Category Archives: OSMF

Posts about organisation of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Working groups, the board, and other entities, and how we structure our organisation

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.

Views from the OpenStreetMap Foundation on the launch of Overture

The launch of the Overture Maps Foundation is a significant development in the world of open map data. The founding members of Overture are influential tech industry leaders, and have committed a lot of resources. While many details of Overture remain unclear, the OpenStreetMap Foundation is interested to get a better understanding of the project. In the best scenario, OpenStreetMap would benefit from Overture’s advancements in software development, from the data and from funding. However, we also recognise risks, and will continue to develop our ability to grow the community and to fund our infrastructure and future development.

OpenStreetMap data is available for anyone to use, from hobby map makers to global corporations, and we encourage Overture to do the same, following our community expectations and licensing terms. The technical problems that Overture is addressing, such as quality checks, data integration, and alignment to schemas, are valuable for any map data provider. We know data consumers have been working on these challenges in isolation for too long, and by bringing these issues out into the commons, and open sourcing the tools, we can all benefit.

Following the announcement, we have had informal conversations with some people involved in Overture to ask questions and learn more. In particular, we asked about how work scoped in Overture overlaps with OpenStreetMap, and what the future involvement of member companies in OpenStreetMap will be. The answers have been helpful, though many questions remain. We have encouraged Overture to engage with our community and to share their plans publicly. We’ll share a few points here that were discussed informally.

Everyone we talked to emphasised that Overture is not intending to replace or fork OpenStreetMap. They see the work as complementary. The individual companies expect to continue working directly with OpenStreetMap, and may even increase their involvement, including financial contributions. Map edits that are right for OpenStreetMap, should go to OpenStreetMap. This stated commitment to OpenStreetMap’s work and community also suggests that the companies and Linux Foundation are on board to support OpenStreetMap financially. Overture has come together with a small group, and the intention is to grow and work out many details. They welcome OpenStreetMap involvement in the form that makes most sense.

The OpenStreetMap community has vast experience and knowledge in working with the diverse and complex realities of geographic data and compiling it into a unified global dataset. This knowledge can be supported but not replaced by automated approaches. We firmly believe that our community-driven approach to data collection will remain foundational to any global map. The mission of the OSMF to support the growth and development of OpenStreetMap community is more important than ever.

We encourage Overture to engage with the Foundation and the OpenStreetMap community, and make us a part of Overture’s strategic discussion holistically. Through good engagement, we can identify areas to collaborate and bring improvements to the core of OpenStreetMap, rather than creating duplicate or competing efforts. The resources that Overture’s founders are investing into the project, and their stated commitment to OpenStreetMap’s work and community, show the value they place on good maps, and the potential for supporting improvements in areas core to OpenStreetMap’s mission. We welcome Overture to discuss with the OSMF Board, and to explore the best ways to facilitate ongoing communication, decision-making, collaboration, and support.

Engineering Working Group Call for Proposals

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

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 requiements, please see 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 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 2 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!


About 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.

Nominate yourself for the OSM Foundation Board Elections by October 22!

The OpenStreetMap Foundation logo

Here’s an opportunity to get involved in the OpenStreetMap Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the OSM project!

The OpenStreetMap Foundation Board elections are coming up in December, and there are three seats that will be open. If you’re interested in running, the deadline to nominate yourself is coming up, October 22, 2022 at 23:59 UTC.

About the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of Directors

The seven-person Board of Directors works on OSM Foundation matters on a volunteer (unpaid) basis and is elected by the OSM Foundation membership.

The board meets regularly to work on administrative, policy, and fundraising issues, to vote on resolutions and to support the OSMF Working Groups, which are also composed of volunteers. The Working Groups are always looking for help too! 

For the December election, the terms of Board members Eugene Alvin Villar, Jean-Marc Liotier and Tobias Knerr are expiring, so their seats will be available. (They also may choose to run again.)

If you’re interested in running yourself, or know someone who might be, there is more information about nominations and the elections here. You can nominate yourself!

Board members serve two year terms and may be reelected a few times, with a term limit of three terms in the last eight elections. (You can get more information about board term limits in sections 33 and 34 of the OSMF Articles of Association. The Articles of Association are the rules and guidelines of the OSM Foundation.)

The Board elections start December 3rd and close December 10th. You can see more key dates here.

Monthly board meetings are open to OSMF members to observe or ask questions. You can find minutes of past meetings here.

Why you should run for the Board

We always need board candidates! Consider it yourself or ask someone else who you think might be good for the next OSMF board election, which will take place on the 10th of December, 2022! 

Why run for the board? Below you can read the personal views of current and past board members:

(Please note that in order to run, you need to be a Normal OSMF member 28 days before the election, not an Associate one, and you must have been a member during the full 180 days before the election.)

If you’re not already a member of the Foundation, it’s a great way to support the OpenStreetMap project, voice your opinions and also become eligible to vote in Board elections. You can learn how to join the OSMF here, which can be free if you are an active contributor to OSM.

Note: translations for this post are to come.

About 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 and OpenCage – Joint press release

Note: OpenCage is a silver level corporate member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, entitling them to this joint press release. If your organisation would like to support the OSMF more, please consider joining the OSMF as a corporate member, or read about other ways to give back.

OpenStreetMap Foundation corporate member OpenCage is pleased to announce a new collaboration with popular geospatial podcast MapScaping to help encourage the growth of small OpenStreetMap-based projects.

OpenCage has purchased four episodes worth of MapScaping advertising slots, and will donate these slots to small OpenStreetMap projects. Each selected project will receive a 30 second ad read, a presence on the MapScaping website, and promotion via social media. The definition of “OpenStreetMap projects” is intentionally left vague to encourage a wide spectrum of applications. Examples of the types of projects OpenCage and MapScaping could imagine supporting with the initiative include: open source tools seeking developers, OSMF volunteers recruiting volunteers, start-ups looking to make their service more widely known, or local OSM communities advertising new initiatives.

Full details of the initiative and application process are laid out in a post on the OpenCage blog. Applications are open until the 15th of October. Preference will be given to projects that, due to their newness or non-commercial nature, don’t have the resources to advertise themselves.

“Our service has depended on OpenStreetMap since the day we first started eight years ago. While we’ve always done our best to give back to the OSM community – for example by sponsoring events, and becoming corporate members of the foundation – we specifically wanted to find a way to help smaller, up and coming projects. Working with MapScaping gives us a great tool to help these projects accelerate,” said Ed Freyfogle, OpenCage co-founder.

Daniel O’Donohue, founder and host of MapScaping said, “We’re delighted to provide a platform to help the OpenStreetMap community grow by sharing these projects with our global audience. OpenStreetMap has been a key ingredient in the explosion of geospatial innovation over the last decade, and I’m looking forward to working with creative projects that are at the leading edge of that innovation.”

About OpenCage

OpenCage operates a highly-available, enterprise level geocoding API based on OpenStreetMap and other open datasources. In addition to being corporate members of the OSMF, OpenCage are proud members of the UK and German local chapters, co-sponsor and contribute to the open source development of Nominatim (the primary OpenStreetMap geocoding software), and regularly sponsor OpenStreetMap events. 

About MapScaping

The MapScaping Podcast is a weekly podcast for the geospatial community. Started in 2019, MapScaping has grown rapidly to become a leading independent media voice in the global geospatial discussion. The show profiles innovative geo projects and technologies, and provides a forum to discuss issues facing the geospatial community. 

What is OpenStreetMap?

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.

What is 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. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation – you can become a member for free, if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

Towards an improved data model for OpenStreetMap

We all know and love the OpenStreetMap data model with its nodes, ways, and relations and the open tagging that has allowed OpenStreetMap to be so innovative. But the data model also shows its years and some improvements might be possible. There is a lot we don’t want to change. Especially the open tagging model has proven itself. We might think of some small improvements, but the core idea of allowing any number of key-value (string) tags has worked amazingly well.

But there are some pain points due to the way we organize our data. The biggest problem is that geographic location is only available to nodes and not higher-level geographic objects like ways and relations. This means that accessing the location of, say, a way always means we have to follow the references to the member nodes of that way. This makes processing OSM data extremely cumbersome and resource-intensive.
The other major pain point often talked about is the missing “area” datatype. We use work-arounds like closed ways and multipolygon relations, but that has always been problematic, because we can’t be sure that those objects are actually valid polygons.

The OSMF Engineering Working Group (EWG) has commissioned me (Jochen Topf) to write a study over the next months outlining the problems with our current data model, possible improvements and their impact on our systems. Any changes to our data model will, of course, have a large impact on our mappers, the data users, our software and on the whole OSM ecosystem. So the study will also suggest ways to move forward implementing those changes step by step.

You are welcome to contact me via email at jochen@topf.org if you want to discuss any of this. After my talk at the State of the Map in Milano in 2018 in which I already outlined some of the issues with the data model, I created the osm-data-model repository. Feel free to comment there. After my preliminary study I will expect there will be a more formal discussion process where we can decide as a community which (if any) changes we want and how we are going to implement them.

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.

Mapping for Cyclists and Hikers: Flemish Tourism Organisations Join Forces with OSM Belgium

Last March saw the launch of the Pin je punt project (“Pin your point”). The aim of this tourism-focused mapping campaign is to augment OpenStreetMap with points of interest for hikers and cyclists, specifically in the Belgian region of Flanders. Pin je punt is a collaboration between Toerisme Vlaanderen/Visit Flanders (the region’s official tourism administration), the provincial tourism organisations and OpenStreetMap Belgium.

A partnership like this has a lot of potential to increase awareness about OpenStreetMap, and convince organisations and individuals to hop on the OSM train. So of course we wanted to know more. How did this collaboration come about? What has been achieved? And what can OSM as a community learn from a project like this?

To get an answer to these questions, we sat down with Pieter Vander Vennet (OSM Belgium) and Jos Pyck (project manager for Pin je Punt at Visit Flanders). This post is a reflection of those conversations.

Pieter Vander Vennet
Jos Pyck

What is the goal?

The Flemish tourism agencies want to enrich OpenStreetMap with as many points of interests as possible in the following categories:

  • Charging stations for e-bikes
  • (Public) toilets
  • Benches and picnic tables
  • Observation towers
  • Bicycle repair stations
  • Bicycle rentals
  • Playgrounds

The data should be complete enough so it can be used to improve route planning applications for hikers and cyclists, possibly even printed maps.

How did it start?

Back in the winter of 2020-2021, Visit Flanders was contacted by route planning developers looking for datasets to improve their services for cyclists and hikers. Triggered in large by the COVID pandemic, this target audience had grown into a large community with varying needs: hikers in search of public toilets now that restaurants and bars were closed, young families looking for playgrounds, e-bikers in need of charging stations, …

Unfortunately, no Flemish dataset was available to meet these requirements. The Flemish tourism organisations did have open datasets, but they were incomplete and spread across the five provinces. The solution? Using OpenStreetMap to unify, improve and maintain these different datasets.

Through the local cyclist organisation Fietsambassade Gent, Visit Flanders came into contact with Pieter Vander Vennet, who had developed the MapComplete editor and had already worked with a couple of government agencies. They formed a core working group with other OSM Belgium users Joost Schouppe and Seppe Santens (also ICT manager at the West-Flemish tourism organisation Westtoer, the only provincial agency with previous OSM experience). And just like that, Pin je punt was born.

How is the data added to OSM?

The existing datasets of the provincial tourism organisations were loaded and the objects converted into notes, which can be validated by users one by one. Of course new data points can be added as well. Validation and editing occurs in a custom theme in Pieter’s MapComplete tool, enabling users to edit specific POI categories in OSM in a user-friendly way. This makes it the perfect fit for the Pin je punt campaign, which is also aimed at users without OSM experience. Visit Flanders invited all Flemish province and municipality employees to start editing, and even launched a media campaign to reach the general public. (The promo video featuring a former Flemish radio presenter (in Dutch only) is, as far as Pieter knows, the first professional commercial encouraging contributions to OpenStreetMap!)

Of course, as new users are attracted, it is important to keep an eye on the quality of their work. For that reason, volunteers of the Belgian OSM community monitor the edits made in Pin je punt.

A bicycle pump in the Pin je punt MapComplete theme

What are the results and takeaways?

The Pin je punt campaign officially concluded at the end of April 2022. During the 1,5-month-long project run, the imports of the provincial datasets and the edits made by many tourism organisation employees and other users resulted in about 1,500 new points being created in OpenStreetMap. Since the Pin je punt MapComplete theme remains available, these users can continue to improve the data in their municipalities.

But the potential effects of Pin je punt extend far beyond an increased number of POIs for hikers and cyclists. The campaign also has the capability to increase awareness about OpenStreetMap and its possibilities outside of the OSM community, and to encourage more organisations to start using OSM.

Pin je punt has convinced one person in particular of OpenStreetMap’s strengths: project manager Jos Pyck of Visit Flanders. He used to be sceptical about using OSM, as he–despite his GIS background–deemed it far too technically complex. But this campaign has turned him into a true OSM believer. He’s impressed by the sheer size of the database and the fact that anything can be captured in it. And his pleasant experience with the helpful community even resulted in Visit Flanders becoming a corporate member of OSM Belgium.

Jos is very interested in expanding the Pin je punt theme with more tourism-related layers in the future, for instance bars, restaurants, drinking fountains, … He has even made it his mission to encourage other government agencies and municipalities to invest (more) in OSM, instead of setting up and maintaining their own limited, siloed databases. The five provincial tourism organisations involved in Pin je punt are already on board. Four of them had no previous experience with OpenStreetMap, and this project convinced them that the OSM community can produce a dataset superior to theirs. The experience really lowered the barrier for them to use OSM again in the future. Hopefully the results of Pin je punt can win over other public organisations as well.

Collaborations like these can also be a learning experience for the OpenStreetMap community. As a former outsider, Jos Pyck had some interesting insights to share. Though he is now an avid fan of OSM, he still believes it is difficult for newcomers to start using the map, as they are intimidated by how technical it looks. This outsider perspective had a positive impact on the look and feel of the MapComplete theme created for Pin je punt. While Jos’s team members were trying out the first versions of the theme, they formulated some comments about the user-friendliness of the tool. Pieter Vander Vennet took their feedback to make the tool as simple, easy to use and promotable as possible. Note that it can be reused outside of Flanders–the project team already saw some edits popping up in the rest of Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the UK, …

One particular observation Jos made while venturing into the world of OpenStreetMap, is the small number of women in the community. He points out that his colleagues who tested the MapComplete theme were all female and therefore had a different perspective on usability, which helped tweak the tool substantially. According to Jos, OSM would very much profit from getting more women on board.

Want to find out more?

This blog post points to many interesting links providing more information about the Pin je punt project and the people involved. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to Jos Pyck, Pieter Vander Vennet and Joost Schouppe at pinjepunt@toerismevlaanderen.be.

Want to contribute?

Though the Pin je punt project officially concluded at the end of April, all contributions to help cyclists and hikers in Flanders are still very much welcome. So don’t hesitate to head to the Pin je punt MapComplete theme (in Dutch only) and start mapping!



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

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Meet Grant Slater, the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s new Senior Site Reliability Engineer

Thanks to the support of corporate donors, the OpenStreetMap Foundation has been able to hire its first employee, who is starting on 1 May 2022. Grant Slater and Guillaume Rischard, the Foundation’s chairman, sat down for a virtual chat.

Hi! Tell us about you?

Hi! I’m Grant Slater, and I’m the new Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) working for the OpenStreetMap Foundation. I’m originally from South Africa, and now live in London (UK) with my wife Ingrida and our son Richard.

What do you do in OSM? Where do you like to map?

I’ve been mapping since 2006, mostly in the Southern Africa and in the United Kingdom. I have a strong interest in mapping the rail network of South Africa; holidays “back home” often involve booking railway trips across the country, with a GPS in hand.

My latest toy is an RTK GPS base station and rover. I’ll soon be mapping my neighbourhood with centimetre-level accuracy.

For the last 15 years, I’ve been part of the volunteer OpenStreetMap Operations Team who install and maintain the servers and infrastructure which runs the OpenStreetMap.org website and many other related services.

What are your plans for the new SRE job?

My main objective will be helping improve the reliability and security of the project’s technology and infrastructure.

One of my goals will be to improve the project’s long-term stability as we grow. OWG can’t work without volunteers, and I will be improving the Operation Team’s bus factor by also improving our processes, documentation, and by smoothing the path to onboarding new team members.

I will be helping to drive forward modernising the project’s infrastructure by reducing complexity, paying-down technical debt, and reducing our need to maintain undifferentiated heavy lifting, by tactically using Cloud and SaaS services, where suitable.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

With time, I would like to see OpenStreetMap introduce new tools and services to improve our mappers’ access to opted-in passively collected data to improve the mappers’ ability to map and detect change.

Gamification! OpenStreetMap should always remain a fun and gratifying experience for all. We’re building an invaluable and unique dataset with far-reaching consequences for which we should be incredibly proud. Happy Mapping!

I would like to hear your feedback and suggestions, please email me osmfuture@firefishy.com

Grant gave a talk at State of the Map US (2013) – OSM Core Architecture and DevOps and is hoping to give an updated talk at State of the Map 2022 in Florence, Italy 19–21 August 2022.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Firefishy
https://twitter.com/firefishy1
https://github.com/firefishy

Self-introduction of the new iD developer contracted by OSMF

The OpenStreetMap Foundation board welcomes Martin Raifer, whom we contracted to work on the maintenance and development of iD, the default editor at openstreetmap.org. Below you will find his self-introduction. Martin will continue working for 20% of his time for HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) and he will have regular meetings with the OpenStreetMap community regarding iD. We would like to remind that any iD-related disputes will be dealt by the OSMF Software dispute resolution panel.

Hello, my name is Martin Raifer, on OSM I use the username tyr_asd. I’m happy to announce that starting with November 2021, I will take over the maintenance and continue the development of the iD editor (OSM’s default mapping web-application) as a freelancer and will be paid for that by the OSMF. I’m feeling humbled that the OSMF entrusted me with this important task!

my goals for iD

To put it simply: I want iD to be the best possible mapping tool! It should optimally fulfill its prominent, important and also delicate role of being the OSM’s default map editor.

iD should remain an intuitive tool which everyone can use, from beginners performing their first edits to the most experienced of mappers. Since many users will continue to have their first point of contact with mapping using the iD editor, there is the need for a strong focus on good usability and user experience design. At the same time, I find it also important to not neglect the needs of more advanced users who like to work efficiently and sometimes need more specialized ways to manipulate OSM data.

In many ways, iD already does a quite good job of affording people to edit the map. Of course there are always things to improve, stuff to optimize and features to change.

my background

I’m an active OSM mapper since 2009, and have been contributing to the OSM software ecosystem in various ways. Some of you might know overpass-turbo – the web front end I created for the Overpass API – or some of my other OSM-related projects. Professionally, I have worked with OSM data first at an urban bike mobility startup, then as a freelancer for a project of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and became a research associate at Heidelberg University/HeiGIT (more about that below) where I helped organizing the State of the Map conference in Heidelberg in 2019.

In the past, I already contributed occasionally to the development of several OSM’s core software: for example the osm website, the editor-layer-index and the iD editor. For iD I helped with beta-testing in the early days, added presets, submitted bug fixes and implemented a few small features like the support for WMS backgroundlayers.

my affiliation with HeiGIT

I will continue to work for the HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology at Heidelberg University) alongside my work on the iD editor to a small extent of one day per week. At HeiGIT, I will continue to collaborate on mostly OSM-related research activities, with a strong focus on data quality. In addition, I will also support some teaching activities such as lectures at Heidelberg University.

The main chunk of my time will of course go into the development of the iD editor! I will do my best to cleanly separate my activities at HeiGIT from my work for the OSMF. Should at any point in time a conflict of interest occur, I will directly report it to the OSMF and HeiGIT to resolve.

my next steps

Initially, I will prioritize fixing of bugs, publishing of updates and documenting of the status quo such that decisions about future changes can be made in an informed way. Working through the accumulated reported issues on GitHub will probably take a while.

After that I would like to focus on step-by-step improvements of the iD editor. This could include stuff like enhanced support for road lanetagging, lifecycle prefixes, openinghours, or productivity tools like a building or wayimproving mode.

I am open to feedback from the whole OSM community, so get in touch on iD’s issue tracker on github or through some of the many OSM communication channels (I will try to follow as many of them as possible). Of course code contributions from you are also very welcome!


Do you want to translate this and other blog posts in another language..? Please send an email to communication@osmfoundation.org with subject: Helping with translations in [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. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

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You’re invited to the 2021 Local Chapters and Communities Congress

The LCCWG is excited to invite OpenStreetMap local chapters and community organisers and leaders to the 2021 Local Chapters and Communities Congress!

Local Chapters & Communities Congress poster – please share widely!

The LCCC 2021 is a virtual event where leaders and members of various OSM communities, whether they are officially recognized Local Chapters of the OSM Foundation or just a regular user group of OSM mappers, come together to share stories and learn from each other.

Last year, 35 community leaders came together from more than 20 different countries and the LCCWG is asking you to spread the word far and wide so that even more communities come to exchange knowledge and build networks this year!

The LCCC takes place online on 06 November from 1200 – 1500 UTC and you can find more details on the OSM wiki, here.