Since the Foundation’s last Annual General Meeting in September 2013, the Foundation has been open to corporate members. Corporate members have the same rights as normal members with the exception that they don’t have a vote at Annual General Meetings. We’re planning to create a package of benefits for corporate members (such as being prominently listed on the OSM web page). The details still need hammering out, but in any case, the main reason why anyone becomes a member of the OSMF is that they want to support the project, not for what they get in return.

You can now be among the first who publicly show their support for the OpenStreetMap project by signing up as a corporate OSMF member. The membership fee is £1,000 per year (at current rates, that’s €1,200 and US$1,650). Your membership fees will help to keep OpenStreetMap’s servers running and ensure the continued success of the project.

Read More / Join Now

…and if you want, leave a comment here to tell us that you’ve joined.

In January 2014, OpenStreetMap saw its 20 millionth edit.

User:cosmicpop registered to edit OpenStreetMap just recently, and made a little fix to the map of his local neighbourhood. These things happen thousands of times every day, and with enough people mapping in their local area, we’re building a free and open map of the world!

But this time was special. This was the 20 millionth edit saved to OpenStreetMap. To celebrate, we decided to get in touch, and present this contributor with a prize. Here is cosmicpop with his new OpenStreetMap hi-vis jacket!

“Wow, I’m not the superstitious type, but this is the first time I’ve ever edited on OpenStreetMap, while in my other browser tabs I was looking for a hi-vis jacket to wear while cycling which I have recently taken up. Maybe I should do the lottery this weekend.” – Cosmicpop

Cosmicpop tells us he had been thinking about contributing to OpenStreetMap for a while now, and decided it was time to fix a one-way restriction which was missing from all maps. Friends visiting him were often surprised by the one-way not being marked on their satnavs. Well now it’s correct on OpenStreetMap – a great local improvement by a new user for our 20 millionth “changeset”!

Changesets? Edits?

When you’re editing OpenStreetMap you can add new map elements or modify existing ones. Your changes – be it one or a hundred – are sent to OpenStreetMap when you click “save”. Simple!

When you do this, you write a little message describing your change, and this is recorded, together with your edits, as a “changeset”. We just hit 20 million of these bundles of changes, some big, some small.

You can view your own changesets from your OpenStreetMap profile page, or view the latest changesets from all users. For a more spectacular global view of changesets as they happen, check out live OSM edits, and “show me the way“.

More stats

Of course changesets are not the only stats we track. OpenStreetMap also has…

2.17+ billion Nodes in database
214+ million Ways in database
3.78+ billion GPS points in database
1.5+ million registered users
Check out the stats page for more.

After being in Europe, North America and Asia, it is time to explore yet another continent. We’re happy to announce that the 8th international State of the Map 2014 conference will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina (map) on November 7th – 9th.

OSM is a truly global project with people all over the globe. Having SotM14 in Argentina is a great way to show the world what’s going on in South America regarding OSM and it can help strengthen the local OSM communities there.

If you haven’t made holiday plans for this year yet, why not consider Argentina in the spring? (yes, it will be spring there)

In case you live in Europe or North America and you feel Argentina is too far away? You’re still invited to join SotM-EU (Karlsruhe, June 13 – 15) or SotM-US (Washington DC, April 12 and 13).

More details about SotM14 will follow later this month. Stay tuned.

[UPDATE: Lots more details can be found at stateofthemap.org]

(image by benontherun.com cc-by-nc-sa 2.0)

Simon Poole
OpenStreetMap Foundation Chairman

It’s customary at the end of the year and at the start of a new to reflect on what has been achieved and highlight noteworthy events in the past year. For OpenStreetMap 2013 would seem to me to be the year in which using our data is no longer extraordinary, but normal.

Over the course of the year we have seen devices from Bosch, Garmin and others being announced or delivered ex factory with OSM based maps, and we’ve seen a number of media houses switch to using OSM for their online publications. None of these seemed to be perceived as earth shattering, just matter of fact. The downside is that we have to actively remind ourselves that we, a small free and open project, are achieving astounding inroads in to an area of activity otherwise open only to governments and multi-billion dollar corporations.

For old hands 2013 is more likely to be noteworthy for two quite visible changes. One was the introduction of the new default editor iD. I would like to take the opportunity and specially thank the authors of previous default Potlatch 1 and 2  that are so closely coupled to the success of OpenStreetMap and which have served us, and continue to do so, well over many years.

The other change  naturally was the deployment of the web site redesign replacing the sidebar and tab layout with the current design. If archive.org is to be believed the previous layout had been with us since December 2005  and it was not a surprise that there was some turmoil and emotions accompanying the change.

At the end of the year our special thanks should also go to the volunteers that keep our infrastructure running and further to all contributors big and small that make OpenStreetMap what it is.

From the perspective of the OpenStreetMap Foundation among our goals for 2014 are  formalizing the relationship with our national and thematic organisations and to stabilizing our funding model going forward.

The project as a whole continues to show healthy growth both in coverage, participants, quality and usage. If I was personally asked what we need to consciously add more of, instead of just doing what we always do, I would point to address collection. While we added up to an incredible 1 million addresses per month in 2013 we really need to increase this a bit and while, naturally, some of this will come from imports, just walking around a block and jotting down the house numbers every time we are somewhere new could greatly increase the rate at which we approach the goal of including a free address dataset in the OSM data.

On this note, I wish everybody a happy new year and have a fun 2014 mapping.