OpenStreetMap events in 2015 | OpenStreetMap Blog

The OpenStreetMap Foundation has been organising the annual State of the Map (SotM) conference since 2007. These events have proved popular with our community and beyond, and have grown from a few dozen attendees to a high of 300 attendees at SotM 2013. This year we had two good bids to host SotM 2015, but issues beyond our control caused concerns about whether we could make this into a success. The SotM working group, with the support of the OSMF board, has therefore agreed that there will be no OSM Foundation organised conference this year.

As the OpenStreetMap community has grown over the last 10 years, so has the conference scene. Even without OSMF organising a conference this year, there will still be a number of OSM-centered conferences, including SotM US at the UN’s New York headquarters in June, and SotM-Scotland in October. There are also many webinars, mapping parties, hack events and socials planned for 2015.

SotM-US will be held at the UN headquarters in New York, 6-8 June 2015
(image CC-BY 2.0 Dan McKay)

The StateoftheMap Organizing Committee has taken on a number of new members to support our efforts in 2015, 2016 and beyond. We are currently drafting a proposal on the future of SotM in which we are looking at the role of SotM within the project and how the OSMF SotM relates to the various regional events. We already have some views but we encourage you to share yours in the comments below.

Preparations for State of the Map 2016 will be starting soon and we encourage local groups who may be interested in hosting SotM in their home country to contact us early.

Blog post by the StateoftheMap Organizing Committee

This post is also available in: Japanese Croatian

11 thoughts on “OpenStreetMap events in 2015”

chtfn February 25, 2015 at 05:24

Is it possible to know what those reasons were?

Cheers

Gregory MArler February 25, 2015 at 10:48

There were multiple reasons and people will have different views on which ones counted enough to not have a SotM. I notice now that our SotM-WG minutes aren’t available online but when we get them up there, they will hopefully give a clearer answer of the discussion.

For me, the time was a big factor. An international conference takes a lot of time to organise and several things took place later than ideal which then pushes other tasks backed. One of those was forming the current SotM-WG and now it is in place it will be a great task-force to move on with organising SotM 2016.
RobJN February 25, 2015 at 10:54

Sure, the SotM-WG are planning to provide further information. Can I please ask that you give us a bit of time. We have taken on a few new volunteers this year and I feel it is important that we give all SotM-WG members time to finalise an extended message. The working group will be meeting this week and a further message will follow shortly (likely on the mailing lists).

Ed Loach February 25, 2015 at 07:42

Any news on what will be done about holding an AGM if not at SotM?

Gregory Marler February 25, 2015 at 10:57

The 2014 OSMF AGM was done with a lot of remote attendees. It was the first year for SotM having a new system that required everyone to vote online. Even if an OSMF-run SotM had taken place in 2015, I think the intention was to not rely on people being in-person for the AGM and they may have happened at different times. The Special General Meeting of December 2014, I think only one person attended the physical location and it was run on IC chat (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Special_GM14).

Dave F. February 25, 2015 at 09:39

This is good news for OSM. It will give the attendees more time to go outside & actually map new data to improve the database’s detail & quality.

Gregory Marler February 25, 2015 at 11:12

I love visiting new places around the world because of SotM, and then mapping in those places on the days surrounding the conference. Even so, there is plenty for me to map near home if I spend less time travelling this year.