FOAM’s Pioneer Local Communities

Mapping the first groups of the global community growing around FOAM

The goal of a consensus driven map of the world will be reached with a truly global, strong, and vibrant community of cartographers and zone providers. We have already seen the organic growth of local FOAM groups, a development we are extremely excited by—and want to support moving forward.

🇦🇺 Australia — https://t.me/foamaustralia

🇧🇪 Belgium — https://t.me/foambelgium

🇺🇸 California — https://t.me/foamcalifornia

🇨🇳 China — https://t.me/FOAMChina

🇨🇾 Cyprus — https://t.me/foamcyprus

🇫🇷 France — https://t.me/foamfrance

🇩🇪 Germany — https://t.me/foamgermany

🇯🇵 Japan — https://t.me/foamjapan

🇳🇱 The Netherlands — https://t.me/foamnetherlands

🇳🇴 Norway — https://t.me/foamnorway

🇵🇭 Philippines — https://t.me/foamphilippines

🇵🇹 Portugal — https://t.me/foamportugal

🇨🇦 Toronto, Canada — https://t.me/foamtoronto

🇬🇧 United Kingdom — https://t.me/FOAMUK

In this post we give you a first glimpse of these communities and some of the people that have helped start them.

Nick Adams, Californian community

—https://t.me/foamcalifornia

FRANK RAMSPOTT/GETTY IMAGES

How did you discover FOAM?

I am an engineer working in decentralized civil infrastructure (energy/water/sanitation/telecom), so I try my best to stay current on the development of new technologies that might help people design, build, and maintain this type of infrastructure. I believe I first heard about FOAM through a colleague who is doing similar work in decentralized ISPs.

What applications/use-cases for FOAM are you most excited about and why?

For several use cases in decentralized, multi-agent-based civil infrastructure designs, it is very useful for agents to be able to provide a meaningful level of assurance on claims around location, whether it is the location of a human or the location of some physical component of a system. I am excited about FOAM because it is building the framework upon which these types of claims can be made.

Additionally (and somewhat separately), I am interested in how FOAM can be leveraged in building regenerative natural ecosystems being designed by organizations like the Regen Network.

What do you anticipate being most involved with? (Developing on the protocol, operating a Zone, being a FOAM Cartographer)

In order to understand FOAM better I aim to be involved as much as I can, starting with operating a Zone and being a FOAM Cartographer for my local community, and from there working my way into contributing to the protocol as a developer.

Did you want to start a local community/get involved for any particular reason?

My main reason for starting a local community was to help myself build an understanding of FOAM, while hopefully doing the same for other interested members of my community. When I first became aware of FOAM there wasn’t an organized community for California; I think this state will be a very interesting place for FOAM given its geography, economy, and tendencies toward early tech adoption. I split my time between San Francisco and Southern California, so I think I am in a good position to help build the broader California FOAM community.

Do you anticipate any factors in your region that will affect the local growth of the FOAM network, both positive and negative? For example, local blockchain culture, land topography (hilly, heavily forested, dense urban environment etc.).

There is a lot of local activity in the blockchain space, and early adoption of new technology tends to be pretty strong here, so that will help with growth of the FOAM network. It will be interesting to see how the dispersion of our state’s major urban centers affects the growth of the network; I anticipate that FOAM would first be used in places like the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and from there extend through lower population density areas in order to connect throughout the state.

Chris, British Community

— https://t.me/FOAMUK

Jason Hawkes — www.telegraph.co.uk

How did you discover FOAM?

I discovered FOAM while discussing with a friend in the Ethereum community the potential for blockchains to incentivise networks in an unprecedented way, via microtransactions and other methods. I brought up Rightmesh as an example, and he asked me if I’d come across FOAM.

What applications/use-cases for FOAM are you most excited about and why?

It is actually FOAM’s versatility in potential applications that appeals to me — i.e the best use cases for it may not even have been thought of yet. FOAM allows decentralised, censorship-resistant location data to be added to any application — that is huge! Even last week for example I was nearly the victim of a hacking attempt — could FOAM be used in the future as an additional security measure online? Could it be used to reward shoppers in certain locations with geolocated vouchers? Could it be used to build AR games that cannot be cheated? I’m a big believer in creating universal tools, and then being surprised at how they take off in ways the creators didn’t expect.

What do you anticipate being most involved with? (Developing on the protocol, operating a Zone, being a FOAM Cartographer)

I hope to get involved initially by operating a Zone, or possibly multiple Zones across my city. I’d then be open to joining any projects that I feel I can contribute to in a meaningful way.

Did you want to start a local community/get involved for any particular reason?

I wanted to start a local community largely as I think FOAM could be a great tool for the world in many ways, and it is a project that will rely, especially initially, on having a strong community. I saw a way to help a project I think can do good.

Do you anticipate any factors in your region that will affect the local growth of the FOAM network, both positive and negative? For example, local blockchain culture, land topography (hilly, heavily forested, dense urban environment etc.).

I’m in London, which I think presents an ideal environment for FOAM to trial, iterate and grow in. Georaphically London is flat and featureless — boringly so — and it pairs this simple canvas with a reasonably strong and innovative tech community.

Adriaan Brouwer, Dutch Community

— https://t.me/foamnetherlands

How did you discover FOAM?

I was actually looking for an addressing solution for a project I am working on in Ghana (where most of the houses do not have addresses). I found FOAM and went through their content which caught my interest and motivated me to explore the protocol more thoroughly.

What applications/use-cases for FOAM are you most excited about and why?

Naturally, I am excited about use cases that need to adopt geographic location in their smart contracts. Different actors in a land administration system want to make sure they are talking about the same physical location. A hash produced of a GPS code (long and lat values) may not be sufficient since, slight changes in the values will produce a different hash altogether. It would be so valuable to validate which location we are talking about in this industry and also VISUALIZE it. Which excites me about the spatial web app. I have a GIS background and I love to make things insightful through maps etc.

To be more specific, I think the mobility industry is a huge space for FOAM. Human mobility has a lot of things to improve upon. More efficient interlinked networks of ride sharing and autonomous vehicles are needed. They need very precise location to operate. And it would also be nice to make presence claims in this industry to make sure no actors can behave faulty.

What do you anticipate being most involved with? (Developing on the protocol, operating a Zone, being a FOAM Cartographer)

Basically, all three of them. I am working with a human mobility start up in Amsterdam which could develop solutions on the protocol. I would love to operate a zone in Amsterdam and its surroundings to help kickstart the network and be able to provide some of the first presence claims. And, I would love to see how honest our perception of the world around us would be through the POI cartography function (through TCR etc).

Did you want to start a local community/get involved for any particular reason?

In the first place, I wanted to apply for a job with FOAM. I am excited about the protocol because my passion and previous study experience come together in the project. When the guys told me that more jobs will open after the token sale, I started looking for a way to work towards the same mission without formally joining the team.

Do you anticipate any factors in your region that will affect the local growth of the FOAM network, both positive and negative? For example, local blockchain culture, land topography (hilly, heavily forested, dense urban environment etc.).

Very positively to be honest. The adoption of blockchain and crypto’s in the Netherlands is enormous. Furthermore, the land might the most flat piece of land in the world. It is very urbanized which calls for solutions like this. I think Netherlands would be the best place for FOAM to roll out any test case to be honest.