The last couple of months have been busy with organising the State of the Map 2019 conference. In particular, the program committees have done the difficult job of selecting which talks will be presented at the conference. We had many submissions and unfortunately we could not accept them all, but we aimed at selecting talks that we believe you will all find really interesting.
As well as the regular talks in the program, this year also sees a full track on Sunday dedicated to academic talks which anyone is welcome to attend, not just the academically inclined among you!
For more information on the talks that were selected and when they will be presented, take a look at the program. Most talks will be recorded, so if you cannot attend, you can watch them online after the conference!
Call for Posters
Getting the selection of talks ready was not the only thing happening the past few weeks – we have also been preparing for the annual poster competition. This year we have a dedicated poster session at the conference where selected posters will be exhibited and you will have a chance to meet the creators and talk with them.
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.
You don’t have to attend SotM 2019 to submit a poster.
Early Bird Tickets
Early bird tickets are still available at the ticket sales web page. These prices are only available until the 21st of July, so get your ticket now!
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.
Post by Gregory Marler on LivingWithDragons. Re-posted with permission.
The OpenStreetMap event of the year is “State of the Map” (SotM), an international conference run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation and I love being part of the organising committee that brings so many people to one place. We’re volunteers and it takes a lot of work and a lot of local knowledge throughout the year to organise a 400+ conference, so we ask for communities to bid to host it in their city/area. There’s support in overseeing what needs to be done, budgeting, and links with previous sponsors, but it relies on a full local team to join in the help. This led me to ask, why should your community host State of the Map?
The photographer takes a group photo of delegates and team at SotM 2018 (Italy)
It will use the skills of your community. The organisation work requires researching suppliers of booklet printing, catering, etc. It needs people to communicate with the venue and with our sponsors, even speakers and scholarship applications. There’s usually help needed with graphics and there’s space for people to suggest new ideas for the conference. During the event we need welcoming people, and people to keep the schedule running on time. There’s so many different things to do and they vary in how visible from them. I firmly believe the best way to appreciate individuals is to know they’ve dealt with an essential task or to encourage them to take on a task you think they’ll be good at.
Along with the conference, of course comes lots of knowledgeable people. In the talks and in the coffee break discussions you get to hear updates about OpenStreetMap, learn new things or get more detail from the experts and different communities. This is both for your local SotM team, as it’s encouraged to listen to the talks if you’re helping out, and it’s for your wider community of OSMers and newbies in the city/country/region. This can be a great chance for locals to attend SotM when they might not usually due to travel distance and barriers such as costs or visas.
Stickers at a SotM Scotland event in 2012
Don’t think about one weekend, as often the conference is a catalyst to have more local events. In the build up to SotM you’ll want to meet more often and you’ll get to know people who live near by. Hosting SotM has also led to more events following it as people want to continue the in-person sharing of knowledge and community. You might host extra events in collaboration with other organisations, in the past countries have even ended up having scenarios like “The month of maps”. I would encourage you to have had some community meetups before bidding for SotM, it gives you practice setting dates, communication, and venues.
Remember that OpenStreetMap is not about a conference. However, the conference helps us build new understanding. This can lead to new contributors joining OpenStreetMap (maybe getting more involved) and new uses of OpenStreetMap by being inspired and encouraged what others can do. You might want to invite local government or companies that are on the fence with deciding to use or release open data.
My last reason is that, it’s fun. We’re all a nice bunch of people really. There’s usually an organised social evening at SotM (we’ve had private tram tours, picnics in the park, a performance by Japanese drummers, all sorts). On the other nights the visiting mappers will look to your community team for advice on where to eat/drink and what are really the best nearby tourist sights. If you love your town, then you should love sharing the best bits and the secrets with the new friends you make.
What to do now? First of all, read the Call for Venues page, because that contains a lot better detail on what is needed to be ready and what is needed in your bid. I would suggest getting together a community that is interested in hosting, even if they have different levels of interest and different amounts of availability. Find a date to give about 2 weeks notice, find a place to meet like a coffee shop or a friendly office, and use various social media to invite local mappers to come and chat about State of the Map in your town. You might start writing the bid there (copy the example bid format), you might assign people to go away and research the different sections required.
Dinner and a drum performance at State of the Map 2017 (Japan)
You are very welcome to contact the SotM team early on, this might be once you’ve suggested it to your community it might be before that initial meeting I suggested. We want to help you out, and to help you with your bid. This could be linking you up with others nearby that have got in touch with us, or answering questions you have.
After the bids come in we get the challenge of choosing which bid will host SotM next year. It’s a difficult decision, and we’ve come to learn what will make the conference run smoothly. Don’t be disheartened if your bid is not selected. All that research and team building can be usefully adapted to running a smaller conference for your country or region (there’s a whole list of them). These won’t be an OSMF-run conference but the global team is still keen to assist in small ways. Often local/regional conferences contact us with their proposed dates before they announce, and find it helpful to know if they might clash with others (potentially causing less people to attend). Running a country-level conference can also show how well you can run an event, it could set you up well to bid for SotM in future years. I’d love to see some of the previous ones run on an international level, and it’s great to see more of these pop up.
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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
Tickets are now on sale for the State of the Map conference 2019 in Heidelberg, Germany. The conference runs from the 21st-23rd September. As always, if you are eager to start, we offer an Early Bird discount, but hurry, as these special prices are only available for a limited time. We have had a large number of talks submitted to both the regular and academic tracks, so this year promises to have some really interesting topics. Come and be a part of what should be the biggest SotM to date!
Early bird ticket prices
There are many different tickets on offer, so make sure you select the correct one when ordering.
Regular – €180 (early bird) Regular tickets for €180 are available for individuals.
Community – €75 (early bird) If you are a member of the volunteer OSM community, you can get your SotM ticket for a special discounted price of €75.
Supporter – €700 (early bird) For those businesses who want to help support the SotM but cannot sponsor, we offer the supporter ticket costing €700.
Included in your ticket
entrance for one person to the social dinner and
use of local public transport in Heidelberg (VRN), so you don’t have to worry about paying for public transport each time you use it.
Additional offers
Alongside the regular tickets, we have some extras to offer.
Additional persons to social dinner – €50 per person If you are bringing more people with you to Heidelberg who are not attending the conference, you can still buy extra tickets for the social dinner. Each one is €50.
Heidelberg Altstadt guided tour – €15 Heidelberg has a very historic city center, and we are pleased to offer a guided tour which will take place in the afternoon of 20th September, costs €15 per person and will last approximately 3 hours.
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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
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.
Assemble your team and propose your city as host for the next OpenStreetMap conference. The State of the Map organising committee helps you. We encourage you to contact us on sotm@openstreetmap.org as early as possible so that we can provide guidance, if required.
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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
As of now we are accepting your talks and presentations in the following State of the Map 2019 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
Academic Track: There will be a proper academic track, it will be announced separately!
Two novelties deserve a special mention:
The “OSM Basics” track: We would like to welcome newcomers with contributions that get them started in the fascinating world of OpenStreetMap. These talks should specifically address the needs of people not overly familiar with the OSM ecosystem.
The “Extended talk” submission type: Big ideas need time to grow. For talks in this category we will allow double the time (40 min) compared to the usual talks. Make sure to mention why your talk needs this extended space.
You will find the Call for Participations and the link to the submission form at:
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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
State of the Map is the annual event for all mappers and OpenStreetMap users. In line with our motto “Bridge the Map”, 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 Heidelberg, September 21-23, 2019 and strengthen existing and build new bridges. The HOT Summit, the annual gathering of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team community, will also be directly preceding SotM – to enable all SotM participants to easier attend HOT Summit and vice versa – and facilitate further exchange.
We want to enable as many of you as possible to be part of State of the Map 2019. We are happy to announce that we can provide financial support, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors
Each year we receive more scholarship applications than we are able to support. To help us best allocate the funds, we have different levels of scholarship to pick from:
Support scholarship (admission and accommodation)
Full scholarship (admission, accommodation and full travel costs)
Enhanced scholarship (admission, accommodation, full travel costs and extra support to cover evening meals and supplementary costs)
Here are some tips to help you complete your application. You can also check out Gregory’s post on how we selected scholars from previous year’s applicants.
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?
To enable our scholars to have the chance to extend their stay for the HOT Summit, this option will also be supported through generosity of HOT Summit sponsors. Please make sure to indicate if the HOT Summit is of interest for you on the form as well.
Review team For SotM 2019 we decided to contact past scholars who might want to be involved in the review process.
Twelve persons will review the applications (Thanks!). All people who replied or self-volunteered were included.
Eleven are past scholars.
Four are women.
Four volunteered prior to being contacted.
Geographic distribution of review team’s nationalities:
4 Africa West, East, Central and Southern
4 Asia-Pacific
4 Europe
Criteria for reviewing the applications:
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?
You can update your application before the 30th of March.
Can you support the scholarship program?
Is your company or organisation interested in sponsoring State of the Map 2019 and our scholarship program? Take a look at our sponsorship packages and email us at sponsor-sotm@openstreetmap.org for more information.
2019-03-12: This post was updated to add information about the review team and the criteria that will be used.
The international State of the Map conference is 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. The State of the Map Organising Committee is one of our volunteer Working Groups.
The local team prepared a wonderful logo and an appropriate conference motto “Bridging the Map” which not only applies to the basics of OSM community but also to our host city Heidelberg:
State of the Map 2019 logo by Michael Auer
Right next to the old bridge in Heidelberg there lives a curious little statue – a bronze monkey. In its hand, it holds a mirror to remind anyone crossing the bridge to look back from where they came from and remember who they are. For the 2019 SotM in Heidelberg we want to take the role of that little monkey and remind everyone that no matter where we are going and what we are doing with OSM, we should never forget that we all come from the same origin: a little map that anyone can modify and use. Whether you are a hobby mapper, a scientific researcher, a humanitarian, an NGO, a government agency, a small business or a global company — we want to bridge the gap between us, or better yet, we want to Bridge the Map.
Our estimated timeline for 2019 is
15 Feb – Call for Scholars 28 Feb – Call for Abstracts (general and academic) 30 Mar – Deadline of Call for Scholars 24 Apr – Deadline of Call for Abstracts 16 May – Start Early Bird ticket sale 20 Jun – Program Announcement 04 Jul – Switch to regular ticket prices 21-23 Sep – State of the Map in Heidelberg/Germany
Open open open
Apart from the daily work of conference preparation, we have spent considerable efforts in order to use more FOSS tools. We started by moving our meetings from Hangout to Mumble. We use HOT’s Mumble server which already serves the OSMF board and other OSMF working groups. So it was already proven that Mumble is smart and works on all platforms.Our next step was much more challenging. We moved our email communication from Google Mail to the OpenStreetMap mailing list server. We couldn’t move our domain yet as there were too many constraints for a rigorous cut. So we decided to keep the Google account with the stateofthemap.org MX until everything is sorted out. At the moment the mail address “team@stateofthemap.org” is still valid, but it is forwarded to sotm@openstreetmap.org. Tom – thank you so much! – has set up a number of private mailing lists for all our needs:
All these lists are private. Only members of the SotM working group or the appropriate teams are able to read the emails addressed to these lists. For example progam-sotm@openstreetmap.org is read by the program committee and used for all internal communication. At the same time everybody (from outside) can write to this email address send their questions to the program committee using this email address.
Our next step will concern the submission form for the conference contributions – the “Call for Abstracts”. We will move from Google forms to Pretalx, which is Open Source software. It is already used by FOSSGIS (the German local chapter). So we know about advantages and limitations.
We still have some proprietary tools in use, and switching from a proprietary to an Open Source tool takes additional work – not only for us but also for the operations working group. In the past few months we could spend some time on this, but during the hot phase of SotM preparation there will not be enough capacity. Also, the Open Source tools are sometimes less comfortable than the proprietary equivalent, and it needs a lot of communication to persuade all the affected people to make this additional effort. The State of the Map working group supports the idea of Open Source software, and we think this goal is worth the extra effort (even if the path is sometimes rocky).
Following the successful initiation of the Academic Track at State of the Map 2018 in Milan [1], this Track will be included again in the program of State of the Map 2019, to be held in Heidelberg on September 21-23, 2019.
The main purpose of the Academic Track is to bring together and foster interactions between the OpenStreetMap community at large (contributors, developers, users, etc.) and the academic/scientific community of researchers from all over the world.
A designated Leading Team would be in charge on the organization of the Academic Track, co-chaired by Marco Minghini (on behalf of the OSMF State of the Map Working Group) and Yair Grinberger (on behalf of the Heidelberg local team). We hereby issue a call for applications, inviting all interested individuals to apply to join the Leading Team. This team will be in charge of:
writing and publishing the call for abstracts/papers for State of the Map 2019
designing and managing the review process of the submitted abstracts, deciding which ones to accept for oral presentation or poster presentation
defining the Academic Track schedule at State of the Map 2019, by working in close contact with the Programme Selection Committee
planning and managing possible publication outputs, e.g. conference proceedings or a Special Issue in a scientific journal
In agreement with the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the local team, it was decided that the Academic Track Leading Team will be composed by Marco and Yair plus 3 additional people that would be selected through this open call. Thus, we invite applications for researchers or academics to be part of the Academic Track Leading Team. The call is open to everyone interested. Applications shall be made exclusively by sending an e-mail to the OSM science mailing list science@openstreetmap.org (this requires registering for the list at https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/science), and filling the following template:
Name and Surname Please enter your name and surname.
Affiliation Please enter your (current) full affiliation.
Academic experience, in particular on OpenStreetMap Please enter a short description of your main academic interests and contributions, especially related to OpenStreetMap. A full list of OpenStreetMap-related publications (or a link to it) is appreciated.
Editorial experience Please enter a short description of your editorial experience, e.g. as a Member of the Editorial Board of scientific journals, Guest-Editors of Special Issues, reviewer for scientific journals. Place the focus on OpenStreetMap, when relevant.
Participation in State of the Map 2019 Despite it is not required that you are attending State of the Map 2019, please inform us whether you plan to attend (if selected as a member of the Academic Track Leading Team).
Only applications submitted according to this procedure and only self-nominations will be considered.
The deadline for applications is January 3, 2019.
Applications will be assessed by the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the Heidelberg local team. The three available seats of the Academic Track Leading Team will be assigned based on the candidate’s personal merit and according to the overall goal of forming a diverse and Interdisciplinary Team. In absence of candidates who are meeting the expectations, the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the Heidelberg local team reserve the right to select less than three people, or nominate additional persons by invitation.
Best regards, Yair and Marco – on behalf of the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the State of the Map 2019 Heidelberg local team.
The OpenStreetMap Awards were held for the 3rd time on 30th of July at the State of the Map conference. Beforehand nominations were provided and shortlisted by community voting, and at the closing session of the conference, the community came together and applauded all the nominees as the winners were revealed (Video of this session)
There were nine nominations in each of the nine categories. Find out more about each of them on the awards site and on the wiki. All nominees are very deserving of awards, but here are this year’s winners:
The Core Systems Award went to Sarah Hoffmann who leads the development of nominatim, the open source search tool.
The Innovation Award went to Wikimedia Foundation Collaboration Team who have developed an impressive mapping stack for the Wikimedia projects, including features like the map internationalization.
The Influential Writing Award went to Christoph Hormann who has been examining many mapping style choices, enlightening us on satellite imagery processing and generally sharing his opinion on mailing lists and the blog.
The Greatness in Mapping Award went to Tshedy The work of Tshedy (Mats’eliso Thobei) is well known in the OSM Community. She is popularly known as “Lesotho Mapping Queen”. She is an avid writer, trainer, and mapper.
The Expanding the Community Award went to Christine Karch. Christine who is a part of the State of the Map Working group has contributed in expanding both the developer and the general OSM Community worldwide through hack weekends and other events.
The Improving the Latin America Award went to Natalia da Silveira Arruda, a professor at the University of Antioquia (UdeA) who runs a Youthmappers chapter at the University in the city of Cartagena de Indias/ Colombia. So far this has trained >200 students.
The Improving the Africa Award went to Crowd2Map Tanzania, a volunteer-run mapping project that unites over 2000 remote mappers worldwide with over 600 community mappers on the ground in Tanzania. Since 2015, they have mapped schools, hospitals, roads, buildings and villages across rural Tanzania.
The Improving the Asia Award went to State of the Map Asia 2017 organizing team who successfully brought 200 open mapping enthusiasts from Asia and beyond to this conference held in Nepal.
The Ulf Möller Memorial Award went to Richard Fairhurst. He is a longstanding shining light of the OpenStreetMap community, and developer of key software such as the Potlach editor, an entry point to OpenStreetMap for many.
We congratulate all the award winners and everyone else whose hours and hours of contribution have made OpenStreetMap the map it is! Finally thanks to Ilya Zverev for his hard work in running the awards, and thanks to all those who nominated and voted. Please continue the good work, and prepare to nominate each other for the next year’s awards!
There is a great program of talks and workshops for this year’s State of the Map, but as people gather from around the world we want to help you make the most of this in-person time together.
Travel tips
To help you travel stress free we have added useful info to our website. For example, once in Milan, the easiest way to get to State of the Map is to take the M2 (green) subway line to Piola.
Flying in to Malpensa Airport? Buying tickets online saves money only if you buy a Malpensa Express Return Ticket 30 Days – you pay 20€ instead of 26€. The departure and the return journeys can be made within 3 hours of the time of train you select and the ticket is sent to an email address.
View the attendee list
OpenStreetMap communities form an integral part of OpenStreetMap. We interact online throughout the year but seldom have an opportunity to meet those that live far from us. As we come together at State of the Map we have made the attendee list available to help you make connections, meet old friends and form new ones.
Run a session
Check out the program for this year’s selection of talks. Perhaps something new has happened since the deadline for proposing talks, perhaps you didn’t have the idea quite worked out.
Throughout the 3 days we have spare rooms for you to host a break out session (Birds of a feather session). And on Monday we have some extra Lightning Talk slots available. These are quick five-minute talks that don’t need to have slides.
You can sign up for both by visiting the registration desk at State of the Map. Keep an eye on the board to see what other people have added; you wouldn’t want to miss something amazing!
Join in from home
Not able to attend this year’s State of the Map? We will be live streaming the main rooms throughout the event. Keep an eye on our website for the links.
You can also follow us on Twitter @sotm and use the hashtag #sotm. And new this year, we have created a telegram group for the conference. Join us here.
