The call for venues for State of the Map 2019 is now open:
State of the Map 2019 – Call for venues
Assemble your team and propose your city as host for the next OpenStreetmap conference. The State of the Map working group helps you. We encourage you to contact us on team@stateofthemap.org as early as possible so that we can provide guidance if required.
Submit your proposal by 6th May 2018.
Community voting for State of the Map 2018 is now open! Inspired by the community that makes OpenStreetMap a reality we want your help in shaping this year’s program.
The People Speak! by saulalbert. Licence: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
Thank you everyone for submitting session proposals for State of the Map 2018. We have a great line up of presentations this year, it is time to share your views and help shape the State of the Map 2018 program.
Please participate in our OpenStreetMap community survey. It’s open to all, whether you are planning a trip to Milan, attending virtually on the live streams, or just enjoying our session videos afterwards.
Once past the front page you will be presented with a long list of talks to rate, sorted at random. We don’t expect you to rate all 134 talks; if each person reading this just did 10 then we would end up with a large amount of valuable data. When you’ve got as far as you’d like, just scroll down, hit Next until you can Submit your answers. Just don’t leave the page open for too long, as your session might time out. Note: Use of OSM usernames helps us with spam detection – we won’t share them with anyone.
You matter in the creation of OpenStreetMap and we want your voice to be heard in the creation of its conference. The survey is only open until 20th March 2018, so go to the survey now!
The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap. Organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation it has been held each year since 2007 (except 2015). State of the Map 2018 will take place in Milan (July 28 – 30, 2018).
Tickets for State of the Map 2018 are now on sale. Come register for this international gathering of the OpenStreetMap community. Move fast in order to guarantee yourself the “Early Bird” discounted rate!
State of the Map offers value for anyone excited about open location data. Our main conference days will feature around 50 talks, open spaces for gatherings, and exhibition areas where individuals and organizations can meet. Hundreds of OpenStreetMap community members are expected to attend and we want you there!
The early bird catches the worm. Or “chi primo arriva, meglio alloggia.” The world of OpenStreetMap belong to those who get (tickets) early.
In parallel to the standard sessions, this year State of the Map will run an Academic Track session to showcase the great importance OpenStreetMap has gained within the scientific and academic communities. The Academic Track aims to bring together and foster interactions between OpenStreetMap contributors and scientific researchers from all over the world. Consequently this will demonstrate both the potential and maturity of scientific investigations based on OpenStreetMap to the whole community and stimulate a beneficial discussion among the attendees. Contributions are expected to address any scientific aspect related to OpenStreetMap, in particular, but not limited, to the following:
The maximum length of the abstract is 2500 characters. Abstracts must be scientifically rigorous and structured as follows: introduction/background, where the problem addressed is introduced; main aim or purpose of the study; brief description of the methodology and findings achieved; final discussion highlighting the scientific contribution of the study and its practical benefits/implications. Abstracts describing the use, analysis and processing of OpenStreetMap data for new and unconventional applications/disciplines are particularly encouraged.
Abstracts will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to give an oral presentation during the Academic Track sessions at the conference. In addition, authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit a full paper for the Special Issue “Open Source Geospatial Software” of the journal Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards.
Scientific Committee
The application form for State of the Map 2018 grants and scholarships is now open.
OpenStreetMap is a world map of many people and places. And we want you all there for our upcoming State of the Map conference in Milan. We can provide financial support to help you to join in the fun thanks to the generosity of our sponsors. This year we welcome back Bing, Facebook, Mapbox as Gold sponsors, Telenav as Silver sponsor, and say hello to Italian company, Immobiliare.it who joins at Silver level.
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 – you can now pick from Grants for speakers, or Full or Enhanced scholarships.
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.
Whilst you are here don’t forget that you can also read the experiences that our scholars gained from being able to attend State of the Map 2017.
This post was updated in late June 2018 to include the sponsors from our top two tiers.
In July the OpenStreetMap community will be coming together for our annual State of the Map conference, this year in Milan, Italy. It is set to be an exciting three day event where mappers, programmers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and policy makers will share their passion for OpenStreetMap.
We invite you to submit your session proposals for the 2018 State of the Map, by Sunday, 18th February 2018.
You are encouraged to submit proposals for 20 minute talks, 5 minute lightning talks, and 75 minute workshops that will result in progress and excitement in the world of OpenStreetMap. If you require a grant or scholarship to attend, please note that you will have to complete an additional form which we will publish in the next few weeks. Again, the deadline to submit your session proposals is Sunday, 18th February 2018.
This year, we are particularly keen to see applications from good quality workshops (please apply for a grant or scholarship if it will help you). We also want to welcome academic talks, and will soon be releasing an additional form for you to submit your academic abstracts for peer-review.
Milan is known as the fashion capital of the world and is equally famous for its art, design and stunning architecture such as the Duomo – one of the biggest and grandest Gothic cathedrals in the world. This year we are delighted to be hosted at Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic University of Milan), home of the PoliMappers and we will be based in the building shown above. This year’s logo was designed by Angelica Braccia and can be seen in all its glory on our website.
Mappy New Year! 2017 has been an eventful year for OpenStreetMap. The communities across the globe not only hosted some amazing State of the Map conferences but also plenty of meetups, mapathons, mapping parties, workshops and much more that brought us, mappers, together and celebrated the essence of OpenStreetMap.
The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual, international conference of OpenStreetMap. Organised by the OpenStreetMap Foundation it has been held each year since 2007 (except 2015). There are also many other regional and local conferences named “State of the Map”. Please note that these regional SotMs are organised exclusively by local teams, which run their own sponsorship programs and have separate budgets from the OpenStreetMap Foundation. The main aim of these conferences is for them to become a platform for the exchange of information and experiences between old and new or potential users.
In this review, we have also included some non-SotM conferences that also focus a lot on OpenStreetMap.
Cheers to all the organisers and participants who made these conference a success, as well as contributing to making OpenStreetMap what it is!
2017 started with this Italian conference on Free and Open Source Software and Geographic Data “FOSS4G-IT 2017” held in Genoa.
Group photo (Source: Website)
The 2017 FOSSGIS Conference was organized by the non-profit FOSSGIS eV and the OpenStreetMap Community with the support of the University of Passau. Users and developers gathered for a common exchange about application and work opportunities as well as the latest developments in this field.
Group photo (Source)
The OpenStreetMap community in France organised a regional State of the Map conference for the 5th time. This was the first regional State of the Map conference of the year and it took place in Avignon.
Some of the 250 attendees of State of the Map France (source)
The first State of the Map in Africa took place in Kampala, Uganda. It was inspiring to see so many passionate OSM volunteers from different parts of Africa altogether.
Group photo from the first SotM Africa (Source)
This year the international State of the Map conference, organised by the SotM Working Group of the OpenStreetMap Foundation together with the local community, took place in Aizuwakamatsu. Everyone enjoyed three days in, Japan with talks, discussions and workshops all around the free and open map of the world. You can read about the experiences of our scholars here and we hope to see you at international SotM 2018, which will take place on the 28th-30th of July 2018 in Milan, Italy!
Group photo from SotM (Source)
State of the Map Asia, the annual regional conference of OpenStreetMap took place in Kathmandu, Nepal. The conference brought together about 175 Open Mapping enthusiasts from 16 countries in Asia, two countries in North America and two countries in Europe. The event provided an opportunity to share experiences, learn from each other and think collectively about the future development of OSM in Asia.
Different OSM communities across Asia came together at the State of the Map Asia 2017 conference (source)
State of the Map US took place in Boulder, Colorado. This was a platform for mappers, businesses, government agencies, and non-profits, to collaborate around OpenStreetMap.
Group photo from the State of the Map US 2017 (Source – CC-BY 2.0 Justin R. Miller)
The OpenStreetMap and FOSS4G communities met at the combined event in Buenos Aires, with six days full of geomatics workshops, presentations, exhibitions and interactions.
Group photo at the conference
This year’s SotM Czech Republic took place as part of OpenAlt conference.
A presentation on OSM for Location Intelligence during the conference (source)
This year’s SotM LatAm took place in Lima, the capital city of Peru. There were many interesting sessions that took place at the conference. You can read more about it here.
A group photo of the OSM community in Cameroon taken in 2015 (Source)
Over 150 people from 10 countries came together at SotM TZ to explore how mapping can help develop Tanzania, people working in this field, and learn GIS and mapping skills at introductory and advanced levels.
Attendee Innocent Maholi captures a picture (Source)
These were a few of the many amazing conferences that happened in 2017. Let’s make sure that 2018 sees more such events for OpenStreetMap and continues to help communities network and grow!
Interested in hosting a regional conference and want to have in the name “State of the Map” or “OpenStreetMap”? Please notify the OSM Foundation as soon as possible. This is to ensure that there are no timing conflicts with the International or other SotMs nearby. It also gives us some protection of our trademarks.
Are you far into the planning stage for your regional SotM conference in 2018? No need to worry, but please notify us immediately too. Note that the updated policy does not affect people organising mapping parties. We will tell you more about our updated trademark IP policy soon, so stay tuned!
The OpenStreetMap community recently received an award at the DINACon conference on digital sustainability.
OpenStreetMap is showing itself to be sustainable in various ways. Our database is available to download in its entirety, which helps to ensure the hard work of our contributors will always live on regardless, but our core servers keep humming thanks to many generous donations to OSMF over the years, as well as funding from our corporate membership programme. Most important of all, our community continues to thrive, attracting new members, while retaining wonderfully dedicated long-term contributors (to whom this award was dedicated). Thank you to everyone who helps make OpenStreetMap sustainable.
Thanks also to Simon Poole, Stefan Keller, and Michael Spreng who accepted the award, as well as running an OpenStreetMap session at this conference.
While we’re on the topic of awards…
During our own conference, the international State Of the Map, in Japan back in August, we held the OpenStreetMap Awards ceremony. If you missed it, these are the results:
The OSM awards website has a list of all nominees, and details of why they were nominated (also on this blog). Well worth a read. It’s a catalogue of spectacular individual contributions made to OpenStreetMap throughout the 2016/2017, and all of these nominees deserve our congratulations.
OpenStreetMap communities form an integral part of OpenStreetMap. State of the Map conferences is held across the globe to celebrate the essence of these communities. Through the year we get an opportunity to interact with fellow OpenStreetMap contributors via various channels like OSM diaries, mailing lists, OSM Forum and many others, but seldom have an opportunity to meet those that live far from us. State of the Map conferences has become one of the platforms where the OSM usernames get faces and reflect the online world of OSM that we interact with every day!
To make the most of this opportunity you can now use this attendees page! You can add your OSM username, projects you have been or are working on, the country you are from, the dates you are planning to attend the conference and your contact information.
Photo by Harry Wood, CC BY-SA 2.0 on Flickr
Why is this useful? You can connect more easily with people from different parts of the world working on similar projects as you are. It can help you coordinate your travel with fellow OpenStreetMap contributors. It will help in setting up sessions, meetings and most importantly, help you make the most out of State of the Map.
Don’t forget to add your details and do look into the page before you travel to State of the Map!
See you all in Japan!
The community voting for the OpenStreetMap Awards 2017 is open! During the call for nominees you submitted more than a hundred of them. Then a number of active community members have prepared a shorter list. Now it is again your turn: choose who gets an award at the ceremony at the State of the Map in Japan.
This time you would need to consider 45 nominees in 9 categories. That is a tiny fraction of active community members who did good in the past year, but still a lot to choose from. To make your task simpler, we have made a couple of changes.
You don’t have to select only one nominee for a category: that was a hard choice last year, and most of the time you’d wish you had more votes. Now you have! Choose as many as you like, even all of them. This process is called Approval Voting: studies show it is much fairer that the regular one-vote voting, and much easier to understand than STV. The winner is still determined by the number of votes.
And do use the fact that you can change or add to your votes at any time until the voting ends (that would be on 16th of August). We will cover all nominees in this blog, so you could make an informed choice. Starting right now, with the two technical categories. Nominees are listed in a random order.
For outstanding contributions to any of the core tools, systems, processes or resources. Not limited to systems under OSMF control. The Rails port, mapnik, and any other tool that mappers use on a daily basis, knowingly or not, are eligible.
A slide from the 2016 ceremony
For the best new service or approach. New tools for contributing data, image recognition, trace or OSM data analysis, new mapping approach or new perspective on old tools.
Now that you know what these ten nominees did, head to the OSM Awards website and click on these you think should get an award for their work. We’ll return next week to look at writing and mapping categories.
Photo of the certificate © Blog Conhecer OpenStreetMap
