Announcing the SotM 2025 Call for Participation

sotm 2025 banner

Whether you’re passionate about maps, data, or shaping the future of  OpenStreetMap (OSM), the community is always looking for your inspiring ideas! Why not sharing them during State of the Map 2025

The call for participation of SotM 2025, taking place in Manila, Philippines, on October 3 – 5, is now open! The programme committee is ready and waiting, eager to unwrap your submissions for talks, workshops, and panels. These sessions aren’t just part of the conference; they’re its beating heart, driving conversations and sparking ideas that resonate worldwide. Presenting your work, projects and ideas at SotM is also a great way to get in touch with the wider OSM community.

Tracks

Sessions can be submitted for the following tracks:

  • OSM Basics – Information dedicated to newcomers
  • Community and Foundation – Bringing people together, working group experiences, strategies & vision
  • Mapping – All about making the mapping easier and better
  • Cartography – Your ideas on how to create good-looking presentations of the OSM dataset
  • Software Development – Software for processing and editing data
  • Data Analysis & Data Model – Reflections about the OSM data, its model and analysis of quality and completeness
  • User Experiences – Stories of using OSM and its data as a user
  • Education – How you use OSM in an educational context

If your submission doesn’t seem to fit into one of these tracks, don’t worry – as long as it is clearly related to OpenStreetMap, you’re perfectly fine if you simply choose the track that feels to fit best.

Academic Track at SotM 2025

In addition to this general call for participation, there will again be a proper academic track with a separate CfP, which will be announced later. So, if you’re knee-deep in the captivating world of OpenStreetMap, stay tuned for the official call: The working group is eagerly awaiting the most riveting insights and groundbreaking results from your studies. Get your research hats on, gather your data, and prepare to submit the best of your studies.

Timeline and Deadlines

  • 18 May 2025 23:59:59 UTC: Deadline talk, workshop and panel submissions
  • End of June 2025: End of review phase, speakers will be informed, schedule published
  • July 2025: Talk video production (test video and final video)
  • 3-5 October 2025: State of the Map

For more information on the above track categories, submission requirements and rating criteria, please visit the complete call for participation and the submission guidelines on the SotM website and then submit your session on Pretalx using our submission form!

Stay tuned for more news about the State of the Map 2025! See you later this year in Manila, Philippines, and online!

The State of the Map Working Group

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

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 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. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an 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.

The Philippines welcomes us to their shores for State of the Map 2025 on 3-5 October! 

The Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands, and there are more than 7,000 reasons to love it! We are delighted to share that the State of the Map global conference will be coming to Manila, Philippines, from 3 to 5 October 2025. This is a historic moment for Southeast Asia as this will be the first global SotM in the region.

The OSM Philippines community warmly invites passionate OSM contributors—mappers, data enthusiasts, developers, and community organizers and members from all around the world—to celebrate the spirit of collaboration and open mapping, look back to where we came from, look closely at where we are now, and look forward to where we would like to be next. 

Following the positive feedback for the past two conferences post-pandemic, the upcoming State of the Map 2025 will once again be held in a hybrid format. We are committed to making  SotM even more inclusive and accessible, bringing in new voices and new faces, to participate in this open mapping festivity. 

Save the date! Stay tuned via our website, 2025.stateofthemap.org, for more updates on speakers, agenda, ticketing, and how to get involved as the event draws closer. Let’s gather our ideas, pack our maps, and gear up for a one-of-a-kind mappy experience at State of the Map 2025 in Manila!

Interested in sponsoring SotM 2025? 

We invite you to become a valued partner in the mapping revolution by supporting the State of the Map 2025 conference! By collaborating with us, you will be contributing to the advancement of open data, community engagement, and mapping innovation. Your support will play a crucial role in shaping the future of OpenStreetMap and will provide your organization with unparalleled exposure within the global mapping community.

To learn more about sponsorship packages, please see our Sponsorship Prospectus.

For further information or to discuss customized sponsorship packages, please contact our sponsorship team at sponsor-sotm [at] openstreetmap [dot] org.

Announcing our SotM 2025 Logo

We would like to thank everyone who took part in the SotM 2025 Call for Logo! We received more than 15 proposals from creative contributors from all over the world! 

…however, only one design will be the new face of this year’s conference!

Congratulations to Andi Muhlis for submitting the winning logo inspired by the iconic jeepney of Manila, which embodies the vibrant spirit and creativity of the Philippines.

The logo features a stylized jeepney, paying homage to local cultural heritage. A detailed segment of the Manila map is also prominently displayed, symbolizing our commitment to the global mapping community. The design seamlessly integrates traditional and modern elements, reflecting Manila’s unique character.

OpenStreetMap Philippines Local Organizing Team for SotM 2025 and the SotM Working Group

Eight New Companies Joined the OSM Corporate Membership Program in 2024

The number of OSM-using companies joining the OSM Foundation Corporate Membership program has increased significantly in recent months.

In all, eight new companies joined and five increased their giving levels in 2024.

>> Read more about becoming a Corporate Member of OpenStreetMap

Starting from the top: Long-time OSM supporters, ESRI, Meta and Microsoft have joined TomTom at the Platinum giving level. The Platinum tier is suggested for companies for which map applications are core to their business; and/or they have a product that depends on OSM data and/or revenue in the hundreds of millions.

>> Read more about Meta’s recent generous donation and partnership

Five new names now appear as supporters at the Silver giving level: global gaming and AR company Niantic, QGIS, calimoto, Mapy.cz, and ioki. Silver is recommended for companies who use OSM data in a product or service and have revenue in the millions.

“OpenStreetMap Foundation’s community-driven approach helps keep the map of the world as accurate as possible. As map lovers and builders ourselves, we are excited to help support the OSMF mission” – Yennie Solheim, Niantic Director of Social Impact

E–Smart, which specializes in dynamic speed management, and LANDCLAN, offering location intelligence data and tools, are new joiners at the Bronze level. Interline, a transportation network consultancy, and Verso, developing route optimization software, both upgraded their membership from Supporter to Bronze.

And Infrageomatics, offering location intelligence derived from open source infrastructure data, has joined as new Supporting member.

The success of OpenStreetMap depends on organizations that make financial contributions, donations “in kind” such as hosting services and other resources, and hardware. These philanthropic investments help ensure site stability, support the maintenance of technical infrastructure, and help sustain OSM’s volunteer community.

The OSM community and the OSMF are extraordinarily grateful for the sustaining contributions of Corporate Members.

Apply to be the OSM Core Software Development Facilitator

The OSM Foundation has recently received investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software. In this context we are looking for a OSM core software development facilitator who will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work.

Please submit your application to the OSM Foundation Personnel Committee at pc@osmfoundation.org. Include CV, cover letter, and/or examples of work as attachments. Applications will be accepted until January 21, 2025.

In the role of facilitator, you will help the developers with prioritising and organising the work around the software development for the core OpenStreetMap database infrastructure. The work is mainly centered around the openstreetmap-website project and its C++ implementation openstreetmap-cgimap but also includes smaller “satellite” projects for providing data dumps and updates.

Your role is to organise communication with the OSM community to ensure visibility on the development work and to establish a space for the community to contribute productively. You will be responsible for managing the budget assigned to core development work. In that you will work closely with the OSMF Engineering Working Group and regularly report to the OSMF board.

Scope of work / responsibilities

The facilitator plans, coordinates and contributes to

  • taking stock of the current state of the core OSM software stack, state of development, current issues and possible future developments
  • clarifying together with developers what expectations for contributions are and ensuring accessible documentation
  • developing a light-weight roadmap plan as guideline for current and future contributors
  • creating a space for volunteers from the developing and general community to contribute productively
  • identification of areas where paid support can assist the volunteer developers
  • hiring and supervising of one or more persons to take on a supportive maintainer role
  • communication within the group of developers, with developers and maintainers from interrelated software projects, the OSMF and the OSM community at large

The facilitator will be expected to take a leading role in shaping these tasks in close collaboration with the existing maintainers and developers, to ensure a modus operandi that works for all involved.

Profile

The successful candidates should have prior experience in management in an engineering project. Ideally they have also some experience with

  • participating in open source projects, as developers and/or in a managing role
  • mentoring other developers and working with volunteers
  • working with OpenStreetMap and its community

Good communication skills are essential and you should enjoy working with developers with many different backgrounds. You should be able to work independently and self-directed and be able to shape your own role within a group of highly motivated and engaged volunteers.

Employment/contracting structure

Location: 100% Remote

The STF project is expected to start in January 2025.

The facilitator position will be a contractor position and is funded for 2 years with a total budget of 175 working days. We expect the facilitator to be more active in the first year, when they get to know the team and projects. At the end of the funding period, the OSMF will evaluate the impact and benefit of the facilitator position and may decide to continue funding the role.

The person will work from their premises, and determine their own schedule. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a global organisation; working with people in different time zones and handling related scheduling constraints is expected.

Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in OpenStreetMap

We are thrilled to announce that the OpenStreetMap Foundation has been selected by the Sovereign Tech Agency for a service agreement in the amount of 384,000 EUR over two years to ensure the stability, growth and modernization of OpenStreetMap’s core software.

The Sovereign Tech Fund — a program of the newly established Sovereign Tech Agency — invests in the development, improvement, and maintenance of open digital base technologies worldwide. OpenStreetMap is a global, collaborative, open source intiative, providing vital geospatial data for public use, private sector services, humanitarian response, and an incredible number of diverse applications. OSM has become the global infrastructure for digital map data.

The commissioned work will focus on updating and modernizing code to current standards, and enhancing volunteer contributions through improved documentation and testing infrastructure. It will also identify ways OSM’s core infrastructure can improve, including forward-looking research in topics potentially like responding to vandalism and new ways to interact with OSM data.

As a result of this contract, OSMF will be creating two new roles. The first role to be recruited will be the OSM Core Software Development Facilitator. They will help the growing team of developers of the OpenStreetMap core software to coordinate and organise their work, establish a space for the community to contribute productively, and ensure good communication across the community.

Watch this space for a job position in early January and consider applying or sharing it with a good candidate.

The OSMF board is grateful to the Sovereign Tech Agency for their investment at a critical moment of growth for OpenStreetMap.

Meta Contributes to 178K EUR to OpenStreetMap

The OpenStreetMap Foundation Board is excited to announce Meta has made a major contribution of 178,710 Euros to support the OpenStreetMap community and core infrastructure. This critical funding is directed to OSM operations and infrastructure, and helping to bring the OSM community together around the world.

The major part of these funds will be directed to meet growing user and data demand, and improve our technical infrastructure and software development. A portion of the funds have already been deployed to sponsor the global State of the Map in Nairobi, and over a half dozen regional and local OSM events around the world. And Meta steps up to a Platinum Corporate Membership, a commitment to OSM in the years ahead.

Meta contributes and participates in OSM in multifaceted ways. Their editors have had particular focus on detecting and fixing errors and vandalism. Meta develops the Rapid editor to enable human-in-the-loop AI assisted mapping. Meta’s Mapillary platform has collected and made available street level imagery for OSM for years, a super valuable resource for mapping. Recently, Meta has focused on pedestrian mapping, engaging the OSM community to improving data like sidewalks and crosswalks.

The OSMF Board is grateful for Meta’s donation and the many contributions to OpenStreetMap.

The OSMF welcomes in-kind support, as well as financial support for OSM’s technical development, operations, and community:

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. Our volunteer Working Groups and a very small core staff are the primary support for the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

2024 OSMF Board Election – Online voting is open until 19 October at 16:00 UTC, when the Annual General Meeting will commence

OpenStreetMap Foundation logo
Official OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply.

This weekend take the opportunity to read the board candidates’ answers and manifestos and vote in the 2024 OSM Foundation Board election!

The OpaVote voting emails will be sent to eligible OSM Foundation members this Saturday 12 October 2024, after 16:00 UTC and will link directly to the voting page – listing each candidate in random order and allowing you to rank the candidates in order of preference.


Eligibility to vote

You are eligible to vote in the election if

  • you have been a member for the full 90 days prior to the date of the Annual General Meeting (which will take place on 19 October 2024), and
  • your membership is not in arrears 7 days before the date of the Annual General Meeting, and
  • you are a natural person.


OpaVote email

The email from the OpaVote online voting platform will be sent to the email address associated with your OSM Foundation membership, and

  • the subject of the email will be: [OpenStreetMap Foundation] Vote for 2024 Board Elections [some_random_letters],
  • the sender will be: noreply@opavote.com

If you believe you should have received a voting email but can’t find it by Sunday, 13 October, please check your spam folder. If it’s still missing, send a message to the email address mentioned here.


Voting information and answers to frequent questions

You can find more information about voting and answers to frequently asked questions on this page.

Please make sure to read the warning on the page before voting.


Deadline for voting: Saturday 19 October at 16:00 UTC

The polls will remain accessible for one week, closing on Saturday 19 October 2024 at 16:00 UTC, when the Annual General Meeting will commence. We kindly ask you to vote in advance.

Do you want to translate this and other blog posts in another language..? 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. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

Get notified about new blog posts: Subscribe to the English RSS feed (feeds also available for other languages)

A Year of Infrastructure Progress: Site Reliability Engineer 2023/2024 Update

As the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), my focus in the OpenStreetMap Operations Team over the last year has been on driving efficiency, improving resiliency, and scaling our infrastructure to support the continued growth of the OpenStreetMap project. From cloud migration to server upgrades, we’ve made several improvements since last year to better position OpenStreetMap’s infrastructure to meet these resiliency and growth challenges.

Improving User Facing Services

Upgraded Rendering Services

The tile rendering infrastructure saw notable upgrades, including hardware and software optimisations, faster tile cache expiry to address vandalism, and automation to block non-attributing users. We now re-render low-zoom tiles daily, improving both performance and allowing a faster mapper feedback loop. The tile service is widely used and keeping up with demand is an ongoing challenge.

New Aerial Imagery Service

Launched a new aerial imagery service that supports GeoTIFF COGs. The service now hosts aerial.openstreetmap.org.za which is backed by 16TB of high-resolution imagery. The new service makes it easier to host additional imagery in the future.

Transition to Gmail Alternative & Spam Mitigation

After facing significant spam issues with the OSMF’s Google Workspace, I migrated OSMF email services to mailbox.org. This has reduced the spam volume and improved administrative efficiency. We’re also in the process of transitioning historical OSMF Google Docs data to a self hosted service.

Dealing with DDoS Attacks and Vandalism

This year, we faced several Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, including a major DDoS for ransom incident, which was reported to law enforcement. These attacks tested our infrastructure, but we’ve implemented measures to strengthen our resilience and better protect against future threats.

We also dealt with large-scale vandalism that affected OpenStreetMap services. Thanks to the swift response and adjustments made by the Operations team, we’ve reinforced our infrastructure to better handle abuse and ensure continuous service.

Planet Data Hosting on AWS S3

With the OpenStreetMap Operations Team I’ve moved our planet data hosting to AWS S3 with mirrors in both the EU and US, allowing us to fully reinstate the back catalog of historical data. Through AWS’s OpenData sponsorship, replication diffs and planet data are now more accessible.

Making Systems Easier to Manage

Full AWS Infrastructure Management Using OpenTofu

With the OpenStreetMap Operations Team I’ve successfully migrated all manually managed AWS resources to Infrastructure-as-Code (IAC) using OpenTofu (formerly Terraform). This transition allowed us to improve cost efficiency, enhance security by adopting a least privilege IAM model, and gain better visibility into expenditures through detailed billing tags. Additionally, we’ve integrated S3 Storage Analytics to further optimise our costs, set up additional backups, and implemented enhanced lifecycle rules.

Improved Service Outage Alerting

We implemented SMS-based alerting for critical service outages, alongside a sponsored PagerDuty account. These improvements ensure quicker response times and better coordination during outages, with full integration with Prometheus/Alertmanager and Statuscake in the works.

Technical Debt reduction

This year, we made progress in reducing technical debt by moving several legacy services to more maintainable solutions. For instance, we containerised old services, including legacy State of the Map websites that were previously running poorly maintained WordPress installations. This transition has improved the scalability, security, and long-term maintainability of these services.

Additionally, we replaced our custom source installation of OTRS with a Znuny package installation from Debian. This shift simplifies upgrades and reduces the maintenance burden, ensuring the system remains up to date and secure without custom modifications.

Ensuring Infrastructure Resilience Despite Hardware Failures

Over the past year, we’ve maintained a resilient infrastructure even in the face of hardware failures. We replaced numerous disks and RAM, ensuring minimal disruption to services. Our bespoke monitoring system allows us to detect early signs of hardware failure, enabling us to act quickly and replace faulty components before they cause significant issues. This proactive approach has been key to maintaining system uptime and reliability.

Upgrading Infrastructure

Cross-Site Replication of Backups

To ensure robust disaster recovery, I’ve established cross-account, cross-region replication for AWS S3 backups, enabling point-in-time recovery. This safeguards critical data and services, even in the face of major failures, providing long-term peace of mind.

High Availability Infrastructure

Key hardware upgrades in our Amsterdam, Dublin, and OSUOSL sites improved performance, storage capacity, and network reliability. New switches were installed in 2022, and we’ve now finished setting up a high availability (HA) configurations to ensure improved service, which we have continued improve the setup by moving to dual diverse uplinks to our ISP for better resilience.

Debian Migration

We are migrating from Ubuntu to Debian 12 (Bookworm) as our standard distribution. All new servers now run on Debian. Our chef configuration management has been updated with test code to ensure ongoing compatibility. This transition marks a shift towards greater long-term stability and security. Mastodon post celebrating the transition.

Looking Ahead

The year ahead brings exciting new opportunities as we build on our progress. Key priorities for 2024 / 2025 include:

Engaging

Community Engagement & Outward Communication: Enhancing collaboration with the Communication Working Group (CWG) and improving our public-facing communication around service status and outages.

Improving Documentation and Onboarding: We’ll enhance onboarding documentation and conduct dedicated sessions to help new contributors get involved in operations more easily. This includes improving the reliability and coverage of our testing processes, ensuring smoother contributions and reducing the learning curve for new team members.

Planning and Optimizing

Capacity Planning for Infrastructure Growth: As OpenStreetMap and the demand on our services grow, we will ensure we can scale to meet demand. By anticipating future needs and balancing performance with cost-effective growth, we aim to maintain the service quality and availability our community expects.

Ongoing Cost Optimisation: We’ll continue to find ways to reduce costs by leveraging sponsorships like the AWS OpenData programme, ensuring sustainable operations.

Continuing to Reduce Technical Debt: We will continue simplifying our infrastructure by reducing the maintenance burden of legacy systems, such as increasing the use of containers. This will help streamline management tasks and allow us to focus on other improvements, making the infrastructure more efficient and scalable over time.

Continue Infrastructure Improvements

Implementation of High Availability Load Balancers: Rolling out the HA (VRRP + LVS + DSR) configuration for load balancers to improve system reliability and reduce potential downtime.

Finalising Prometheus Integration with PagerDuty: Completing the integration of Prometheus for monitoring and PagerDuty for streamlined alerting and incident response.

Complete the Transition to Full Debian Environment: Migrating all remaining services from Ubuntu to Debian for increased stability and security.

Enhancing Disaster Recovery & Backup Strategies: Further refining our recovery documentation and introducing additional backup measures across critical services are protected and recoverable in the event of failure.

The Days are Long but the Years are Short

OpenStreetMap at 20

by Steve Coast

This essay is re-posted with permission from Steve Coast’s Substack.

Two decades ago, I knew that a wiki map of the world would work. It seemed obvious in light of the success of Wikipedia and Linux. But I didn’t know that OpenStreetMap would work until much later.

I was showing someone new to OSM how to add data to the map. I would ask for a place they knew well, zoom in to that area and then find something to fix. The key was to get a quick win by showing the map before and after they had made it better. Get a little shot of dopamine for making the world a slightly better place.

This person asked to look at Cuba.

This presented a challenge, and I had to manage expectations. OpenStreetMap at the time had okay maps of major Western countries but my expectation, as I explained to them, was that Cuba would be a blank empty slate.

Cuba was doubly tricky not just because of economic factors that limit peoples free time and ability to contribute to open projects, but also the internet was (effectively if not actually) banned and computers illegal.

Zooming in to Cuba that day was the last time I was surprised by OSM, and when I stopped worrying about it working as a project: Cuba had roads, parks, hospitals and everything else imaginable already mapped.

OpenStreetMap has grown exponentially or quadratically over the last twenty years depending on the metric you’re interested in. My involvement has waxed and waned like soul mates oscillating between rapture and, inevitably, wanting the best for each other in our post-relationship new lives.

The story isn’t so much about the data and technology, and it never was. It’s the people.

Like John Boyd said, it’s the people then the ideas and then the technology. Not the other way around.

People: The people that wanted to map just weren’t in the existing camps by definition. They largely didn’t work in geography at all. They just wanted a way to make a map better. Governments, universities and companies had lists of reasons why public mapping wasn’t possible, but no actual solution.

Ideas: Allowing volunteers to edit a map in 2004 was simply anathema and bordering on unthinkable. Map data was supposed to be controlled, authorized and carefully managed by a priesthood of managers.

Technology: For those not in the industry, you might not know that OSM essentially did the opposite of what academic and the leading technology platforms at the time advocated. It needed a data model designed for volunteers not paid editors. So, we did tags not ontologies, and nodes and ways, not web feature service.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. – Isaac Newton

OpenStreetMap managed to map the world and give the data away for free for almost no money at all. It managed to sidestep almost all the problems that Wikipedia has by virtue of only representing facts not opinions.

The project itself is remarkable. And it’s wonderful that so many are in love with it.

For me though, I’m far more fascinated with what are the other pebbles on the beach. What else can we make for almost no money that will radically change the world for the better?

If OpenStreetMap is a medium, what is the message?

For me it’s that we can go from nothing to something, or zero to one. Many of us love critiquing something that exists or maybe even improving it. But, my boyish naiveté was assuming that there were lots of other people out there also trying to build new things. Tautologically this simply can’t be true, for if everyone was making new things for any period of time we’d be much further along the various technological curves.

What stops us from doing new things? There seems to be a million reasons and two opposing forces keeping us in inaction: fear and vanity.

Fear of actually building something and showing it to people will push you from one side, and vainly falling in love with the idea itself will pull you the other way. These forces will perfectly balance like the tides. You’ll be stuck in the gravity well of some dead Lagrange point neither executing on the idea nor killing it.

Not everyone has ideas, but if you do, I encourage you to go do the thing.

When you do the thing, most likely you’ll have to kill it. New things tend to not work, or you have to change them drastically. OpenStreetMap’s first four or so major versions were all radically different from each other and relied on feedback from the world to make them into something that would work.

Killing the new things means you have to try many of them. This, too, is reflected in OSM, where I actually started about ten ideas at the time. OSM took off. One was taken over. The rest were strangled to death by reality meeting vanity.

So, celebrate all that we have achieved. It’s been amazing.

And then please turn the wheel and look to windward and consider how to kill it, by making something new or better.


–> Read this post at “Steve Coast’s Musings”

–> Sign OpenStreetMap’s 20th Birthday Card

–> Support or Join OpenStreetMap

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. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OSMF board election 2024 – Submission of self-nominations is open until 13 August 2024, 23:59:59 UTC

OpenStreetMap Foundation logo
Official OSM logo by Ken Vermette, CC-BY-SA 3.0 & trademarks apply.

Submission of self-nominations for the 2024 OSM Foundation board election is open. At least four of the seven board seats are available. Board members are volunteers and typically serve for two years until their seat is up for re-election.

You can put yourself forward as a board candidate by adding your information to the OSM wiki.

Submission of questions to candidates

Community members can submit questions to the candidates here, until 24 August 2024 at 23:59:59 UTC. The official set of questions, which candidates will be asked to answer, will be based on the questions from the community and previous years. The facilitator for the questioning process this year, selected by the board, is Brian Sperlongano.

Resources regarding the 2024 board election and the 18th Annual General Meeting

For more information regarding the 2024 board election and the 18th Annual General Meeting, please see the following links:

Key dates

  • List on the OSM wiki.
  • Monthly view – Please check the description of each event for exact dates and times — the OSM wiki is the authoritative source.

How you can help

Besides asking questions and voting, a few of the current and past board members have mentioned that the thought of being a candidate did not cross their mind until it was suggested to them. So, you might want to think if you’d like to run for the board or to propose being a candidate to others.

Do you want to translate this and other blog posts in another language..? 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. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor

Get notified about new blog posts: Subscribe to the English RSS feed (feeds also available for different languages)