4-5 July 2020

https://2020.stateofthemap.org/

State of the Map is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap.

• No registration is required for SotM 2020.
• Watch the talks as they are streamed. Missed something? Watch already streamed talks here.
• Submit questions to the speakers, to be answered at the end of their talk. Questions are collected as the talk is streamed. Look for the “session pad” link, on every talk page and type your question there.
• Attend or start a self-organized session.
• Discuss with other participants, either at a self organising session, on the IRC channel #osm-sotm-ct on the OFTC IRC server (join via this link or with a dedicated IRC client) or on other communication channels (e.g. Telegram).
• Follow @SotM@en.osm.town on Mastodon or @sotm on Twitter. Use the hashtag #sotm2020.
• Check out the posters.
• Participate in the quiz session!
• Provide general feedback about the conference.

State of the Map 2020 is organised by the volunteers of the SotM Working Group and is streamed by the Chaos Computer Club Video Operation Center.

Enjoy State of the Map 2020 🙂

The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of the volunteer Working Groups of 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.

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.

State of the Map 2020 is just a few weeks away and here are many ways you can still get involved, aside joining scheduled online sessions.

Lightning Talks

Do you want to hold a Lightning Talk during SotM 2020? Submit a pre-recorded 5 minutes video of your Lightning Talk on an OpenStreetMap related topic. Read the how to guide for pre-recorded SotM talks, upload your video here and add your session to this SotM 2020 Wikipage.

The deadline for lightning talk submissions is 28 June 2020.

Self Organized Sessions

Besides the main SotM programme we are offering space for self-organized sessions. If you have an idea for a panel or even a workshop, a self-organized session is the right place for that. The only requirement is that your topic has to be related to OpenStreetMap. We are using the SotM 2020 Wiki for the organization of such sessions so that everybody is able to jump in without any formal barrier.

Of course the Code of Conduct of SotM also applies to the self-organized sessions.

You can find more information on how to prepare and submit a self organized session for SotM 2020 here.

Volunteers

We are looking for volunteers to help in the following roles during SotM 2020:

• Infodesk – To help answer questions on the SotM Telegram group, SotM Twitter and the IRC Channel.

• Session Host – To announce the speakers before the talks and lead the Questions & Answers sessions after the talks.

• Technical Assistant – To help the speaker and the session host with the video conference equipment. 

• Broadcasting – To do the streaming during the conference. 

You can read more about these roles and add your name here if interested: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2020/volunteers

Conference swag

This year everything is slightly different – including swag. Feel free to help yourself with the designs for t-shirts and stickers and don’t hesitate to share with us photos of your printed swags 🙂

The State of the Map Working Group

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

Building on previous State of the Map culture, we love to hear what has been done with OpenStreetMap data, and as the motto for this year also implies too “Art of the Map” we would love to see more. Therefore, we invite you to participate in our poster exhibition for the virtual State of the Map 2020!

Your poster could show how well your home region is mapped, it could be a beautiful new style or map. It might focus on a community project or statistics, it might be a poster explaining and inviting people to OpenStreetMap. What’s important, is we want it to be about OSM. We’re also welcoming academic posters about research around OpenStreetMap data.

Need more inspiration? Take a look at the posters from 2019.

Rules for submission

• Poster should be for A0 size (841×1189mm)
• Poster should be related to OpenStreetMap
• Poster should be open, innovative and transparent (no-copying)
• Poster must be your own work (individual, team or institution)
• Poster should be under open licence (CC-BY-SA 3.0 or later recommended or CC0 🙂 )
• Maximum 2 entries per person, team or institution

How to enter

• Upload your poster to OSM Wiki
• File size maximum 30-40 MB
• Format PDF
• Please send an email to sotm@openstreetmap.org with a description of your poster, for example the background of the project or whatever you find important to mention in the context of the poster – all that you would tell people if you show them your poster. We will publish this text together with the poster on the SotM website https://2020.stateofthemap.org/calls/posters/
• Please mention also the link of the uploaded poster in that email, so that we could know which of the uploaded posters is yours.

Timeline and Deadlines

• Start: 10 May 2020
• Deadline: 30 June 2020

The SotM team hopes to shortlist up to 20 posters that will be published on our website and some other SotM channels under CC BY SA 3.0 (or later)

The State of the Map Working Group

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 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.

Due to the high infection risk of SARS-COV-2 virus and all its consequences like travel restrictions, cancellation of physical meetings, “physical distancing”, and more, a physical SotM is not possible this year.

The local team – who have done great work preparing this conference so far – have suggested to change the physical conference to a virtual one. This wasn’t just an idle talk: they have already started a cool open source software project – https://gitlab.com/billowconf/billowconf for managing this! If you have any idea of how to make it better, please don’t hesitate to get on board.

So the State of the Map working group adopted the proposed plan, and agreed to have an online SotM conference this year instead of a physical one.

We know about your disappointment of not meeting each other physically this year (we are disappointed too), but after a few months of lockdown and “physical distancing” we are sure that we will all be excited to be reading and seeing each other in chats and videos. We will share more on the technical plans as the date comes closer.

The online conference will take place on 4-5 July 2020 (duration shortened to two days instead of three). We planned an extended Q&A session after each talk and plenty of free spaces for discussions. So that the OpenStreetMap community can have a great week-end together.

The State of the Map Working Group


English blogpost by Christine Karch, proofreading by Frederik Ramm

Interested to help the SotM Working Group..? We are looking for you.

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 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.

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]

State of the Map is the annual event for all mappers and OpenStreetMap users. We invite all OSM enthusiasts – whether you are a hobby mapper, a scientific researcher, a humanitarian, with an NGO or a government agency, a small business or a global company — to join us in Cape Town, July 3-5, 2020 as we share experiences and ideas of taking the OSM ecosystem forward.

We want to enable as many of you as possible to be part of State of the Map 2020. We are happy to announce that we can provide financial support, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors. This year we are offering new travel grants to reimburse a portion of travel costs, in addition to our previous program that fully covers all costs with a full scholarship. 

If you are selected, we invite and expect participation at State of the Map. That could be a talk if selected by the program committee, or in lightning talk sessions we’ll make available for scholars. There are other ways to participate and support the operations of the conference while you attend too. 

Apply now for support to join us in Cape Town
for State of the Map 2020!

Deadline: 15th February 2020

Each year we receive more scholarship applications than we are able to support. To help us best allocate the funds, please specify the minimum types of support you need to attend. If you are requesting a travel grant, then tell us the amount of money to cover a portion of your travel and make a difference to attending, or not.

Please review our privacy policy covering how we will handle the information in your application.

Here are some tips to help you complete your application. You can also check out Gregory’s post on how we selected scholars in 2017.

• Select the minimum level of scholarship you need. This will help us to make the best use of limited funds and enable more scholars to join.
• Make sure you clearly state your visa and travel requirements, as well as potential other funding sources.
• Answer the question “Please describe your involvement in OSM and how will attending State of the Map benefit you, your local mapping community and the wider OpenStreetMap project” in 1500 characters maximum. Keep sentences short. Focus on the benefits to you and to OpenStreetMap.
• We want to hear about your contributions to OpenStreetMap, your project or your group. We do not want an account of a group’s work but your individual part in it. Try to use “I” not “we“.
• You may include links to your OpenStreetMap profile, a local group you run, or software you created. If your written answer is satisfactory to get in our shortlist – we might take a look at these additional details.
• What topics or views will you bring to SotM that are otherwise missing?
• What do you plan to achieve through coming to the SotM?
• What do you plan to do when you return home after SotM?
• Are you applying to organise sotm?

We encourage all applicants to already have passports and they should be valid 30 days from exit from South Africa and 6 months from entry in South Africa. 

Review process

Reviewing scholarships

You can read about the scholarship review process for 2019 here. For SotM 2020 we again asked community members to join the review process, and will be finalizing the review team in the coming weeks.

Here’s a list of factors that we will consider when reviewing the applications:

• Is the applicant part of an under-represented minority group?
• Are they from an under-represented location?
• Are they contributing to OSM in a substantial way? (Not only OpenStreetMap edits, but contributed to wiki and documentation, trainers, developers).
• Have they applied previously and not gotten a scholarship?
• Do they have a unique story or experience to share?
• Are they in a position to share their SotM experience with a larger group?
• Will their attendance benefit their local community in some way?
• How difficult will their visa application be?
• How will attending State of the Map benefit them and OpenStreetMap?
• Are they interested in organizing future OpenStreetMap events?

SotM 2020 scholarships team

Interested to help the SotM Working Group..? We are looking for you.

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 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.

Preparation for State of the Map 2020, Cape Town is underway and the organizing team is calling upon you to join the scholarships review and selection team. We would like to set up a diverse team with a wide geographic scope, ethnic and gender diversity, and different kinds of experiences in the OpenStreetMap community.

What does being part of the review team mean?
Being on the scholar selection team means that you will read and rate most or all of the SotM 2020 scholarship applications. You will learn about interesting projects and about the contributions of other OSMers first hand. We will help you by providing the criteria to judge the applications. We expect the scoring to take a half day to a full day all together, spread out over several days. We will send you a spreadsheet or a link to an online spreadsheet and you will be asked to
i) provide a single rating for each application and
ii) add a note why you gave that rating. We will use those comments during the final selection.

After scoring the applications you can participate in the team’s discussions about the final selection – but this is not an absolute requirement. So, if you do not feel comfortable or have technical difficulties, do not worry. Please note that we expect any personal information provided by the applicants, or by other team members, to be kept confidential.

What is the timeline?
Submissions for scholarship applications will open on January 15, 2020 and close on February 15, 2020 so you will have to read and rate the applications up to March 1, 2020. During the last week of February, you will be asked if you want to participate in the discussions about the final selection.

Are you interested?
If you are interested in being considered as a member of the selection team, please fill this form by January 7, 2020.

If you have any questions/feedback, send us an email at scholar-sotm@openstreetmap.org.

SotM 2020 scholarships team

Interested to help in other ways..? We are looking for you.

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 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.

As of now we are accepting your talks and presentations in the following State of the Map 2020 tracks:

• OSM Basics: Information dedicated to newcomers
• Community & Foundation: Bringing people together, working group experiences, strategies & vision
• Mapping: All about making the mapping easier and better
• Cartography: Your ideas on how to create good-looking manifestations of the OSM dataset
• Software Development: Software for processing and editing data
• Data Analysis & Data Model: Reflections about the OSM data, its model and analysis of quality and completeness
• User Experiences: Tell your surprising story of using OSM as an end-user
• Art & Creativity: Creative projects with OSM
• Academic Track: There will be a proper academic track, it will be announced separately

Art & Creativity is a completely new track at SotM. It provides a space to present your artistic and creative projects that use OpenStreetMap data or the OpenStreetMap theme to e.g. create clothing, jewellery, 3D printed objects, engravings, visualizations, computer or mobile games, virtual worlds, augmented reality, flyers, postcards, etc.

You will also find an additional submission type called Panel. Panels are for hot, controversial discussions around the OSM community, mapping and data. Topics may cover for example diversity, legal questions or the future of the database.

You will find the Call for Participation and the link to the submission form at:

https://2020.stateofthemap.org/cfp

If you’re reading this but giving a presentation is not your preferred way of helping make a great SotM conference, the SotM working group is also looking for your help. Please take a look at our recent blog post to read more about what we do and to find out where you could bring in your talents:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2019/11/07/the-state-of-the-map-working-group-is-looking-for-you/

We are looking forward to your fresh ideas and beautiful maps!

SotM 2020 Program Committee

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.

Organising the international State of the Map conference is a huge effort! But it can be broken down to small and straightforward tasks. We are looking for you! Are you interested in taking over one of our tasks? This post shows you what we’re doing – maybe there’s something here that you can help with. Or ask us for more details of tasks you are interested in!

What we’re doing

Next year’s SotM is usually announced at the end of the previous one. That means that work on next year’s SotM already starts before the current SotM even begins! We have to publish a call for bids and sort out the options with the local teams. And to make a well-founded and often difficult decision.

Preparing phase – shortly after SotM

Once a SotM is done, the SotM working group starts working with the local team for next year. The first steps are creating the logo and the prospectus for sponsors. Also, the website is launched around this time, and we sort out the possibilities for the social event.

The program committee start their work by setting up the call for papers. The scholarship committee also have to do a lot of preparation before they can publish their offer.

In the middle of the year – growing phase

Finding sponsors, the call for papers, and scholarships or travel grants are the activities that dominate this phase. Then the review phase for both talk submissions and scholarship applications starts. Finishing the schedule and adjusting with the speakers can be a challenge. The website team has to include the sponsor logos and provide content about the venue, and later the schedule.

The hot phase before the conference

Ticket sales is opened. We have to ensure that all speakers have tickets. This year we were sold out and we had to answer a lot of questions.

Catering has to be ordered. The social event has to be fixed.

Scholars have to be managed. In the past we arranged travel for them and helped apply for a visa if necessary. Also accommodation has to be sorted out for them.

Sponsors have to be taken care of. They get vouchers for conference tickets, and they can provide input for the booklet. Some sponsors may have special requirements.

A lot of design work comes our way in this phase too: signs, banners, but also the T-shirts. Also, the the program booklet is considerable work until it is perfect.

The video recording (and, if possible, streaming) has to be arranged, and we need to check the local internet access situation.

Shortly before the conference we set up a Telegram group. We have to coordinate a lot of volunteers who help during the conference at the welcome desk, at catering, in the sessions, or with the video cameras.

How you can help

Design work

• Logo
• Website layout
• Sponsor prospectus layout
• Booklet layout
• Banners, signs
• T-Shirt design
• Certificate of attendance

Sponsorship

• Preparing the sponsor packages
• Finding sponsors
• Communication with sponsors
• Collecting the logos and booklet ads
• Issue ticket vouchers to sponsors
• Sponsor logo on slides and banners
• Preparing sponsor booths at the conference

Administrative work

• Budget planning
• Financial coordination with OSMF
• Planning the timeline
• Preparing group meetings
• Setting up the registration system
• Administration of group mailing lists
• Conference insurance
• Legal and permission issues
• Safety considerations

Program

• Call for presentations
• Looking for interesting speakers
• Setting up the talk submission system
• Review of the submissions
• Working out a proper schedule
• Communication with speakers
• Coordination with scholarship team
• Canceling, changing, rearranging talks
• Poster competition
• Keynote speakers
• OSM Awards

Travel Grant

• Call for scholarship
• Review of the submissions
• Travel management, accommodation
• Invitation letters
• Preparing a travel guide for scholars
• Local work
• Social event (space, catering, music)
• Conference catering
• Organizing a pre-event
• Hotel reservations
• Name badges, lanyards
• Ordering of T-Shirts
• Ordering of banners
• Printing out of Posters and Signs
• Preparing the venue (video, wifi)

Communication

• Website content: sponsors, venue, accommodation, attendees, call for presentations, etc.
• Creating texts for Twitter, blog posts, mailing lists, newsletter etc.
• Translation into other languages
• Answering mails of attendees
• Telegram groups (during the conference)

Conference work

• Managing the volunteers
• Preparing tables, poster walls
• Setting up banner, signs etc.
• Welcome desk
• Video & streaming
• Video cutting, upload
• Collecting slides of speakers
• Catering
• Session moderation
• Technical assistance in sessions
• Code of Conduct team

Looking for the next venue

• Call for bids
• Communication on mailing lists etc.
• Communication with applying teams
• Review and decision process

Communication

We mainly collaborate via email and on Github in English. The core SotM team has voice meetings on Mumble.

Contact us

Interested? Email sotm@openstreetmap.org

SotM Working Group

Follow us @sotm!

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.