THE 2014-2016

MAPSTORY FOUNDATION

STRATEGIC PLAN
2014 holds great promise for the growth of the MapStory Community, the launch of many new community initiatives, and the maturation of the MapStory.org platform to meet the communitys needs. MapStory, in 2014, will see a technological evolution that enables browser-based crowd-editing and rich, lay-accessible, MapStorytelling functions, transforming how users leverage the platform to initiate their projects and share their stories with a global audience. But, beyond 2014, MapStory will continue to evolve as a platform, a global data commons, and a Foundation capable of fostering a global community committed to an open understanding of our ever-changing world. This strategic plan is intended to guide the MapStory Foundations investments from 2014 through 2016 in order to ensure the communitys near term success while laying the groundwork for its evolution into a global community capable of organizing and sharing the totality of knowledge about our ever changing world. The plan is organized around five core priorities: 1) Growing Community Initiatives 2) Addressing the Needs of Diverse Domains 3) Unleashing Mass Collaboration 4) Making MapStorytelling Accessible for Everyone and 5) Building the Capacity of the MapStory Foundation. As with any strategic plan, it will be revisited and revised annually.

THE PAST IS PRELUDE

2013 was the first full year of operations of www.mapstory.org. As with most ideas, MapStory began as one persons concept incubated for many years. MapStorys launch in 2012 was preceded by a few years of concentrated conceptual refinement, design, fundraising, platform development, and the establishment of the MapStory Foundation. In 2013, the Foundation worked to actualize the four Community Initiatives outlined in its 2013 Prospectus (link), designed to explore the potential value of the www.mapstory.org platform to various communities of interest. These initiatives were: MapStory Education (focused on K-12 education), MapStory Local, MapStory Decision-Makers (focused on Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Response scenarios and Urban Planning), and MapStory Biography. The Foundation made great progress on each. Yet, due to the energy of the ever-growing MapStory Community, several other initiatives took hold and the Foundation, with its limited resources, did what it could to foster them. 2013 saw the emergence of a very global community of registered MapStorytellers, as well as a huge variety of StoryLayers and MapStories that no one could possibly have anticipated. This activity unearthed technical issues and feature requests, and instigated the development of new UI/UX designs that leave the MapStory Community poised for impressive accomplishments in 2014 and beyond.

GROWING COMMUNITY INITIATIVES

A wide variety of experiences during 2013 helped give the term MapStory Community Initiatives mass and meaning. In the end, MapStory Local - the Initiative focused on mapping local development over time - has come to serve as the archetype of a MapStory Community Initiative in a number of ways. First, it was conceived of and initiated by a member of the MapStory Community - not Foundation staff. Second, it flexed and even broke the MapStory. org platform, and required the MapStory Foundation to rally and address these community needs. Lastly, its success requires a large number of individual users to contribute their own unique data to a shared overall dataset and continuously crowd-edit individual features and attributes in that dataset as new knowledge emerges over time. In other words, it requires collaboration.

IN OTHER WORDS, IT REQUIRES COLLABORATION.

2014 and beyond will see the evolution of countless MapStory Community Initiatives similar to Local that cannot be anticipated. One of the Foundations strategic priorities for 2014-2016 is is to develop a process by which Community members can establish new Initiatives of their choosing, effectively spread the word to a global community, and enlist interested parties as potential participants.

ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF DIVERSE USER DOMAINS

It became clear in 2013 that some Initiative concepts are better termed Domains because of their focus on a particular field of practice rather than a content area. For instance, work with K-12 educators revealed their strong interest in MapStory as a tool across all disciplines (from STEM to history). To succeed these educators need MapStory to respond to their unique constraints. Articulating priority Domain areas like this will help the MapStory Foundation focus fundraising, software development and programming efforts in specific directions. K-12 Education will remain a Domain to which MapStory is committed, and the investments made in this domain in 2013 helped further the MapStory Foundations understanding of requirements from the K-12 Education community. Similarly, the Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Response (HADR) Domain and the Urban Planning Domain received substantial focus in 2013, and should remain enduring Domains of focus for years to come. 2014-2016 will likely see new users emerge from a wide range of passionate information communities who hail from completely new Domains. As MapStory Community members emerge from these additional Domains, it is a strategic priority for the Foundation to make its best efforts to support them, and to speak their language. Part of this will involve the Foundation identifying and cultivating relationships with appropriate institutional partners and sponsors that will allow it to sustain efforts within these domains. Proper engagement with each Domain will have resource implications that the Foundation will need to navigate, and on which Community input will be required. It is a strategic imperative that the Foundation develop a repeatable process, staff it, communicate it to the global MapStory community and beyond, and resource it properly.

UNLEASHING MASS COLLABORATION THROUGH CROWD-EDITED STORYLAYERS

One of the original concepts behind MapStory was the ability for distributed versioned editing on spatio-temporal data. Much the same way Wikipedia (and their MediaWiki platform) enables a community to edit text, MapStory (and our GeoNode platform) would enable a global community to edit spatio-temporal (vector) data at a feature and attribute level, collectively generating rich understandings (at a data level) of how particular dimensions of our world has changed. As the required engineering evolved, and members of the MapStory Community took more ownership of this concept, the term crowd-editing emerged. MapStory already enabled many other forms of crowd-sourcing of both data, stories and peer review. This crowd-editing capability, which will emerge in 2014 (e.g., core engineering has been completed) will have huge implications for the MapStory Community. Most important, MapStory will no longer just be a place where people organize, share, and reflect upon spatio-temporal data and narratives. MapStory will then be a place where community data collection projects can be initiated and advanced within the platform itself.

This, of course, has strategic implications for how the Foundation must organize and align resources. At a minimum, the Foundation must develop a repeatable process, automate it, communicate it to the global MapStory community and beyond, and ensure that the server infrastructure (both processing and storage) can handle the onslaught of data that may result. Moreover, it will be imperative that the Foundation communicates to the global Community the strategic resource implications that successful crowd-editing projects might have, and work with the Community to ensure that adequate resources are available to meet their needs.

MAKING THE ART OF MAPSTORYTELLING AVAILABLE TO ALL

In 2013, a broad community of motivated MapStorytellers provided a host of feedback on the limitations of the MapStory platform, and in particular, the kinds of functionality they need to tell the MapStories they are inspired to tell. Needless to say, this global community of early adopters had/has powerful notions of what the Art of MapStorytelling should be, and the technical functionality that was/is required to reach their desired level of artistry. As a result, a major redesign of the MapStorytelling Composer within www.mapstory.org was undertaken in 2013. This redesign worked to incorporate many of the insights from this community of MapStorytellers. And this Community feedback and resultant 2014-2016 WILL SEE MANY redesign has spawned a new vocabulary that will shape how MapStorytellers create narratives over the next several years. One MORE LESSONS LEARNED, requirement was the ability for a regular (e.g., non-technical) user MANY NEW CONCEPTS, AND to StoryBoard a complex, multi-chapter MapStory, where each THE EVOLUTION OF NEW chapter is guided by a StoryBox that has its own spatial extent (min/max XY at a given resolution) and temporal envelope (start/ VOCABULARY end date, interval, and replay rate). And, lots of thoughtful (but negative) feedback over the initial implementation of annotations led to a reimagination of multi-media StoryPins. All of this new vocabulary represents lessons learned from 2013 as they relate to MapStorytelling. 2014-2016 will see many more lessons learned, many new concepts, and the evolution of new vocabulary that represent Community aspirations for the the MapStory platform. And, these aspirations will necessitate the development of new technical capabilities. Strategically, the Foundation will need to institutionalize an ongoing process by which MapStorytellers can systematically provide feedback that spurs platform development that will in turn empower them to share their stories. Over the coming years, the MapStory Foundation will have to mature in order to adequately support a growing global community that increasingly represents every region, country, community, profession, gender, age group, station in life and cultural background. During 20142016 the Foundation will focus particular effort on extending its capacity to govern the platform

and the organization, communicate with existing and new communities, cultivate new sponsors and build presence within institutions and physical spaces that enable face-to-face interaction. Each will require its own strategy, and each of these strategies will be interdependent in important ways.

HUMAN CAPITAL
The MapStory Community is filled with extraordinary talent of all kinds, and one of the MapStory Foundations strategic imperatives is to construct organizational means by which Community members can engage and provide value. This, at its core, is a human capital management challenge. 2014 will offer the MapStory Foundation a number of opportunities to catalyze the Community by enlisting individuals in ways that leverage their unique skills and perspectives.

THE MAPSTORY COMMUNITY IS FILLED WITH EXTRAORDINARY TALENT OF ALL KINDS

In 2014, the Foundation will move to improve overall governance by expanding its Board of Directors, establishing a Global Board of Advisers, and enlisting thought leaders to organize Domain specific advisory groups. Coupled with these institutional developments will be efforts to solidify In addition, the Foundation will build out the structures instigated by various Community members during 2013, including: a) the nascent MapStory Volunteer Technical Community b) the role of Community Trail Boss trailblazed by those who conceived of and led the first MapStory Community Initiatives, c) student Chapters at universities, colleges, and high schools, d) the role of Editor that focuses on improving the correctness, completeness, and visual representation of others data, and e) the community of open source developers that contribute to the ongoing improvement of the www.mapstory.org platform. Each of these organizational innovations will require clarity, coordination, and resourcing and it is the Foundations responsibility to help motivated Community members bring these to life. In particular, the Foundation must ensure that participation in each of these is international and multi-lingual in nature if MapStory is to realize its goal of organizing all knowledge about all that has occurred on Earth over time. Success, therefore, will also require increasing staff capacity within the Foundation. In 2013 the first full time staff member was hired to put foundational aspects of the organization in place. In 2014-16 we will add internal capacity across our domains of activity - software development, community building, content curation, etc. The approach to staff development will always be aimed towards empowering the external user community rather than replacing their efforts with staff. The staffing strategy, therefore, is designed to be a minimal footprint and maintain MapStory as a volunteer/community driven endeavor to the greatest extent possible.

OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATIONS

100% of those who have never heard of MapStory have not used MapStory. In 2013, MapStory achieved significant print, online, and social media attention, but this was mainly limited to the geospatial technology community. The most important strategic imperative is for the Foundation to achieve exposure to a broad global community of potential users through aggressive marketing aimed at traditional media, social media, and word of mouth.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH & EARNED MEDIA

Beyond outreach to the traditional geospatial community, in 2013 the MapStory Foundation conducted consultations with leading journalism practitioners and scholars, attended and presented at conferences for the social sciences, historians, and K-12 teaching community. The Foundation reached out to the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) community, the urban planning community, and the community of folks interested in geneology and biography. Many acts of outreach to many different communities catalyzed the involvement of a wide range of individuals and organizations. But, in the end, this form of outreach cannot scale globally. As such, the Foundation has worked to better engage various media channels which each have an enormous following amongst practitioners within these communities. The Foundation has sought to educate mainstream journalists - both generalists and those with particular beats, such as K-12 Education Technology. Outreach has also happened with web managers at major mainstream media outlets. These efforts surfaced the needs of journalists looking to incorporate spatio-temporal data analysis into their reporting practices, and the work left to do to make MapStory a platform that meets these needs. In 2014 our focus will be on deepening rapid-prototyping work between journalists and software developers that advances the MapStory platforms ability to serve this community. As a result of this work, we expect to see individual journalists and news organizations begin to embed MapStories created by themselves or others on to their own media outlets. We also will work to get journalistic organizations to create Organization Pages that allow them to aggregate their content into a common portal at mapstory.org.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Recognizing that MapStory itself is a social media platform, in 2013 the Foundation worked to increase users capacity to share MapStory content across the Web, through widely used social media channels. MapStorys ultimate success will depend on how well it is woven into the larger fabric of the socialmediasphere. Basic social media integration has been enabled in three ways: 1) OAuth integration with Facebook and Google, 2) sharing of StoryLayers and MapStories via various social media outlets (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), and 3) the ability to embed MapStories in a variety of online platforms (e.g., WordPress.org, Tumblr, Weebly, MediaWikis, etc.). As social media technologies and channels continue to evolve, the Foundation must continue to provide the MapStory Community with the tools they will need in order to share their content with the global community through these means. In the 2014-2016 timeframe, the MapStory Foundations social media strategy will be

focused on driving the presence of content generated by the MapStory Community through these channels in a systematic manner that raises awareness about the MapStory Community, the content (e.g., StoryLayers and MapStories) it has created, and how anyone can get engaged.

DIRECT SHARING AND WORD OF MOUTH

The Foundation is focused strategically on growing its global list of people and organizations that are interested in MapStory content, events, and community accomplishments. As this list grows, and its members pass along (via word of mouth) that which the Foundation shares with them directly, the ability for a global community to learn about and benefit from the MapStory platform and the MapStory Community increases.

SPONSOR ENGAGEMENT
One of the MapStory Foundations central functions is to enable organizations that have long been committed to the creation and curation of spatio-temporal observations to underwrite this new dimension to the global data commons, while also garnering the reputational benefits for their pioneering data efforts. If done correctly, this sponsorship strategy will facilitate MapStoryteller access to vast troves of spatio-temporally enabled data that are otherwise trapped within institutions and organizations of all sorts. Deft sponsor engagement will allow the Foundation to build a community of organizations that facilitate the cross-pollination of expertise in a way that advances the public good.

SPACES, RESOURCES AND EVENTS

During 2013, the MapStory Community benefited greatly from physical spaces, resources, and events provided by a variety of complementary organizations that share our values and interests. Most notably, the MapStory Foundation became a founding member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Librarys DREAM Lab in Washington, DC affording it physical space for its staff, fellows, classes, and events. Since the inception of its original technical development efforts, MapStory also benefited from the goodwill, engagement, and resources of Arizona State University. But other organizations also have generously provided space and resources including museums like the African American Civil War Museum, Washington DC Historical Society and colleges like Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. In 2014, the MapStory Foundation will work to cultivate these and other partner organizations in order to ensure that physical spaces and resources are available to accommodate the growing MapStory community, and to hold the events necessary to further meaningful conversations on topics that highlight and advance the values and interests of the MapStory Community. To this end, discussions are underway with think tanks, complementary non-profits, colleges/universities,

museums, libraries and government agencies. Strategically, the MapStory Foundation is keen to demonstrate how MapStorytelling and other GeoMaker activities can prove symbiotic with the existing social functions of local libraries. For a variety of reasons, both cultural and technological, the traditional library model is under pressure. But, libraries are much more than a place for books. They often serve as archives for public documents and local history. They serve as social centers for learning, and the home to cultural events that enrich the larger community. Through its partnership with the MLK Library, the MapStory Foundation hopes to re-imagine and demonstrate new ways for all local libraries to serve as platforms for community participation in exploring and preserving what we know about our world and how it has changed at a local, regional and global level. Not only would these physical spaces become rally points for the curation of spatio-temporal, digital data. Local libraries would also become platforms for (map)storytelling, and a place where anyone can go to gain the technical skills one might need to successfully engage in MapStorytelling.

MAPSTORY FRONTIERS
In 2013, enormous progress was made in bringing features within the Technical Roadmap into reality. 2014 will be no different. But, to do this, funding will need to be raised. As such, in 2014, the Foundation will work to translate its Technical Roadmap into a series of MapStory Frontiers papers and events that connect the ideas within the Roadmap to real-world challenges faced by various passionate information communities. For example, even with the crowd-editing capabilities that will arrive in 2014, different communities will continue to desire more sophisticated ways to collect and load data into MapStory, such as automated feeds, more diverse file types, etc. A comprehensive Frontiers in Data Collection and Curation strategy will help translate these desires into investment opportunities. Other frontiers may have a more specific focus. Frontiers in Data-Driven CartoJournalism may focus on a constellation of technical capabilities such as enhanced embed, network feed support, custom symbology, and improved search that service the data journalism community. Frontiers in Citizen Science may focus on 4D visualization, scientific model management, and peer review mechanisms. Frontiers in Deeper Learning for Young People may focus on gamification mechanisms, class pages, and learning progressions. The forms and names that these frontiers will take between 2014 and 2016 are undefined and will emerge gradually. But, it is a strategic imperative for the MapStory Foundation to guide a process that helps the community define these frontiers. It is clear that the realization of each will depend upon the interdependent development of different clusters of technical features from across the MapStory Technical Roadmap. And, it is also clear that approaching and advancing these frontiers will require ongoing input from the appropriate communities of users and sponsors in a way that helps shape the technologies and techniques that MapStory will develop.

HARNESSING THE UNKNOWN

In MapStorys brief history, many unanticipated events and people previously unknown to the project have shaped its success. The community will continue to expand in unanticipated ways. Sponsors that are unknown today will materialize in the future. New community initiatives around novel data sets will emerge from the creativity of new community members. And, new narratives will capture the publics imagination. There is much uncertainty out there. This uncertainty poses enormous opportunities for discovery, and to harness the energy and collective genius of a global community of spatio-temporal data geeks and latent MapStorytellers. The MapStory Foundation must be prepared with a strategy that enables it to seize these opportunities for the benefit of the MapStory Community, the global data commons that they will collectively curate, and the larger global community that will ultimately benefit from their efforts. This document represents the beginning of a strategic dialog that demands constant and ongoing input and iteration.