburb in every intimate detail.

Most of all, I liked to beat the commercial competitors!

These days it is an automatic obsession to try and “complete” my local area and evangelise all the benefits open collaboration can bring.

Apparently they are ignorant of advertising (shaping and creating the wants of other people), which is projected to reach £531bn globally by next year. That’s roughly the same amount that the UK Government brings home in tax revenue. Or to take a specific example, research from 2008 suggested that American drugs companies spend roughly twice as much on advertising as they do on research – getting rich by promoting cash-cow drugs instead of researching much-needed medicines.

Apparently they missed the collapse of the global financial system in the past few years, which was triggered by companies getting rich through risky trading practices far distanced from the wants of people outside the financial services sector. Those that were affected first – home owners with “sub prime” mortgages – were exploited by irresponsible people getting rich off their wants in an underregulated market.

Apparently they are ignorant of the way in which the business world actually works. Take this compendium of Microsoft’s dirty tricks, for example, which shows a company (and one man in particular) getting filthy rich by distorting and abusing another poorly regulated market. Yes, they satisfied the wants of a great many people, but if that was your only measure then other companies would have done equally well if not better. But they were crushed.

I’m not saying all businesses are evil, just that apparently the TaxPayers’ Alliance are talking out of their arse again.

Harry Wood will post a useful rundown of some of the stuff people hacked on over the two days.

The only practical thing I did was to work with Rob Scott (OSM) and Scott Day (Southwark Council) to try and extract buildings from the open Ordnance Survey maps so we could merge them into OpenStreetMap without having to manually trace every single one (yawn). For the nerds, I’ve written up our initial results on the wiki.

Talking with Scott, it was clear that Southwark probably have a lot of data we could benefit from, and that they would really like to use OpenStreetMap in lots of places where they don’t need the pinpoint accuracy for road shapes, gardens, etc. that they get with commercial products like UK Map and Ordnance Survey’s Mastermap.

Alisdair Maclean from Brent brought the whole road network on a USB stick. Robert did a quick visual analysis of differences with OSM data using his “musical chairs” app, and Grant overlayed the two sets of data to spot roads he had missed over the years. Again, I hope Alisdair really benefited from the opportunity to chat.

The trick is really just to keep experimenting and helping government people to try things out. Expecting local authorities to just come and use OSM without any decent documentation or personal contact is… well, it won’t happen. Without those relationships, open data initiatives like the London Datastore could just end up dumping data on the public without benefiting from our capacity to correct and improve upon that data.

So do the Conservatives now care deeply about inequality? Darren Johnson put the London Assembly Conservatives to the test this week, proposing that the Mayor of London implement Cameron’s policy of a maximum 20:1 pay ratio in the Greater London Authority group.

Here’s the response of the Conservatives:

In case you’re fooled into thinking that Darren and the Greens are ignoring the low paid, read Darren’s arguments in The Guardian. If we’re all in this together, shouldn’t government bodies ensure that the lowest paid receive a living wage whilst preventing spiralling pay at the top of the scale?

It’s something that a growing number of people know, whether you’ve been priced out or you know someone who has by decades of massive house price rises. It is most severe in London and fancy rural communities, but is a growing problem across the country.

I’m pretty proud of the work Jenny and I did on it!