Monthly Archives: July 2019

Celebrate the 15th OSM anniversary with a birthday party!

The 15th OpenStreetMap anniversary will be celebrated on 10th of August, 2019!
Image by OSM Communication Working Group, CC-BY-SA 3.0. OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply.

The “Birthday” of OpenStreetMap is lost in the sands of time. Observance of the anniversary of the creation of OpenStreetMap is held on or about the 9th of August, which is the anniversary of the registration of the OpenStreetMap.org domain name. The concept of OpenStreetMap predates the domain name registration, but that seems a suitable anniversary date.

This year the anniversary will be celebrated on
10th of August!

Will you organise an OSM birthday party?

How to organise a community birthday party

  • Contact OSMers in your area and talk among yourselves. Decide what you want to do.
  • It can be as big or as small as you want. A few people meeting for some food/drink, or a bigger event.
  • Invite new people! It can be a great way to spread the word about OSM. Promote your event.
  • You can make/order a birthday cake. See previous examples of OSM cakes for inspiration. Don’t forget the attribution!
  • If you take photos, you can share them on the OSM wiki afterwards.
  • Edit this wiki page and put details of your event in.
  • Remember a core principle of OSM: Have fun!

If wiki editing isn’t your thing, email communication@osmfoundation.org with your event details and we’ll add it 🙂

Events are already planned in Japan, Belarus, Germany and the US.
Join us!

Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language..? Please send us an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

Call for help with translations of blog posts and surveys

Would you like to translate posts on blog.openstreetmap.org? Or see surveys from the OpenStreetMap Foundation in your language..? This is a call to community members who have helped with translations in the past or want to help now.

  • You can translate as many old or new blog posts as you like – expressing an interest does not mean you have to translate every new post.
  • We would like to encourage people to collaborate! If more than one person can do a translation, we would be thrilled if you work together.

Blog post translations

We’d like to make the official blog at blog.openstreetmap.org available in more languages, and for some of the existing languages we’d need to catch up on translations of recent blog posts. These are straightforward and we will provide initial guidance.

Extra help needed for translations of surveys

For surveys we need help both in translating the questions, as well as the answers. For that reason we would be thrilled if local communities decided to form small groups that will volunteer to help us. Please note that as anyone who helps with surveys will have access to information that people might want to keep private, you will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation will start doing surveys 2-3 times per year. The next one is planned just before the State of the Map 2019 conference and translation of questions will start this week.

Next step

Want to help?
Please send us an email to communication@osmfoundation.org 
with subject: Helping with translations in [your language]
and indicate whether you want to help with translations of blog posts, surveys or both.

Thank you!

Communication Working Group

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member and read about our fee-waiver program.

State of the Map 2019 program and call for posters

Viewing SotM 2018 posters. Photograph by Thomas Skowron, CC BY 2.0

SotM 2019 Program Announced

The last couple of months have been busy with organising the State of the Map 2019 conference. In particular, the program committees have done the difficult job of selecting which talks will be presented at the conference. We had many submissions and unfortunately we could not accept them all, but we aimed at selecting talks that we believe you will all find really interesting.

As well as the regular talks in the program, this year also sees a full track on Sunday dedicated to academic talks which anyone is welcome to attend, not just the academically inclined among you!

For more information on the talks that were selected and when they will be presented, take a look at the program. Most talks will be recorded, so if you cannot attend, you can watch them online after the conference!

Call for Posters

Getting the selection of talks ready was not the only thing happening the past few weeks – we have also been preparing for the annual poster competition. This year we have a dedicated poster session at the conference where selected posters will be exhibited and you will have a chance to meet the creators and talk with them.

For more details on how to submit, see our Call for Posters.

Your poster could show how well your home region is mapped, it could be a beautiful new style or map. It might focus on a community project or statistics, it might be a poster explaining and inviting people to OpenStreetMap. What’s important, is we want it to be about OSM. We’re also welcoming academic posters about research around OpenStreetMap data.

You don’t have to attend SotM 2019 to submit a poster.

Early Bird Tickets

Early bird tickets are still available at the ticket sales web page. These prices are only available until the 21st of July, so get your ticket now!

SotM Organising Committee

Sign up for event updates and follow us @sotm!

The State of the Map conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap, organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project and you can support it by becoming a member. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.