My Bio

I am a French GIS expert with 15 years of professional expertise and backgrounds in Geography, Geomatics applied to Prehistory and History, Humanitarian and Development. I have been working in GIS since 2000, respectively as a GIS Officer in Local Government/Authorities (France), as a PhD student in Archeology (France and Brazil), as a GIS Officer in United Nations Organizations (OCHA, PAHO and IOM in Haiti and WHO in Pakistan), then as a volunteer, project manager and finally Officer of the Board of the US-incorporated NGO HOT US Inc.

In Local Government, I had the opportunity to work as a project lead on census operations and census data, ordering orthophotos, running call for bids for electing webmapping application, sub-building a cadastre scale urban landuse, geocoding at building scale, chasing and georeferencing old aerial pictures, etc. I acquired an inner and thorough knowledge about how the geographic information is processed and handle by governments and local authorities at multiple scales, and I could measure the constraints and limits of non open data, limiting the possibilities of analysis and data cross-cuts. I always studied at the same time: made researches about geography of car construction, learnt remote sensing during a year and also started a complete course of prehistory, thus participated to excavations or field analysis in Syria, France and Greece. Even there, my focus is not only based on the technical analysis of archaeological remains (stone tools, pottery sherds…), but also on spatial and statistical analysis.

I was working on a PhD about an unknown civilization of first farmers in Eastern Brazil, analyzing pottery sherds, stone tools and other remains, when the earthquake hit Haiti. Then I both discovered OSM through mapping the affected areas and decided to apply for a GIS position in the humanitarian organizations deployed for the response and came eventually at the UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) Information Management and GIS office through iMMAP in February. In March, I met for the first time the Hotties deployed in the country (Nicolas, Robert and Kate) and help them the best I could to organize training or to facilitate their meetings with a few stakeholders. I remained working as a consultant for two years (Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization, International Organization for Migrations) but joined HOT (that had become a NGO meanwhile) in early 2011 for mapping + community building project in Haiti, and basically I have been keeping on working within the HOT Project until now as a volunteer, as a project manager on a given projects and also as a Board member (2014).

My HOT and OSM year in 2014

In 2014, I have been have involved in various activities:

• As a Board Officer of HOT US
• As a Project manager for HOT US, I co-designed with Kate Chapman and coordinated the implementation HOT Community Mapping and training project in Lower Shire, Malawi during two months (August and September) working with Maning Sambale and Emir Hatarto.
• As a member of the community of the HOT project, I have coordinated primarily the CAR activation (completing almost the mapping of this country) and secondarily the South Sudan and Malawi activations, I supported other activations (mapping and mobilizing for mapping) in support of other crisis and also facilitated the Activation WG meetings
• Within the Projet EOF, I co-authored a technical and an organizational guides around OSM ; I am specifically proud of an open data GIS guidebook that will be hosted in FlossManuals soon
• With Nicolas, I coordinated the Projet EOF activities and had the opportunity to deploy in many countries: in Burkina Faso (May), Morocco (October), Ivory Coast (October), Chad (November), Senegal (November), Mali (December).
• I spoke and/or did outreach about the projects OSM, HOT and EOF in various events Conférence Humanitaire (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Quai d’Orsay), State Of the Map France (Paris), UN GIS Day (Geneva), Salon Des Solidarités (Paris), SOTM (Buenos Aires).

My Vision for the HOT Board in 2015

This is the vision that Nicolas and I have for the Board of HOT US in 2015. Work is ongoing to produce and release a collective version from individual statements that will guide our action in 2015 within the HOT Project. 2015 will de facto be a year of changes for HOT with:

• On the one hand, the resignation of its ED and a majority of its former Board members.
• On the other hand, the many candidacies with a diverse set of skills and varying levels of experience within the organization. It’s likely that a sound mix of people shall come out from this election.

If elected, my actions within the Board of Directors for HOT will be as follow:

My vision of what a Board member shall be doing

I’ll be using the many hats that my experience provided me with: strategy, project engineering (design/implementation), reporting, admin/business processes, outreach, networking, advising, grants writing/fundraising and the field-specific technical and organizational skills building local OSM communities developed in Haiti and Africa in the past 5 years.

My priority

My compass will be to ensure that our organization fosters its support to the growth of autonomous local OSM communities (made of individuals, groups, chapters and economic operators) and develop their ability to sustain relations amongst themselves (global-local, South-South, North-South) and with technical communities (OSM, free software and open data) as well as the humanitarian and development actors. My intention is to provide feedback from my field experience in many contexts and type of projects, including e.g. budget optimization to systematically encompass support for local emergent OSM communities.

Reinforce HOT US as a member-based organization by carrying out internally

• Ensure that HOT is a transparent organization for its members who can attend all meetings (Board included) and access all meeting notes, communications and all the Organization documents (specifically finance, admin, projects) ; within of course the respect of privacy
• Make of HOT an inclusive organization in terms of decision making ; specifically in project design tied to subventions, grants, or core funds
• Make of HOT a learning organization for its members from voluntary contributions in Working Group down to project implementation which shall continue to primarily seek hotties’ participation
• Redefine relations and roles between the Board Of Directors and Operational staffs (ED and Project Managers). Ensure a shift towards a more active role for the Directors in strategy/planning/design/implementation/monitoring of operations and projects with the ED in charge of running the day to day business. Resume operations meeting (stopped in 2013) between the ED and Project Managers and introduce continued attendance by Board and WG representatives.

What the organization shall do

• Consolidation of the Commons of the HOT Project (tools, documentation, communication, network) and design a Charter of the HOT Project to which HOT US, other regional HOT organizations and partners have to be compliant with
• Consolidate capacities to support remotely humanitarian and development actors.
• Expand again HOT on-the-ground presence (after its shrinking in 2014) in order to support humanitarian and development actors and grow local OSM communities. Assess and review the fundraising approach to tentatively succeed in securing core funds for the first time in 2015
• Strengthen our neutrality/autonomy from large partner and funding organizations within the humanitarian and development fields
• Ensure that the Organization benefit from continued advisory support through its members and Working Groups and/or in the form of ad hoc simple consultations of experts or through the form of advisory projects tailored to address a specific need of the organization

What is the HOT Project?

Historically, the HOT Project develops as follow :

• It started first as a community made of individuals forming an informal collective from 2007 until the first field work in the 2010 Haiti response (March/May/June).
• In Aug 2010, the HOT Project developed as a community coupled to a US-incorporated NGO, HOT US fulfilling the role of a de facto Humanitarian/Development chapter operating mostly through volunteerism and an economic operator relying for project implementation on a mix of paid and voluntary work.
• In 2015, the HOT Project consists of a community, a chapter (HOT US) and economic operators (HOT US, TheMissingMap project and many others)

The components of the HOT project can be developed as follow:

• A community of individuals involved through remote activations and field work far beyond the HOT US voting members and the stable core of active contributors
• An associative component as a kind of Humanitarian/Development Chapter with HOT US, for voluntary activity around OSM in the Humanitarian and Development fields in the form of mapping, training, outreach, documentation and tools creation
• Economic operators, including HOT US, using the business mechanisms (proposals, calls for bids) and raising funds to support the use of OSM in the Humanitarian and Development fields.

HOT US within the HOT Project

• Organize the Decentralization/Regionalization of HOT US into autonomous HOT regional entities (both chapters and/or economic operators) able to operate worldwide. By so doing, they will comply with the HOT Project Charter (cf supra) and maintain and enrich the HOT Project Commons (cf supra) and seek coordination/cooperation synergies in running their voluntary or economic project-based activities.
• Organize for HOT US to play the role of incubator for such a regionalization process and for the regional entities to share in return with HOT US the financial costs of maintaining the Commons of the HOT Project (through a project fees, for example like TheMissingMap project).
• Organize the cooperation between HOT US, future emerging HOT regional entities and already existing partner entities (GroundTruth, TheMissingMaps, etc.) or projects like the Projet EOF. This will ensure that HOT US incubate/support (if needed) those entities and that mechanisms are in place for those entities to operate by the HOT Project Charter and its Commons and contribute with HOT US to those Commons
• Organize/address the handling of conflicts of interest for Board members involved in professional uses of OSM