Come 2017 it will have been 5 years since the international community gathered in Asia. Today we are delighted to announce that we will be back in Japan for the annual ‘State of the Map’ gathering:

Tsuruga Castle (c) Sonotoki (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

We had some amazing bids this year and the working group has spent time reviewing these with the local groups – thank you for support. Aizuwakamatsu is a brilliant place for us to gather as a community next year. It is a city in the Fukushima Prefecture some 260 km (160 mi) north of Tokyo. With a long history and many attractions it will also make the perfect place for some sightseeing.

Stay tuned to this blog, and our twitter account @sotm, for more news and how you can participate in State of the Map 2017. It’s always exciting for contributors, consumers, developers, teachers, and everyone in-between to come together and share what’s happening in the OpenStreetMap project. We look forward to seeing you in Japan!

Thanks to everyone who made it to the international State Of The Map conference in Brussels two weeks ago. With around 400 attendees from 52 different countries, this was a fantastic event bringing our community together.

Huge thanks to the team of organisers, and local volunteers in Belgium who helped make it such a success. We saw some of these people up on stage at the end of the conference:

…but also thanks to those working behind the scenes. A special thank you to Ben Abelshausen and Rob Nickerson who played leading roles in organising the event from on the ground and remote support respectively. There is a list of folks on the SOTM team page, but this will be updated soon because…

The early steps of organising the State Of The Map 2017 are in progress! We’ll bring you an announcement soon about the choice of host country for next year, and of course there will be an opportunity to help with organising and sponsorship. Start thinking about it. Earlier the better!

Video from all the main auditoriums at the Brussels conference can be found at the conference website. We’ll be bringing you the edited per-session versions of these talks soon. More photos from Brussels can be found in this set from Tatiana the official conference photographer, and also on the sotm2016 flickr tag.

We previously congratulated the winners of the OpenStreetMap awards. In addition to that, here are a few links to blogs by attendees with write-ups and ruminations about the conference:

• Geofabrik gave a general round-up “As always, State of the Map provided amazing insights into what goes on in the OpenStreetMap universe”
• escada wrote a diary entry about his first SoTM “Informative, entertaining and brought by passionate people. Something I have not seen in other (non-OSM-related) conferences”
• Mapilllary gave plus their “photo-walk” pictures, “Massive thank you to the organizing team at SotM. They seem to have thought of everything which allowed attendees to focus on getting the most of out of the three days”
• Melanie Eckle from Heidelberg University described SoTM, and also the HOT summit and other “maptember” events. “The presentations, workshops and ‘birds of feathers’ sessions in the State of the Map conference covered a great variety of topics”
• Mikel wrote up some notes on the Local Chapters congress, one of the activities at the conference (taking place out on the grass in the sunshine!)
• Finally SoTM organizing volunteer, Gregory Marler, described the Code Of Conduct of the conference, and some of the issues which came up. This gives a really interesting insight, and shows why it was an important and valuable step to introduce a clear code of conduct, as a way to encourage diversity at our conference. Just one of the many things our organisers and volunteers worked hard on, to keep us all happy at this great event!

If you attended the conference please check your inbox for a “State of the Map: Feedback Survey“ email. The organising team would appreciate your feedback to help make it even better the coming year.

During the conference we launched a new OpenStreetMap fundraising drive. In the past, the conference itself provided a significant annual source of funding for the foundation, but as the project grows we need more reliable funding sources. Your donations help will ensure continuity and continued independence of OpenStreetMap. Please help us reach our fundraising goal by donating and sharing the link: donate.openstreetmap.org, our fundraising site.

Finally if you couldn’t make it to Brussels for the annual international OpenStreetMap conference, remember there’s a whole range of events large and small happening all over the world (see the calendar). Just last weekend there was “State Of The Map Asia“, the second “local” conference for the asian continent, which took place this time in Manilla, Philippines!

This year, for the first time in history of our project, we are preparing for the first OpenStreetMap Awards, which will be presented this September at the State of the Map 2016 conference in Brussels.

Again, this is a community award: nominees and winners are chosen by you, the community. During the preliminary stage, you have submitted more than a hundred nominees for six categories, including the Ulf Möller Memorial Award. From those, a group of active members of the OSM Foundation have prepared a short list: five candidates for each category. It definitely was not simple: a lot has happened during the past year, and we had to omit some good nominees to fit in these five slots. With the remaining list we’re left thinking “can we just award all of them?”, but there can be only one winner (for each category). So the rest is up to you!

Please vote for your nominees on the awards website. For each of the six categories, choose one nominee. Whoever gains the most votes by the end of the voting, on September 22nd, will receive the award. The winners will be announced on Sunday, September 25th, at the State of the Map conference.

A hackday at State of the Map is a great opportunity to start working on those awesome projects that seemed unimaginable just a few days before, or to continue something already under way. Join us and get hands on with code, documentation sprints and mapping activities. What you work on is up to you!

As usual the hackday will be after the main conference, Monday the 26th of September. This year we are lucky to have found a space donated by Brussels Environment. We can use the BEL conference center with room for about 100 people right in the city center of Brussels. We will need the space because we are joining forces with OSGeo Belgium who have their FOSS4G Belgium conference the day before SOTM.

We ask you kindly to subscribe here and indicate if you want to order food. Make sure you order if you want to eat at the venue because you are not allowed to bring in outside food. We are still looking for a sponsor – but failing that, we will ask for a contribution of 6€ on the day.

All further practical details can be found on the event page. Hope to see you all there!

Your State of the Map team

Thanks to the support of our amazing sponsors we have kept the Early Bird tickets for State of the Map available for as long as possible. With less than 8 weeks to go until we gather in Brussels the Early Bird offer will soon come to an end.

You have until 7th August to grab your price savvy tickets now before normal prices kick in.

Don’t forget your accommodation though! The number of rooms available in our hotel deal drops by half when Early Bird closes so book your room before it’s too late.

Your State of the Map team

Today we’re sharing the programme of upcoming talks at State of the Map 2016 with you!

Over the last few weeks the State of the Map team have been hard at work reviewing your session proposals. We’ve translated, we’ve read, we’ve scored, we’ve filtered, we’ve talked, we’ve listened, we’ve tweaked and we’ve debated! But most of all we’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning about your exciting OpenStreetMap projects. And we’d especially like to thank you for your input via the community survey, important input to the process.

It’s been a big challenge getting to this step. We’ve picked out the best talks but with a limit of just 44, this meant some difficult decisions had to be made. We hope you enjoy the programme of talks – to join us in Brussels don’t forget to purchase your ticket and book your accommodation.

And will soon be adding the Sunday workshops, and lightning talks. There will definitely be space for you to set up informal discussion groups (“birds of a feather” session) during the event.