Monthly Archives: February 2020

Congratulations to weeklyOSM for publishing its 500th newsletter!

WeeklyOSM is sharing OpenStreetMap news every week in several languages. Weekly OSM logo CC-BY-SA 3.0. Image by OSM Communication Working GroupCC-BY-SA 3.0

Congratulations to weeklyOSM for publishing its 500th online newsletter! WeeklyOSM is a community project which publishes news from the OpenStreetMap world every week. It is independent from the OpenStreetMap Foundation [1]. With the help of awesome volunteers across the globe, it is on its tenth year and is available in multiple languages, including:

You can subscribe to weeklyOSM’s newsletter via email or via language-specific RSS/Atom feeds (CZ, DE, EN, ES, FR, JA, TR). You can also follow them on Mastodon/Fediverse at @weeklyosm@en.osm.town or on Twitter @weeklyosm.

The content is released under the liberal Creative Commons licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.

You can be part of the weeklyOSM project as well!

Minimal time required
Propose interesting news to be featured in the next newsletter. Find out how: https://weeklyosm.eu/this-news-should-be-in-weeklyosm

Medium time commitment
Help in translations of one of the already featured languages. Or help by proofreading articles and read the news before anyone else does 😉 Contact weeklyOSM.

Regular time commitment
Are you and your friends interested in translating each weekly newsletter in your own language? Contact weeklyOSM. Translating is of course a big part, but proofreading is also very important. Please note that each language team is free to add their language specific news as well.

Congratulations and many thanks to the weeklyOSM contributors. 🙂

OSM Communication Working Group


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]

[1] The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed 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 of the Foundation.

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 Microgrants Committee

Drawing: “Balloon-Prospect”, featured in Thomas Baldwin’s Airopaidia (1786). Public domain. Image by the Communication Working Group.

Microgrants: enabling volunteers to do more by overcoming financial barriers.

The Microgrants project is ready for launch! When the OpenStreetMap Foundation received the Pineapple fund donation, the money was quickly earmarked as to be given back to the community. Now that’s finally happening, after a recent Board decision (plenty of background behind that link!). Any volunteer who thinks they can make an impact with a small grant will soon be able to apply.

But first we need the help of a few volunteers to manage the project. What do we expect of you?

  1. Running the call for projects.
  2. Making a selection of about ten projects.
  3. Following up with the selected projects.

Anyone can apply to be on the selection committee, and the Board will then make a selection. We are looking for people who know how the OSM community works, who have experience with making an impact for OSM – but also people with practical experience running these kinds of projects.

The policy document offers a guideline to what the Board wants to see happen with this project, but it leaves a lot of leeway for the committee to implement as they see fit. For example, the committee is expected to work out their own rules of order. During the entire process, you will be able to rely on Dorothea for administrative assistance.

The most impactful job of the Microgrants Committee will be the selection itself. The decision is expected to be based on deep community consultation. The Board did keep a veto right over the selected applications.

The committee is also expected to guide the projects to fruition. However, it is encouraged for the committee to extend the group with more volunteers, so as to lighten the workload and diversify points of view. For example, it would be really helpful to have volunteers who speak the language or are culturally close to the selected projects.

When the projects are finished and have reported on their experience, the Committee is almost done. A final task will be to make recommendations to the Board for the next phase of the Microgrants project – we’ve only just begun!

Send your application to join the Microgrants Committee
to microgrants at osmfoundation.org
by March 8th, 2020.

All relevant information will be accessible through the OSMF website at
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Microgrants

All the best,

Joost Schouppe
for the OSMF Board

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

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed 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 of the Foundation.

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.

OpenStreetMap Welcomes Diversity

In January, the OpenStreetMap Foundation adopted this Diversity Statement:

The OpenStreetMap Foundation and the global OpenStreetMap community welcome and encourage participation by everyone. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance, and encouragement, and we are working to help each other live up to these principles. We want our community to be more diverse: whoever you are, and whatever your background, we welcome you.

The Board then appointed the Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee to compile research and undertake new research on our diversity, identify root causes that contribute to any shortfalls, and make recommendations to help resolve issues and improve.

If you’re interested to take part, join one of the two upcoming starting meetings of the committee;

We’ll discuss the scope of work laid out by the Board, sketch initial work plans, and figure out logistics and timing and structure of future meetings.

You might also be interested to join the OpenStreetMap diversity mailing list.

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

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 of the Foundation.

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.