Ilya Zverev

Hello! I'm an open source developer with a passion for geospatial. I know everything about OpenStreetMap and open licenses, my github is bursting with repos, and I helped leverage geodata in many products you know, including Maps.Me and Lyft.

I am looking for a job or a project. The best one would be something in geospatial R&D, that affects a product people use. I love making things nobody has done (or even considered possible) before. See my OSM conflation tools, subway schema in OSM, Every Door, JOSM plugins, and everything else on my github or osmz.ru. I plan products and APIs a lot, both for my job and privately.

Some of the projects I did in the open.

Point of interest conflation tools: my osm_conflate + cf_audit helped bring tens of thousands shops and addresses into OSM, following the extremely impractical OSM Import Guidelines. Those can be used to automatize any import to OSM, and have been internally used by some SEO companies.
Every Door editor is the world's fastest POI collecting tool with which I have added to OSM thousands of shops and building entrances. It has over 1000 MAU and a good roadmap to replace many outdated practices. I also did few other editors, namely Level0 and an in-browser editor.
I helped make the OSM editor built into Maps.Me, an amazingly popular mobile app. A hundred thousand people a year improved the map with it, making it the second most popular editor for OpenStreetMap. For ensuring people don't make grave mistakes, I also published an easy to use change monitoring website with a reverting button.
Change reverting and monitoring tools. I know how changes in OSM can be approached, and can point out few issues with any current monitoring or reverting tools. I did the only change counter that properly measures length of roads for each contributor. I consider change tracking the most interesting aspect of OSM data model.
For Juno, I've validated NYC road network against taxi rides and make a few MapRoulette projects to fix it. And also negotiated and published daily updated GPS traces to help with keeping the map fresh. That was the first and the last such dataset, a glimpse into a future
I also made a state-of-art reverse geocoder for them based on PostGIS. It's the only geocoder that leverages polygonal addresses from OSM.
GeoJSON point editor and an assessment tool: very simple, but very powerful for their jobs. User interface with maps is among my interests, so I know where and how to optimize, and how to make even mundane mapping tasks fun.
Every subway in the world on OpenStreetMap is mapped the same way: I improved and documented the mapping schema for Maps.Me, and helped the community to tidy up subways everywhere. I contined the work by planning the new public transport schema for all modes, and presented it in Milan, but got too burned out at my job back then to finish.
Combining the previous two, I have made the best public transport planner app for Tallinn, UX-wise. Responsive, simple, usable without a map (for example, with screen readers), self-updating. Also has quite a lot of users, including myself, daily.
My Nik4 tool renders a map into an image with Mapnik. Sounds simple, but it has a powerful, well-documented CLI and a set of tools to make exported SVG easily editable. The polytiles script efficiently renders a map into tiles. There was also a web interface to Nik4, and all of that started a business (not mine).
I also made a map style for long distance bicycle trips. Highlights roads, isn't cluttered, very high contrast for B&W printing, with a few clever solutions on railway rendering. Sparked a few forks.
By the way, I love to write. Have been editing an OSM news blog since 2011, a twitter (now mastodon), few Telegram channels, and also published articles on music, movies, and politics.
For events, I organized a dozen mapping parties, twenty "Schemotechnika" meetups in Moscow on maps and design, three SotM Baltics conferences and few others.
And finally, I think recognizing people is super important, so I hosted the OSM Awards nominations and ceremonies over years.

And for companies, I can help leverage crowdmapping or OSM data in a way they haven't thought before. Make work more productive and the data richer. I know all the usual: PostGIS, GDAL, Python, Presto, Flutter, and everything else. I make desktop, web, and mobile software, and do geo-analytics. I strive to learn. Bonus points if conferences are covered: I love to speak publicly.

Some of the talks that show how I think.

You Don't Need a Map that reflects my opinion on better user interfaces for geospatial apps, which often are better without interactive maps.
Broken Promises and Techinical Difficulties on OSM API 0.7 and what's really important to cover when we decide to have the next-gen OpenStreetMap.
Every Subway Network In The World tells a story of taking one broken aspect of OpenStreetMap and making it right — overcoming technical issues and community pushback.

I'm always open for chat. Email me, or use any other contact method from the main page. Here's my LinkedIn. Looking for remote or partly on-premises: I would love to work in the same room with a team, but don't want to move. We can meet in Estonia or Helsinki, or at a carthographic conference.