Author Archives: Richard Weait

Early birthday present OpenStreetMap video series

OpenStreetMap contributor, emacsen, has just released a series of
OpenStreetMap videos for new OSM contributors.

In honor of OSM’s birthday, I present to the OSM community
a new series of videos on OpenStreetMap.

Video playlist

They’re a set of Khan Academy style videos. That is they’re each short
5-15 minute videos on a particular topic of OpenStreetMap. Right now
there’s about two hours of video, covering the basic concepts: all the
way from nodes and tags, to routing, changesets and
rendering.

The seventh Anniversary / Birthday of OpenStreetMap will be celebrated around the world on Saturday,
20 August 2011, in at least 6 cities. Organize an OSM party in your
town!

State of the Map – Denver

SotM 2010 group photo (Girona Spain)

We are less than a month away from the Fifth Annual OpenStreetMap conference, State of the Map. It will be held in Denver, Colorado, from the 9th to the 11th of September.

Most of the schedule spots are now published, and the few remaining spots will be confirmed shortly. More than forty talks and panels cover subjects of interest to beginners, experts and everybody in between.

Tickets are available including great discounts for community members and Buddy tickets are a way to save even more if you plan to attend with a friend.

Keep up to date on all of the State of the Map announcements at StateoftheMap.org.

All about tiles.

The Ordnance Survey recently announced that they had served the one billionth
tile from their OS OpenSpace program. They continue:

OS Openspace was launched on January 31 2008, to enable developers to
produce exciting and innovative ways of displaying information using
our maps. On average there are over 1 million tile downloads per day.

We, at OpenStreetMap, are pleased to see additional map tile sources
available for use in creative ways, such as Ordnance Survey’s own
internal car share program.

Congratulations to Ordnance Survey on the growth of their tile program.

Of course, OS does more than just serve tiles, they are also the
national mapping agency for Great Britain.

OpenStreetMap knows a thing or two about serving map tiles as well.
OpenStreetMap Foundation servers deliver about 4 million tiles per
hour. We deliver a billion tiles every 11 days. And OpenStreetMap
does all of this with donations and volunteers. Donations from people like you allow the OpenStreetMap Foundation to purchase the servers and
hosting and bandwidth that hold the OSM database, serve the community
of OpenStreetMap mappers and serve tiles. Volunteers, like the
indefatigable team of server administrators, keep all of this hardware
working.

Congratulations also to us. OpenStreetMap creates and updates a
global geo dataset every minute, provides services to citizen
cartographers around the world and serves up-to-date tiles on a
tremendous scale.

You can join OpenStreetMap and start improving the map now.

Tile photo by vidalia_11 is
licensed CC-By-SA

What I did on my trip to SotM-EU 2011

State of the Map, Europe, has wrapped up in Vienna, Austria. The
conference venue has closed its doors. The mappers are heading home
to places all over Europe. And even to “Outer Europe”. SotM-EU was a
huge success.

Twenty-five nations were represented at the event.

206 attendees were present.

The mapper who travelled the furthest, Kinya Inoue, was also awarded
the recognition of best presentation for his lightning talk on mapping
Fukushima, and remapping Fukushima after earthquake, tsunami and
radiation disasters.

Slides for most talks are available on the sotm-eu web site

Videos for most talks are available on the sotm-eu web site (day three videos should follow
shortly)

See what attendees said about #sotmeu11in their feeds

Project of the Week: State of the Map – EU

Project of the Week is taking a little hiatus while we’re enjoying the
State of the Map – Europe conference
in Vienna this week. One of the presentations at SotM-EU11 will be on
Project of the Week. Be part of the presentation by running quick to
this poll. Tell us your favourite Project of the Week so far!

State of the Map – Girona photo by Chris Fleming is
licensed CC-By-SA

Project of the Week: On the way to Vienna

This week

We’re on the way to Vienna for State of the Map-EU, so the Project of the Week is to map those things
that will help you get to Vienna. So map your trains, planes and auto service stations on the way from home to Vienna, or the cobbler shop who repaired your shoes.

Next week

While we’re at SotM-EU next week, PotW will be on Hiatus. If you aren’t with us in Vienna, consider
browsing through previous Projects to find one to inspire your mapping
this week.

Project of the Week of the future!

Project of the Week was created by Steve Coast in 2010 and has been
maintained by Steve, and then Richard for more than a year. It is
time for more voices to be heard in the Project of the Week.
Volunteer to be the next PotW maintainer, or nominate a candidate that
you think will be great at maintaining PotW. The project of the week
for 20 July 2011 is to find the next maintainer for Project of the Week.

Vienna State Opera House photo by Gryffindor
is licensed CC-By

Mailing list moderation

After careful consideration, effective immediately Mikel Maron, Andy
Robinson and Mike Collinson have access to the moderation system
across the main OSM mailing lists. They will use their best judgment
according to the moderation guidelines and they enjoy the full support of the OSMF
Board.

http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2011/07/07/mailing-list-moderation/

Project of the Week: Tennis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79071998@N00/297686409/

The project of the week is a fun way to get out and map something that
you might not map otherwise. This week we’ll map tennis courts before
we run home to watch the matches at Wimbledon.

First job: Make sure all your local tennis courts are on the map!

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowling alleys? Share your OpenStreetMap
interests by suggesting a Project of the Week or Project of the Month.

Tennis ball photo by catbaggan is
licensed CC-By-NC-ND