Author Archives: Pete Masters

Apply to maintain and develop iD

iD is the editor through which 80% of OpenStreetMap users contribute to the common edifice. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is committed to its support and seeks to staff iD development.

iD development is a funded position with the OpenStreetMap Foundation, with remuneration at market rates according to skills and commitments.

Please submit your application to board@osmfoundation.org. Include CV, cover letter, and/or examples of work as attachments. Also please indicate your preferences of full-time or part-time, work location, contractor status, and anything else we should consider.

What we are looking for

iD development involves a wide range of roles that may be held by one single polyvalent person – or by more than one, with skills and motivations that complement each other.

The overarching concern will remain addressing and balancing the needs of a diverse range of stakeholders, including:

iD mappers and OpenStreetMap community members from around the world
Corporate and non-profit players in the OpenStreetMap space
Downstream forks and instances of iD
Peer projects that rely on components of iD, or that iD relies on

Project management responsibilities will put an emphasis on communications:

Foster a welcoming, professional, online public space
Maintain and communicate a project roadmap based on input from stakeholders
Gather feedback and build consensus around major changes
Host regular online audio/video meetings to give updates, receive feedback, and hold discussion
Leverage the community to reach out and mobilize beyond the development team’s immediate circle

Of course, the basics of open source software project management shall also be fulfilled:

Provide support for existing functionality
Design solutions to enable new functionality
Review and assist with pull requests from contributors of all skill levels
Publish periodic updates with detailed release notes
Ensure that a third party can build an independent instance as completely as possible

Some domain-specific knowledge will play an important part in understanding user needs:

Some familiarity with the modern field of geospatial technology
An understanding of the OpenStreetMap data model, including tags
The culture of OpenStreetMap, and the free software and volunteered open data world in general

iD is a web application widely used in a varietiy of technological and social contexts – hence the following areas to which its design must pay careful attention:

Usability: ensure that tasks are intuitive to accomplish
Accessibility: accommodate a wide range of users’ abilities
Localization: adapt the app across language, region, and culture
Cross-platform: support all major systems and browsers
Tablet support: handle touch and stylus interactions as well as mouse and keyboard
Privacy: limit web tracking to the minimum required for operation and keep the Privacy Policy up-to-date
Performance: optimize operations for compatibility with the older hardware available to the economically disadvantaged

Development technologies:

HTML / CSS
JavaScript
Node.js
Node Package Manager (npm)
Data-Driven Documents (D3.js)
Git
GitHub

Quality control:

Code readability
Unit testing
Continuous integration
Debugging
Clear documentation, both for users and other developers

Online Briefings on the 2021 OSMF Community Survey

On March 10 & 11, Allan Mustard, Chair of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, will present a series of three Big Blue Button video conferences, open to the OSM community and 8 hours apart, to brief on and answer questions about the results of the 2021 OSMF community survey. The briefings will take place at 12:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC on March 10, and 04:00 on March 11 UTC (click the links to convert for your timezone). He will present some summaries of the data in graphic form, then take questions. He will use his Big Blue Button home room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co/user/all-3t3-ekg.

Allan also plans to open an instance of Microsoft Translator and to speak into it in English, and will share the access code for the instance at the start of the presentation, so that anybody with Microsoft Translator’s app (on desktop, notebook, tablet, or smart phone) can follow his oral narrative in the language of their choosing. He will also use the Power Point 365 facility for rendering speech to text so that anyone who can read English can read subtitles as he speaks. Anyone planning to view the video conference who wishes to use the translation facility should download the Microsoft Translator app in advance and become familiar with it first.

If you would like to access the anonymized, raw results of the 2021 OSMF community survey, visit this page on the OSMF wiki.

Call for State of the Map 2021 logo designs

In 2020, we held the first ever online State of the Map conference! In July this year, State of the Map 2021 (SotM 2021) will also take place as a virtual conference (dates to be officially announced in mid-February).

The face of every SotM is, of course, its logo; a recognizable graphical element that represents the spirit and mood of that year’s global conference. For this reason, we need the help of the most creative minds in the community to create a new logo for SotM 2021!

The logo is also a crucial element for defining the design and colors of the official SotM website as well as the style of the conference content on all OSM platforms. It will also be used for the beloved SotM merchandise and swag (t-shirts, stickers, etc), making the best memories from the conference unforgettable.

From experienced professionals to graphic design newbies and enthusiasts, everyone can participate and share an original idea with the community!

Contest guidelines

The logo design should:

be an original artwork
refer to OpenStreetMap (OSM), and virtual State of the Map (SotM)
focus on the sense of global community and its core values;
be easily recognizable
open licence: CC BY SA or related
be submitted by Sunday, 14 February 2021 23:59 UTC

How to enter

Please submit your logo proposal via email to sotm@openstreetmap.org, attaching the design file in a PNG format and scalable file format (like PDF or SVG).

Winner selection

The submitted artworks will be reviewed by the SotM working group, and the winning logo will be decided via vote. The official logo will then be announced after the SotM meeting in mid-February.

Looking for some inspiration?

Take a look at the logos from the past SotMs. If you have any questions about the call, feel free to contact the State of the Map Working Group sotm@openstreetmap.org.

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 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.

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.

iD is the editor through which 80% of OpenStreetMap users contribute to the common edifice. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is committed to its support and seeks to staff iD development.

What we are looking for

OpenStreetMap Blog