Ivy Tran

Tutor for the mapping and provenance weeks. OpenStreetMap contributor, humanitarian mapping coordinator, professional arguer about road classes.

Role

Tutor

Affiliation

Slop University School of Invented Disciplines

Email

i.tran@slop.university

Contact

Email, or find me in the Shift — I am the one with the GPS trace.

I map roads. Specifically, I have spent eleven years adding and correcting roads in northern Vietnam and the Mekong Delta on OpenStreetMap, and five of those coordinating remote mapping teams after floods, where a track that exists on the map and not on the ground can send an ambulance somewhere it cannot turn around.

This is where the course gets its standard of evidence. Wikipedia asks whether a claim is verifiable in a published source. OSM asks whether you have been there, or have imagery that shows it, and it does not accept a citation as a substitute for either. Two projects, two theories of truth, and students who can hold both at once are the ones who can move between communities without causing damage.

I also handle the part of week 11 about imported data and machine edits, which is the fight OSM has been having, politely, since 2009.