Category Archives: State of the Map

State Of The Map. The OpenStreetMap conference organised by the foundation

Your First ODbL Planet

The first day of State of the Map, each year is filled with anticipation. Anticipation of seeing old friends and making new ones, anticipation of inspirational presentations and discussions and anticipation of big announcements.

The opening session at State of the Map, 2012, was no different. In Tokyo, on Thursday morning, 06 September 2012, Steve Coast called Michael Collinson, chair of the License Working Group to the stage to make an announcement. And it was an announcement that we have been anticipating for quite some time.

The next OpenStreetMap planet published will be an ODbL planet.

Mr. Collinson also thanked the countless hundreds (or thousands) who aided immeasurably in the OpenStreetMap license upgrade to ODbL. He named a representative few including OSMF legal counsel Wilson Sonsini, OpenStreetMap community members Richard Fairhurst, Frederik Ramm and Francis Davey, author of the ODbL, Jordan Hatcher and posthumously, License Working Group member Ulf Möller.

There will be more details posted in the next days, but for now we’re excited to share this announcement with you.

Tokyo host for SoTM 2012

The SoTM organizing committee have just announced the winning bid for the 2012 International conference for OpenStreetMap. This year we’re going to…

Tokyo, Japan!

Tokyo by Night

‘Tokyo by Night’ photo CC-BY-2.0 user JeHu68 on flickr

The annual event will be held September 6th-8th 2012.

From the stateofthemap.org blog:

There were five proposals to host the leading international OpenStreetMap conference: Aveiro (Portugal), Havana (Cuba), Lille (France), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Tokyo (Japan). “We’ve received several strong bids. Deciding on the best location for State of the Map is always one of our biggest and toughest decisions.” says Henk Hoff, chairman of the SotM organizing committee. With the crisis Japan had to face the past year, the Japanese OSM has grown intensively; making Asia an important part within the OSM community.

“We strongly believe that holding State of the Map in Asia will widen and strenghten the international community as a whole, like it has done in Europe and North America in the past” commented Tiachi Furuhashi of OpenStreetMap Japan.

2012 will host the sixth annual international conference, attracting over 250 people in attendance. Previous editions of this conference were held in Manchester (UK), Limerick (Ireland), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Girona (Spain), Denver (USA). Sponsorship details, volunteer opportunities and more information will be available in the near future.

SotM 2012 Call for Venues is now open

We’ve had 5 great State of the Map conferences. Manchester, Limerick, Amsterdam, Girona and Denver. Big question is: where are we going to be in 2012?

We would like to have your help with finding a great venue for the largest annual OpenStreetMap conference.

Would you like to have the 2012 edition of State of the Map in your city? Submit your proposal on our Call for Venues page on the wiki. More details about criteria and the information we would like to have from you can also be found at that wiki page.

We hope to announce our 2012 venue in the beginning of the new year.

State of the Map 2011 wrap up

State of the Map 2011 group photo

The fifth annual OpenStreetMap conference, State of the Map, wrapped up in Denver, Colorado recently. Even if you were not able to join the fun in Denver, you can still enjoy parts of the event. Conference sessions were recorded by our friends at FOSSLC and many of those recordings are already available. You’ll also find audience video for some of the sessions.

Tagging a conference

If we were tagging SotM11 to add it to the OSM database, we might consider tags like:

  • conferencename = State of the Map, 2011
  • attendance = 273
  • attendance:prepaid = 258
  • attendance:walkin = 15
  • attendance:attendee_countries = 34

State of the Map 2012

The call for venues for State of the Map 2012 is expected in November 2011. The SotM 2012 venue will be announced early in 2012.

New Board Members

Final votes were cast today at the Foundation AGM, and the results are in. Congratulations to our new board members:

Richard Fairhurst, Matt Amos, and Dermot McNally

Mikel Maron was also re-elected onto the board.

[Update] : The votes tallied up as follows: 98 votes for Richard Fairhurst, 81 Matt Amos, 74 Mikel Maron, 68 Dermot McNally, 47 Kate Chapman, 44 Eugene Usvitsky, 42 Derick Rethans, 41 Niccolo Rigacci, 27 Serge Wroclawski.

Thankyou to all of our candidates. This year we really had an excellent group of highly dedicated OSMers to choose from, and the choice was a difficult one. The relatively even spread of votes is reflective of this. We hope and expect that you will all play an active role in the foundation in 2011-2012.

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.

Call for Papers! State of the Map 2011

It’s that time of year again! Get those creative juices flowing, the organizing committee for the annual international conference officially announce the 2011 call for papers. This year there are exciting and engaging new themes like Mapping without borders, Real apps for real maps, and Next Gen. Be sure the check out the guidelines here.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation invite contributions from mappers, academics, geo-hackers and open geodata supporters around the world. If you are involved in OpenStreetMap mapping, coding or community organisation – or if you want the chance to present your ideas or opinions to the OpenStreetMap community, you should submit a paper to the State of the Map 2011!

Deadline for submission is March 15, 2011, but don’t delay! We try to fit in all papers, but with so many wonderful topics, we only have time for the best. Be sure to get yours in early.