Author Archives: Courtney Williamson

Why State of the Map Conferences Are So Important to OSM

If you’ve been lucky enough to attend a State of the Map (SotM) conference, you already know that they offer some of the best GIS and geospatial knowledge, skills, and training available. That’s on top of being a terrific networking event with lots of fun and engaging social time. If you’re new to the OpenStreetMap community and haven’t yet attended a SotM, or you’re part of a company thinking of sponsoring a SotM, alongside sending a team to attend, this post is for you.    

Image credit: Parker Michels-Boyce Photography. Please tag @OpenStreetMapUS in social media posts when using these photos.

What Is a SotM?

OSM’ers organize annual State of the Map meet-ups as a way to build community, share tools and research, and network with each other toward the shared goal of improving the map. They come in all sizes and are organized locally, regionally and globally, but the goal is always the same: to get together to talk about mapmaking research, tools, initiatives, and other community topics.  Local and Regional SotMs are organized by local communities and the global SotM is organized by the OSM Foundation. 

State of the Map conferences build bridges between OSM mappers and community activists, open-source developers, researchers from universities and academic institutions, designers, cartographers, as well as technology professionals from private companies and public institutions.

What Kinds of Topics are Discussed?

The range of topics is as diverse as the community. The types of presentations range from 5 minute “lightning talks” to 15-20 minute presentations to 75 minute workshops. They cover topics such as platform and tool development, data analysis, humanitarian mapping, and many others. Presenters are affiliated with local communities, Youthmappers, HOTOSM, maplibre, FOSS4G, academia, other nonprofits, and small and large companies.

The 2022 global SotM in Firenze, Italy provides a good example of the range of information and skills that are represented at a SotM. Here are a just few of the session titles: “OSM Carto as Vector tiles; Innovating on Derivative OpenStreetMap Datasets”, Mapping a Small Town”,  “maplibre-rs: Cross-platform Map Rendering using Rust”, “Ten Years iD Editor—The Road Ahead”, “Women Leadership in Mapping Riverside Communities in the Amazon Forest Using OSM.”

These examples just barely scrape the surface.  Here’s the whole programme and here are the recordings of the presentations. Here is the poster exhibit—yes, even the walls of the 2022 SotM were educational! And, here is a summary of the academic proceedings.

So, as you can see, a SotM offers inspiration and knowledge for anyone who is interested in the future of geospatial technology, OpenStreetmap and free and open source software and data.

The OpenStreetMap community spends 365 days a year building the best map of the world together. State of the Map US is our opportunity to spend a few days, in person, building the best community. The event is unique in geo, as it draws such diversity of topics and attendees. Private industry, individual hobbyists, academia and government come together to network, innovate and learn from each other.

 
 –Maggie Cawley, Executive Director, OSMUS

Why is it Important to Sponsor State of the Map Conferences?

There are so many good reasons!

  • The expertise shared at all SotMs contributes directly to the quality of OpenStreetMap.
  • It’s the right thing to do; companies that benefit from OSM should support the community as well as attribute the data. Donations to the project via the OSMF, sponsoring SotMs, becoming a corporate member, and sharing tools and data are all good ways to give back.
  • It’s an excellent recruiting opportunity. Where else can you find many of the best minds in GIS and geospatial all in one place?
  • It’s an excellent professional development opportunity. You’ll connect with other companies working within OSM, learn from other engineers and analysts, and be inspired by dozens of interesting new tools and projects.
  • It builds brand awareness through corporate social responsibility. It’s well known that customers are more loyal to companies that invest in creating a better world.
SotM Asia
SotM France
SotM US | photo credit: Parker Michels-Boyce Photography.
2022 SotM
SotM Africa | photo credit: blog post by Yusuf Suleiman

There are too many SotMs to picture them all here, but here are a few recent examples.

How Can I Support a SotM in 2023?

There are four large, regional SotMs coming up, and all of them need sponsors.

FOSS4G Oceania
Aukland, 16-20 October, 2023: sponsorship prospectus

This conference amalgamates FOSS4G and SotM into one conference to focus Oceania’s open source geospatial efforts. The conference gives Oceania mapmakers a link to global communities of developers and users and is supported by OSGeo and the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Previous FOSS4G SotM Oceania conferences in Melbourne, Wellington and Suva were an overwhelming success:

  • Melbourne and Wellington were sold out with over 250 attendees at each conference
  • Attendees from over 14 countries from Oceania and further afield such as Canada, the UK, and the USA
  • Attendees included GIS professionals, developers, hobbyists, humanitarian workers, and government agencies

State of the Map EU
Antwerp,  10-12 November, 2023:  sponsorship prospectus

This conference offers an opportunity for a diverse group of individuals to meet and exchange knowledge, experiences and plans for developing use and improvement of OSM. Around 400 attendees from Europe and all over the world are expected to participate. The conference will be offered as a hybrid event, allowing additional participants to join via live- stream if they are unable to join in-person.

“State of the Map is the place where you’re the closest to actually feeling the heartbeat of the whole project. The international SotM can and should travel around the world! But there are way too many mappers and data users in Europe for there to be no big OpenStreetMap conference in Europe for two years.”

–Joost Schouppe, OSM Belgium, co-organizer of SotM EU 2023

State of the Map Asia
Bangkok, 21-25 November, 2023: sponsorship prospectus 

After a successful comeback last year in the Philippines, SotM Asia will be held in Bangkok, Thailand this year! We hope to serve and gather 300-500 participants from Asia and beyond to connect and discuss not only OpenStreetMap and open data tools, projects and challenges, but also showcase diverse Asian cultures.

State of the Map Africa 
Cameroon, 1-3 December, 2023: sponsorship prospectus

OSM Africa is a regional community of contributors, users and supporters of OpenStreetMap from countries within the African continent. This includes mappers, scientific researchers, humanitarians, NGOs, government agencies, small business and global companies having and/or supporting work within the continent. The network is aimed at growing and producing a complete and well detailed map of Africa on OpenStreetMap in order to advance the quality, completeness and sustainability of geospatial data in Africa.

 

EWG Project Deadline: “Adding the Ability to Mute Users”

The Engineering Working Group (EWG) would like to announce the deadline for the following project: Adding the ability to mute users on the openstreetmap.org website.

Project Deadline

The  deadline for submitting a proposal will be March 13, 2023. After the submission deadline the EWG will resolve to award the bid within 2 weeks.

About the Project

Users who receive unwanted messages to their openstreetmap.org message inbox currently have to report the message writer and wait for an administrator to take action. This feature will make it possible for anyone to painlessly mute (ignore) private messages from another user.

For more details about the project, including how to apply and proposal requirements, please see the the Engineering Working Group Project Funding Repository on Github. Click on  “Ability to mute other users” under the Projects section or visit this link for a list of deliverables.

Understanding the Project Funding Process

Before submitting a proposal make sure to also read the Engineering Working Group’s Project Funding Proposal Framework for a general overview of the process. Should you have any questions about the funding process please reach out to the Engineering Working group at engineering@osmfoundation.org.

About the Engineering Working Group

The Engineering Working Group is charged with, among other things, handling software development paid for by the OSMF, putting out calls for proposals on tasks of interests, offering a platform for coordination of software development efforts across the OSM ecosystem, and managing OSM’s participation in software mentorship programs. 

The Engineering Working Group meets once every two weeks. Meetings are open to all and all are welcome. Questions? Please send an email to engineering@osmfoundation.org. We are a small group and are still welcoming new members!

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

Reminder: Call for Feedback on the Data Model

Data Model Study

The Engineering Working Group of the OpenStreetMap Foundation commissioned a study in the beginning of 2022 on how to improve the existing data model. Jochen Topf has delivered the results of this study, including recommendations on how to make the OpenStreetMap data model more computationally efficient and more accessible.

Two key suggestions have been made:

  • introducing an area datatype for representing polygons
  • getting rid of untagged nodes

Community Consultation

In order to decide the next steps in this process we want to have more discussions with the community of developers as the proposed changes impact OpenStreetMap software which directly or indirectly depends on the data model.

Join the Discussion

Potential benefits

Less Mess for Areas

Some mappers may be surprised to hear that OSM does not already have an Area data type. After all, the iD editor prominently features buttons for drawing points, lines and areas. Once mapped, these areas usually appear on the map as expected. The OSM wiki documents whether a tag is typically used on areas, and even Overpass Turbo lets you use areas in your query.

Behind the scenes, however, these areas are represented as ways or relations. Each tool working with OSM data uses its own set of rules to guess whether a particular way represents a line or an area. Making areas a proper part of the OSM data model would lead to a consistent interpretation across applications, enable the API to prevent broken areas from being uploaded, and may eventually lead to support for partial downloads of very large areas.

Keeping OSM Processing Accessible

Currently, ways are made up of references to nodes, and we rely on these references to determine how ways connect to each other. Resolving the coordinates to these node references is a costly process within the OpenStreetMap toolchain as it takes hours to days, even on capable hardware.

In the future, we might model ways as a simple list of coordinates – depending on the exact implementation we end up with. This would offer large performance benefits, but getting rid of untagged nodes would be a significant change.

At first glance, performance improvements may not seem particularly exciting. But how easy it is to work with our data directly impacts how useful OpenStreetMap is to the world at large. As Jochen observes: “The goal is to keep OSM as that great resource that can be used not only by multi-billion-dollar companies but by the student who wants to create a map of the world on their notebook or the activist with their donated second-hand computer.”

Better OSM History

Many mappers are disappointed when they realise how few things the history tab of the website can actually show. There are many tools, like OSMCha and Achavi, that offer much more, but still require a certain degree of proficiency to use them.

You might ask why, and the answer is very technical – the location of a single version of a way is, in many cases, not defined. It is the reason that change tracking remained an expert discipline with relatively newbie-unfriendly tools. By changing the data model we will move away from that barrier, and subsequently we can expect substantially better tools, but not before we get proper coordinates and versions for ways.

Minutely Vector Tiles Generation

While there are quite a number of matured vector tile generators nowadays, a couple of problems are still open.

  • One is which features shall go into the vector tiles for openstreetmap.org
  • The other is how to reconcile minutely updates with vector tiles for performance at an acceptable level.

That task gets an order of magnitude easier if you can not only truly parallelise the generation of tiles, but also elide the first expensive step to figure out to which tile a changed way belongs.

We might be able to find someone who encapsulates the raw computing power necessary to do this. But even if so, this is a highly nondesirable degree of dependence on that partner.

So yes, vector tiles for openstreetmap.org are in principle possible without this data model change, but at a so much higher cost that only specialized hardware will be able to keep up with minutely changes.

Have Your Say about the Future

Some kind of change is inevitable. The growth of the OSM database is outpacing speed improvements in hardware, and the ID-based model means that the whole process cannot be parallelized with full speedup. Keeping up with changes was easily possible in the past, but needs needs more and more tricks now. There is a point in the future where also specialized hardware will suffice to keep up with minutely changes.

However, there are many possible approaches to meeting this challenge. Now is the opportunity for the developer community to share your opinion about the way forward.

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.

Introducing the Communities Tab on OSM.org

There’s a new way to find and connect with OSM communities.

In the upper right corner of OSM.org, you can now see a “Communities” tab that links to a single, centralized location that lists formal Local Chapters, as well as the other OSM communities. Given how many communities there are and how fast OSM is growing, it’s a good time to add a prominent way to connect.

According to LCCWG member Joost Schouppe, the new tab “is probably the most visible change on osm.org since the addition of Notes.”

Once you have navigated to the new “Communities” page, you’ll see that the data for the Local Chapters listings is dynamically delivered via the OSM Community Index (OCI). In fact, the most difficult aspect of the project was figuring out how to integrate the OCI data into the page rather than just adding a simple list of Local Chapters as static content. As website maintainer Andy Allan noted, “The latter would have been quick and easy, but using the OCI means it is automatically updated when new Chapters are added, and it also means we are reusing all the translations for the Chapter names from the 46 different languages that we already support.”  

While there is not currently a way to dynamically capture all of the other, less formalized communities, the addition of the “Other Groups” section highlights their existence and points the way to more information.  

“It’s just a start” says LCCWG member Adam Hoyle, who also worked on the project.  “Ideally this can grow into an even better centralized page for people and communities to find each other.“ 

Showing a list of Local Chapters is only scratching the surface of what can be done, now that the various underlying technical challenges have been solved. For example, when new mappers set their home location on their profile, they could be shown a list of local forums, mapping groups, and communication channels customised to their location could immediately be shown on their personal dashboard. 

The key to shipping additional improvements to the “Communities” page is having volunteers to help out. ”All this community information is in OCI already, so we now need people to help expand our integration,“ says Allan. Schouppe adds that “this particular issue has been on the LCCWG agenda since October 2020, and Adam started working on it in January 2021. It goes to show that, because we are all volunteers, it takes a lot of time and effort to evolve the osm.org website, but it can be done.”

→ To contribute to the development of OSM.org, please visit the main Github and/or this issue, which highlights the many existing pull requests and gives ideas for how to contribute.

→ To help the LCCWG with their efforts to help local communities grow, please join one of their channels.

 I’d like to thank Adam Hoyle for his work and patience while we worked  through getting the technical foundations in place, which took a while but sets us up for the future; and also to the team behind OCI who made some changes to their side of things to help us get the translations  fully working more easily. –-Andy Allan

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.