CloudMade layoffs and the OSM Foundation
Submitted by rw on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 01:08.
CloudMade laid-off four of their five community ambassadors on 23 July 2009 as confirmed by CloudMade chairman, Juha Christensen on Twitter.
CloudMade reducing 4 of 55 jobs, opening up 5 new in PR and national group relations http://is.gd/1JrZq & http://is.gd/1Js0S
The CloudMade Team page was updated some time later and we notice that Thea is the lone community ambassador remaining. I have many friends among the current and former CloudMade team. Friendships both new and renewed at State of the Map just a few days ago. Those still at CloudMade and the four laid-off are all tremendously talented, wonderful people and you should add them to your team if you get the chance.
Juha's seeming casual dismissal of the four departing ambassadors, ... opening up 5 new [jobs] in PR ...
seems uncharacteristic and is probably due the the desire to respond promptly once the news broke on Twitter. But casually discarding four members of the OSM community or not, the CloudMade layoffs are just business
. CM have their goals and their aspirations and they have to answer to the CloudMade clients and investors.
Marc Prioleau, new CloudMade CEO, responded to follow up comments on Twitter suggesting that the fired ambassadors weren't at fault and that CM was just changing their approach.
CloudMade Ambassadors are all troopers. But we needed to change our approach. Goal = Map Complete. Much more to come
Marc suggests again that CloudMade must answer to their masters. No fault of the OSM community, the OpenStreetMap Foundation or the four individuals that CloudMade whacked. It's just business
.
The CloudMade layoff serves as an excellent reminder that OpenStreetMap isn't just business
. OpenStreetMap is a community and a project, not a company and a product. Treating the OpenStreetMap project and community as a product or a company is doomed to failure.
Support for OpenStreetMap comes from groups and individuals who participate in the project and even from companies who value the OpenStreetMap project like Nestoria, ITO World, Fortius One, Yahoo! and Google. CloudMade has been a generous contributor to OpenStreetMap to date as well. CloudMade is relying on OpenStreetMap data. It's just business
and it makes sense for them to contribute to the tools they use[1]. But their business model, goals and interests, like those of any other commercial contributors, could change overnight. Ask any of the four former ambassadors about changing business approaches. They'll do well in the long run, but I imagine that the plans that they had for this week have changed. It would certainly have been worse for them if the four were all members of the same family. Or all elected members to the same board of directors, like the OpenStreetMap Foundation. There are many things that we, as a project, can't defend against or predict, but this is one problem that we can avoid.
We can avoid relying too-much on any single contributor or any single donor. Just as we must avoid the hit by a bus
situation we must avoid falling victim to just business
.
The OpenStreetMap Foundation articles of association should be amended to minimize the risk to the Foundation and the project from just business
. I recommend the following change.
- That no more than one person[2] be permitted to serve on the OpenStreetMap Foundation board of directors from any single company[3] at one time.
Nobody wants to see CloudMade lay off more members of their team, whether they are OSM contributors or OSM Foundation board members or not. But it could adversely effect the ability of the Foundation to function should Nick and Steve have to look for new gigs at the same time due to a change in business approach at CloudMade. This concern is not specific to CloudMade and would be as much of a problem were more than one OSMF board member involved at Google, or Nestoria or Potlatch, Inc or any other single business interest.
While my suggestion reduces risk of just business
damaging the Foundation and OSM, it also encourages additional voices to be heard at the Foundation board level. Commercial interests have a lot to offer the OpenStreetMap Foundation board and enforcing business diversity in the members of the board is an advantage to the community even if the hypothetical second mass firing at some company never occurs.
[1] The founders of CloudMade are passionate about OpenStreetMap, well beyond just business
. Nobody should doubt the commitment of Steve or Nick after more than a moment of consideration.
[2] person from a company e.g.. employee, partner, owner, board of directors, substantial shareholder, etc.
[3] company or related companies e.g. holding company, shell, subsidiary, parent company, investor, etc.
Articles © 2010 
Map images and data © 2010
Is it the end of OSM or CM?
don't know the business model of CM and yes it was for sure not easy to build a larger community in US. It was quite a shock when I heard it last week from one of them. My first thought was CM has to face the reality of business and crowd sourcing and community is not easy to make a business with.
But now I am really surprised to see the direction they are heading to. forget the community .....
"CloudMade is looking for a shining PR star" ... "who has learned the ropes with a major agency"
You can't buy a community with some shiny marketing crap. We have enough of this already somewhere else. no one is interested in an other set of pens, t-shirts, mugs and all these gimmicks.
OSM will not die. it will improve even in US. not as fast as in Germany but hey you cant be super power number 1 and best in OSM at the same time ;-)
some areas catch up quickly so there is still hope
It is really sad because have met 3 of them and they all have been very committed and there was a lot of progress the map is much better now in these places
was it the best approach to begin with? hard to tell communities are not build top down. Was it fast enough? hard to tell but for a business which relies on exact data probably not investors knock on the door and want to see some return ....
Not the end for either in my opinion.
I don't think that the CM change in approach spells the end for CM. Too many smart folks there with too much business experience.
Even with a hypothetical flame-out at CM, I don't see that effecting OSM long term. It would certainly be a distraction for those at CM who still planned to participate / contribute to OSM until they got their feet back on the ground.
ambassadors is not a task of CM
To start it is really sad news for the ones involved. On the other hand, I always found it very strange that Cloudmade employs community ambassadors. The community is OpenStreetMap not a commercial company (=Cloudmade). When a business wants to stimulate the coverage in a country they should arrange something via the foundation. This company can than sponsor these ambassadors. Look at what happened now, many new interested people attending mapping parties and now....many disappointed community members. Thanks Cloudmade! OSM foundation, please set up and take your responsibility...ups...the foundation is Nick and Steve. I guess Cloudmade created a problem for the project.
@rw I am not so sure about the the business experience at CM. Many have never worked for an other company.
I'm not too worried about
I'm not too worried about the "hit by a bus" scenario. The electorate can be trusted, I think, to vote for people who are significant in the OSM community in themselves. Steve and Nick's interest in OSM predates CloudMade and I'd hope it would postdate it, too. Even if not, if someone loses interest in OSM (as happened with a director in the second year of the Foundation) there's a procedure to request their departure.
But, that said, your suggested change would be an excellent one for the second reason, that of encouraging diversity. The opportunities for conflicts of interest will grow as both OSM, and the businesses which use its data, become more successful. Whether or not such conflicts of interest actually occur is almost immaterial - it's the perception that counts. Having two or more directors from one company on the Foundation board could potentially discourage a competitor from investing in OSM.
On Anonymous's point - I'd disagree about PR. Good PR isn't "pens, t-shirts, mugs and all these gimmicks". You don't notice good PR. Good PR means getting CloudMade (and OSM) mentioned in the same breath as Google Maps and co; it means making sure journalists and bloggers are aware of the distinction between CM and OSM; it means more users for OSM, and more mappers. As a journalist I greatly value good PR. Unfortunately I also see a lot of cases where PR is either bad (pens, mugs, and most commonly, spraymailing) or non-existent,. CloudMade's has fallen into the latter category. They, and OSM, have missed out by not actively managing their PR over the last year, and I'm pleased to see them addressing this.
Anyway, enough of this, I'm off to register Potlatch, Inc.
Seriously, sponsorship from where?
How does the OSM community expect sponsorship of mapping parties if companies cannot treat the map as a business? Are all OSM Board Members/community members trust fund children or millionaires? Where do you think the money comes from for sponsorship? - trees? Or is the real issue that OSM members like to keep the map as a special project and will complain regardless of who sponsors mapping events?
Mapping party sponsorship
Anonymous at 15:33 asked,
I don't know that the community at large expects anybody to sponsor mapping parties. It is my understanding that the vast majority of the mapping parties are community-organized and not commercially sponsored. For example, in 2008 it appears that there were 380 events and of those 180 were mapping parties. By my count 20 of the US parties were sponsored.
Sponsorship is certainly not a pre-requisite for a successful mapping party.
The rest of your questions, anonymous 15:33, suggest that you might live near a bridge, but just in case you are sincere:
Not to my knowledge.
I have a few of those money trees in my yard, but the squirrels eat all of the coins before they bloom into banknotes. So no sponsorship money is coming from those trees.
This was answered above with respect to mapping parties.
Looking at sponsors as a whole, I've heard nothing but thanks for the commercial sponsors for various OpenStreetMap projects. For example the community raised a lot of money quickly for the new server in early 2009. Commercial donations from Google, CloudMade and other companies made it possible for us to exceed our fund raising goal. The Yahoo! contribution of aerial imagery and GeoCommons open source geocoder are two more examples, of many, of companies making important contributions to OpenStreetMap. The OSM community appreciates these contributions.
Thank you for your contributions to OpenStreetMap.
Just to point out
I don't think the shining PR star is for the community. If the existing community were meeting "goal - map complete" at a speed amiable to business, you wouldn't need a shining PR star, you'd need to sit back and wait.
If your crowdsourcing crowd ain't large enough to do the job, you need more crowd.
PR is about public
PR is about public relations. The crowd is the public. Cloudmade and it's founders are by far the most competent to address this so I'm cheering in favour of it happening. As Richard points out CM and thus OSM has not done enough about this yet.
The more the merrier!
- John
sponsorship from where?
Anonymous, sponsorship from where? Sponsorship comes from all directions to OSM. Look at the examples of rw.
I can add to that the SOTM sponsors to make the annual event possible.
The point I made before was that community ambassadors should not be employed by a commercial company.
This is a community (or foundation) task. Sponsoring community ambassadors working for the foundation is a fair route.
You get the coverage you want, however the ambassadors is not controlled (or fired) by a commercial company and mapping parties do not get canceled all of a sudden.
Bye the way, I am very much in favour for companies using OSM. But OSM is the community and not a company.
Post new comment