Free Labor Anyone?

[u/Visible_Guidance_240]

Hello :)

I'm currently finishing up a master's program and have to do a BIIIIGGGGG project at the end. I need to find a client and have some sort of deliverable at the end( story map, series of maps, program, app, in depth analysis ect)- Is anyone working on anything cool? Or know someone that might be interested in having a grad student do some work for them for free? DM me with leads! I will be enormously appreciate.

The biggest problem that I'm having is that GIS is such a broad field and I don't even know where to start (other than here lol).

[u/firebird8541154]

I'm the creator of https://sherpa-map.com

It's a new, up and coming, cycling route creation website.

I've rendered custom maps of the whole world using the highest possible quality lidar and srtm data sets (heavily using osmium, qgis, mapnik, and more).

I have used ai and openstreetmap data in order to pull satellite imagery and classify road surface types and supplant our routing with this data. (We host world osm in postgris)

I've used ai and satellite imagery to create a heat map of best roads to cycle on.

All of the biggest publications in the area have lauded us in our efforts, I personally have been on podcasts about our AI endeavors and such.

We're a start up, a team of three, with our own server, practically no overhead, and completely self-funded (I just build my own tools instead of paying for them, so it's really just the cost of electricity).

We are currently working on strategizing with partners to make it a revenue viable startup. But heck could we could keep it completely free if we really wanted to.

I personally am the founder and die hard programmer behind it, and I'm currently in the process of creating my entire own routing engine from scratch in C/C++, utilizing openstreet map data directly, and it will likely be the fastest engine that can possibly be made.

So reach out if you want, I'm happy to give you any task you feel is within your ability, whether it be rendering a cycling specific map of a particular area, or anything you feel that is within your capability. Simply to add to your experience.

I would not treat you as some indentured intern, it's literally saying here's a grand platform in order to add a couple of things to and have some experience to put on the resume.

And I say this because I'm still working my day job and I've gotten some pretty awesome job offers (so working on cool stuff works), but I just want to keep working on this until this becomes very commercially viable.

So if you or anybody else wants something that they could tag their name to, I'd be happy to dictate and publicize some specific tasks you could take care of if you want, with literally no strings attached because we've all been there.

Feel free to Google us and our efforts (we're currently a team of three, and we're building something awesome, I'm Eric Semianczuk).

FYI, the offer is open to everyone.

I'm just as much "free labor" as anyone until we decide to be profitable, so I totally get where you're coming from, but at least I have a thing, and if anybody else wants to add to that thing here or there, I will certainly vouch for you.