Africa is my home. I divide my time between home in Nairobi, Kenya and other home in Durban, South Africa. I also love to travel, mostly to visit family in the USA.

I come out of a local government background in Durban, now eThekwini Metro, where as a spatial planner I received formal training in aerial photo interpretation, photogrammetry and land survey, so I always enjoy a challenge turning the satellite pics into OSM data. I have used commercial GIS systems since the 80’s, starting on the simple but very effective Atlas GIS by Strategic Mapping Inc. and later moving on to the infuriating command line of the very effective ARC/INFO by ESRI. That was so long ago only probably only Jack Dangermond and I remember it. Now I’m a QGIS fan and have used it supporting philanthropic work in Rangpur Division, Bangladesh.

I’ve done lot of Land Use mapping for city planning purposes. I wrote a data management system to facilitate this, and I worked on classification schema - what OSM calls Tagging. I’ve picked up a lot of information technology knowledge over the years, and really appreciate the unseen and mostly unrecognised technical work that the operations side of OSMF does to keep our favourite mapping system on our screens.

I concentrate my mapping in Africa, though I’ve mapped in every country around the world. I especially like mapping poorly or unmapped places. I love the knowledge that I’ve put a village on the map so perhaps now the residents can be recognised and can receive development support and humanitarian aid. I’m also very interested in conservation and climate change, so I do a lot of mapping of the threatened forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in several places in Kenya, such as the Mara reserve and the largely unexplored forests and wetlands inland of Lamu town. I map a lot of rocks, sand and dry river beds in Chad because I am interested in both the amazing wind-eroded rock arches and the East Saharan montane xeric woodland which somehow survives on top of high mountains in the Sahara.

In my later working life I was promoted out of the work I loved and did less geography and demographics and I turned to Strategic planning, Risk management, Performance management, Budgeting and other grey lifeless management drudgery. Those tiresome things do have their uses for building and managing organisations, and I have used them in my four terms as an OSMF Director, Secretary and then Board Chair.

I finished my first two year terms as member of the OSMF Board as Secretary of the Board and as Chair of the Finance Committee. The first two years started with a fairly steep learning experience and ended with a change in my direction towards putting more emphasis on strategic planning, financial planning and fundraising. The next two years I was elected as Chair of the Board and I’ve tried hard to live up to the responsibility. There are never enough hours in the day to finish OSMF work.

My mapping activity has faded as I take on more and more admin responsibilities. See my mapping record on Pascal Neis’s nice site

I will say more on my views on interesting and controversial topics and my thoughts on the future of OSM into the answers to the questions put to election candidates by OSM members. Watch that space.