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.
State of the Map is all about the coming together of the OpenStreetMap community but this doesn’t have to be limited to the conference venue. Working with our travel partner (they also do our scholarship travel and – free of charge – arranged the venue for the social event), we have rooms set aside at two major hotels just for State of the Map attendees. Rooms cannot be held indefinitely so please book at the earliest possible opportunity to avoid disappointment.
Politecnico di Milano, inner courtyard. Photograph by Alessandro Palmas.
Read the program and immediately realize you can’t miss the next State of the Map 2018 in Milan.
In addition to many interesting talks and workshops, for the first time you can join the Academic Track: a full day session that aims to bring together and foster interactions between OpenStreetMap contributors and researchers.
You will meet OpenStreetMap enthusiasts from all over the world, and discover new local mapping efforts from the last year. The program features members of the community, researchers, new voices, experiences switching to OSM, crisis mapping, new technical tools, company perspectices, projects from every corner of the planet, big data management and much more.
The venue has two main rooms and four additional halls. If you need space for an impromptu gathering, you will always find at least one available room. And don’t be afraid to share your ideas: if you have a last minute idea for a lighting talk you can “book” a 5 minute slot by writing the title on the flipchart at the welcome desk!
Are you still in doubt? We are sure you don’t want to miss the social event on Saturday evening at Old Fashion, close to the beautiful Castello Sforzesco, with live music and drinks.
What are you waiting for? Hurry up and buy a ticket!
Night view of the tower of Filarete, which is the central tower of Castello Sforzesco and close to Palazzo dell’Arte. Photograph by Alessandro Prada. Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
As if a State of the Map schedule full of awesome talks was not social enough, we are packing your Saturday night with an officially sponsored State of the Map social event.
In the heart of the historic Parco Sempione, we will convene at Old Fashion Milano just a few minutes walk from the centre of Milan. With garden terrace, live saxophone, and private DJ set, it’s set to be an exciting night. Feeling the vibe? After 23:00 the club opens to public, and the night continues until 05:00.
Come join us after the social presentations close on Saturday, July 28th for the official State of the Map 2018 social event! The details for your fast recall:
