A progress update on vector tiles from the Engineering Working Group

The OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Engineering Working Group has an update on the effort to create vector tiles for openstreetmap.org. Read on for why this work is important, what’s been done so far and how they are incorporating community feedback, and the technical details for those who want to know more.

The background

Currently, the openstreetmap.org website serves raster tiles, which are image tiles made up of pixels — think a downloaded image of part of a map. But the effort has begun to create vector tiles for the site, which will help improve how the map looks and how it works. You can read more about the background of the project here.

Vector tiles serve up maps as vectors: points, lines and polygons. They store geographic data (like what makes up OpenStreetMap) in a format that allows for dynamic styling and interactivity. For users, vector tiles will mean a new, modern-looking map style with seamless zoom on openstreetmap.org, the map can be updated more quickly when data changes, and it should perform better for users.

Looking further ahead, the most exciting part is what this vector tile project will make easy for volunteers and tile users: 3D maps, more efficient data mixing and matching and integration of other datasets, thematic styles, multilingual maps, different views for administrative boundaries, interactive points of interest, more accessible maps for vision-impaired users, and surely many other ideas that no one has come up with yet. You may recall that many of these have been long-term interests for people in the OSM community.

The plan

The goal of vector tiles project is to provide a vector tiles setup that can work for openstreetmap.org — that is, a worldwide, complex basemap site in heavy demand from users and services around the world, where the data underlying the map changes all the time.

Or to put it technically, to create a setup for a worldwide complex basemap under high load which requires minutely updates.

Paul Norman is leading the vector tiles project.

He is working on adding to his Tilekiln project which generates vector tiles from a PostgreSQL database (like OpenStreetMap’s), making use of the Shortbread schema, which is a data format for how to name layers & properties within a vector tile, and improving Themepark, which allows one to add OSM data to a Postgres database.

The work is split up into three steps:

1. First round of Tilekiln improvements and Shortbread Themepark improvements

2. Parallelism improvements

3. Shortbread publicly available in production

The first two steps are nearly done. Tilekiln now generates tiles in parallel, making it practical to generate tiles for the entire world. The next step is to start the deployment into OSMF hardware to prepare for production.

Technical details on step 1

For those interested in the technical details of what’s being worked on, there are five main components of the first step above.

1. Automated packaging of Tilekiln

2. Tilekiln metrics being published with a Prometheus exporter

3. Themepark Shortbread reviewed

4. A demo server running with minutely updates of Shortbread tiles, rendering tiles on-demand

5. Demo shown to community

Items 1 and 2 are complete without need of further discussion. For item 3, Paul found that the osm2pgsql Themepark Shortbread implementation needed more work than anticipated as it was missing a layer and had some issues.

Item 4 and 5 are complete. Paul’s demo server is running with minutely updates and the hardware requirements are more modest than expected.

The community has also been providing useful feedback, such as on Paul’s OSM Community Forum post.

The community offered a lot of suggestions, some of which have already been incorporated. The remaining, in-scope issues from the community are: Curved lines rendering as jagged and vector tiles being too large.

The jagged lines issue is due to how smooth curves are represented in vector tiles. It has mostly been addressed but similar issues are expected to crop up in the future. A target scale equivalent to the minimum scale of the standard tile layer has been set. Zooming in to an even lower scale is possible, but artifacts may start to appear.

Vector tile size will continue to be an issue that needs continual work, but the current tiles are particularly large. Since this part of the testing some changes have been made that cut the size in half. Tile size optimization will be an issue that needs ongoing work, as tile size is the biggest factor in user experience.

The tiles being produced are usable, but more work remains to be done. Now that the parallelism work is complete it’s possible to generate large sets of tiles in order to test, so Paul will be returning to working on the tile definitions to improve tile size and fix some remaining issues, but the current tiles are usable.

Background on the tools being used

Here is some information on the various tools used for this project.

Tilekiln is software written by Paul Norman for generating vector tiles from a PostgreSQL database. Alternatives are martin (or maybe t_rex). Tilekiln is in new development, although it uses a lot of standard PostgreSQL features to generate the vector tile data. Most OSM based maps (incl. osm-carto on osm.org) are generated from SQL database queries from a PostgreSQL database. Tilekiln generates vector tiles from similar queries. Tilekiln is new.

Themepark is part of the osm2pgsql suite of tools, to allow one to add OSM data to postgres, and share those processing steps between other projects. Many PostgreSQL based OSM map styles (like osm-carto) use osm2pgsql

osm2pgsql has been around for 15+ years in OSM, and is used in many many places. Although Paul has contributed code to it, he is not the main developer. osm2pgsql has gotten more advanced, and better, in the last few years. Part of the power is pre-processing the data, and Themepark is an attempt to make these pre-processing steps easier.

Shortbread is a “vector tile schema” created by Geofabrik. It’s a data format for how to name layers & properties within a vector tile.

This blog posts contains contributions from Adam Hoyle, Mikel Maron, Amanda McCann, Paul Norman, and Andrew Wiseman

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed 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, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

Highlights from the OSMF Board Spring 2024 Meeting

The OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board of Directors recently convened for a Face-to-Face (F2F) strategy meeting, and we wanted to provide you all with an update!

We met on April 27th and 28th in Frankfurt in person, and for some of us, it was our first time ever meeting in person.

The meeting allowed us to discuss and refine strategies, foster deeper connections, and become more effective in serving the OSM community. By coming together in person, we were able to cultivate a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives, refine our communication strategies, and focus on the most pressing priorities facing the OSMF.

Over the busy weekend, we were fortunate to have the guidance of our trusted facilitator, Gunner, who helped us navigate through discussions and prioritize our action items. He helped us communicate better, refocus on what really matters, and prioritize our many tasks and goals. With his guidance, we were able to make the most out of our time together and tackle important issues head-on. With his support, we not only stimulated our internal operations but also laid a solid foundation for more effective engagement with the OSM Community.

By coming together, we were able to address challenges more efficiently, brainstorm innovative solutions, and lay the groundwork for future initiatives. As we move forward, the Board is excited and motivated to share the progress of our action items with the community. While some of these initiatives will yield results in the short term, others may require more time to fully come to fruition. Nevertheless, we are committed to transparency and accountability, and we look forward to celebrating our achievements together with you all, the community.

You read more about some of our discussions and actions from the meeting on the OSMF website (here).

We’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to meet F2F and strengthen our bonds. And we’re not stopping here! Looking ahead, we are eagerly anticipating our next in-person engagement at this year’s State of the Map in Nairobi. This event will provide another invaluable opportunity for us to connect with each other, and most importantly with members of the OSM community, exchange ideas, and continue our collaborative efforts to make OpenStreetMap the best it can be.

OAuth 1.0a and HTTP Basic Auth shutdown on OpenStreetMap.org

In 2024, the OSMF Operations Working Group (OWG) is retiring OAuth 1.0a and HTTP Basic Auth on OpenStreetMap.org. These are technical ways for applications to authenticate users with the OSM website or API. OAuth 1.0a and HTTP Basic Auth have been deprecated since 2023, as OAuth 2.0 is now the standard authorization method for most systems.

There are three key dates in the transition process:

March 1st, 2024: New OAuth 1.0a application registrations were disabled. Existing applications were not impacted. HTTP Basic Auth was not impacted.
May 1st, 2024: System administrators will start brownouts to find applications that are still using OAuth 1.0a or HTTP Basic Auth.
June 1st, 2024: OAuth 1.0a and HTTP Basic Auth will be shut down.

Retiring these authentication methods is necessary because of security concerns, and the complexity of maintaining so many authorization implementations, including ones that rely on unmaintained components.

How does this impact me as a developer?

If you are a developer of an application using OAuth 1.0a or HTTP Basic Auth to log in to the OpenStreetMap.org website, you might need to make some changes to switch to OAuth 2.0. Fortunately, this is a well-supported industry standard.

If your application only makes read calls to the API, authorization is optional. For rate-limiting purposes, it is still a good idea to add authorization to your requests, but it is not required. If your application is a website using OSM for logins, making use of OAuth 2.0 is much easier as it is much better supported because so many other sites use it. It also avoids problems like users ending up with many tokens in their list on the website.

If you are developing software that edits using the API and is run locally, you may need to make code changes. All common languages have libraries that deal with OAuth 2, and libraries are the preferred choice for any authorization. You can also use Zverik’s library for command-line tools, or write your own shell script of about a dozen lines.

You should be able to find lots of examples online of OAuth 2 client implementations in your language. If you want to get more detailed information or ask technical questions, please use the GitHub ticket. Here, the OWG also tracks the applications requiring modification to use OAuth 2.0.

How does this impact me as a mapper?

Most mappers will notice no change. The transition will not affect how you log in to your OSM account or use the website. iD and JOSM have supported OAuth 2.0 as the default authentication method for some time. If you use your OSM account to log in to a third-party site like the HOT Tasking Manager, MapRoulette, or HDYC, you will not be impacted as those sites have already moved to OAuth 2.0. Read-only API access does not require authorization at all.

Three Great Reasons to Join the OSM Foundation as a Member

Here are three reasons why April is a great month to join the OpenStreetMap foundation as a member.

1. As a a member you can self-nominate to serve as a member of the OSMF Board. This allows you to influence the strategic plan, some of OSM’s finances and other matters that directly affect the direction of OpenStreetMap’s future.

This year’s OSMF General Meeting and board elections are 19 October 2024. This means that if you want to run for the Board you must become a member of the Foundation by 22 April 2024 There are FOUR Board positions up for election next fall. Even if you’re not sure that you want to run for the Board, but you think you might be interested, you should join!

2. If you are a member of the OSM foundation at least 90 days before the Annual General Meeting, you can vote in the annual Board elections, as well as on other foundation initiatives. The details on types of membership are here. Importantly, if you are an ‘active contributor’ you can apply for a free membership.

3. To help us grow and diversify the OSM Membership worldwide.

As you can see from this blog post, we are in the midst of a worldwide campaign to increase the number of OSM foundation members from all parts of the world. Right now, representation amongst OSM members is skewed toward the US and northern Europe, whereas there are many thousands of OSM contributors all over the world. By joining as a member, you can make the voices of the communities heard.

OSMF Board member Arnalie Vicario has been posting testimonials from current members on her X (and other accounts.). Here’s a video from Daniel Akor from OpenStreetMap Nigeria:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1775364652974940317

Become an OpenStreetMap foundation member today!

SotM 2024: Call for Academic Track Abstracts

This year’s State of the Map conference, a hybrid conference taking place in Nairobi and online simultaneously, will feature OSM Science 2024, aka the 7th edition of the Academic Track of State of the Map – a full day of sessions dedicated to academic research about, and with, OpenStreetMap. See see past editions:

The goal of OSM Science 2024 is to showcase the research and innovation of scientific investigations into OpenStreetMap, while at the same time providing a bridge to connect members of the OpenStreetMap community and the academic community through an open passage to exchange ideas and opportunities for increased collaboration. We expect empirical, methodological, conceptual, or literature-review-based contributions addressing any scientific aspect related to OpenStreetMap, in particular, but not limited to, data collection, integration and quality analysis in OpenStreetMap; contribution patterns and the human/social dimensions of the project; integration of Artificial Intelligence techniques and other applications in which OpenStreetMap takes a central role.

Submission Guidlines

Authors are invited to submit abstracts (800-1200 words in plain text, without figures) using the OSM Science 2024 Pretalx submission system by 10 May 2024. Authors of selected abstracts will be invited to deliver an oral presentation, a 5 minutes lightning talk, or to present a poster (in case a poster session will be organized) at OSM Science 2024 and to submit an extended abstract to the OSM Science 2024 Conference Proceedings (see the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 proceedings.)

Submit your proposal today!. Learn more about the requirements and the scientific committee on the official State of the Map 2024 website.

Do you want to translate this and other blogposts in your language…? Please email 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 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, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is an 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.

SotM 2024: Call for Participation

The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual OpenStreetMap (OSM) conference run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). It is organised by the SotM Working Group, a team of volunteers. This year, SotM 2024 will again be a hybrid event, held in person in Nairobi, Kenya and online!

State of the Map is intended as an opportunity for the OpenStreetMap community to get to know each other, both personally and regarding their work in OpenStreetMap. We want to offer a programme that covers all topics relevant to OpenStreetMap. Sharing OpenStreetMap knowledge is the essence of SotM. Apart from presentations, we value the interaction between listeners and speakers, so we want to create an environment that boosts critical and healthy discussions, including contentious topics. This year we meet in the vibrant city of Nairobi in Kenya. This will be the first international SotM on the African continent. We hope that many of you join us there. At the same time, we recognise that many people may not be able to travel due to personal reasons or governmental restrictions. Therefore, we intend to share the programme virtually as well and give the virtual visitors the opportunity to participate and interact.

We would love to see your submission for one or more of these tracks:

OSM Basics
Community and Foundation
Mapping
Cartography
Software Development
Data Analysis & Data Model
User Experiences

Tracks

Don’t worry too much about the track categories. They are mainly there to give you an idea on what kind of talks we are looking for and to help us organise the conference. If you find it difficult to select the right track for your talk, choose the one that fits best.

OSM Basics

OSM has grown a lot. Many newcomers or “newbies” have a great thirst for knowledge in areas that may seem uninteresting and basic to existing contributors. We want you, the expert, to pass on your knowledge to the next generation of community members. Considering we have a variety of participants from across the globe, these talks should focus on being easy to follow and understand. Please note in the submission what approximate level of previous knowledge is required for the participants.

Examples for this kind of talk are: Explaining the OSM data model. Introduction to OSM Editors or cartography tools. Working with OSM data using the Overpass API. How to render a map? How to print a map?

Community and Foundation

Want to recount your experiences while building a community? Or talk about the vision of OSMF? Or maybe discuss the strategy of the Board? Then this is the right track for you. Reflections on community diversity and questions on etiquette are also suitable. Other possible topics include why to become an OSMF member, working group experiences, and everything related to OSMF and the OSM communities.

Mapping

This track is all about mapping, surveying, data collection, tagging; tips and reflections on OSM editors, or new editor features; reflections on automated mapping, organised editing and imports.

Cartography

Possible topics can include cartography and data visualisation, rendering raster and vector maps, map styles, CartoCSS, MapLibre, maps with QGIS, printing maps and more. All your ideas on how to create a beautiful, fun, quirky and out-of-this-world map! The track also provides a space to present your artistic and creative projects that use OSM data or themes to create clothing, jewellery, 3D printed objects, engravings, visualizations, computer or mobile games, virtual worlds, augmented reality, flyers, postcards, etc.

Software Development

This track awaits talks by or for developers of applications that make use of OSM data: OSM editors, (vector) tile servers, geocoding, routing, navigation, editor layer indices; tips and tricks with new PostGIS features, or new features of other tools and applications.

Data Analysis and Data Model

This track is dedicated to OSM data itself: analysis of OSM data quality; reflections about enhancing the data model; or discussing the way the OSM data is accessed through the API. Also submissions about the use of AI with OSM data are welcome in this track.

User Experiences

This track is all about the usage of OSM. Examples are how OSM is used in governments, public transport, humanitarian response, and scientific context, among others, as well as OSM as an educational tool in classrooms. You can present citizen projects that are using OSM data to understand and manage their environment.

Submission Types

You may choose for most submission types whether you attend in person or participate virtually. We will try to make all events available for online and offline attendance. Exceptions are noted below. Please keep in mind that the conference will take place in the EAT timezone (UTC+3). We will try to accommodate the timezone of participants when scheduling events but we will be restricted to the usual conference hours between 9am and 6pm local time (i.e. EAT).

Talk (20 minutes)

Classic talk of about 20 minutes for the talk itself followed by a question and answer session. This is the preferred submission type. Talks can either be held in-person at the conference or, if you cannot attend, you may submit a pre-recorded talk. The QA part of the talk is always live. Virtual speakers will join via a video call. That means that even with a pre-recorded video, you need to be available.

Extended Talk (40 minutes)

An extended talk has 40 minutes for the talk and 15 minutes for questions. These are for topics you want to explore in more depth. The same rules as for classic talks apply. You should outline why your talk needs more time.

Workshop (60–90 minutes)

Workshops are sessions in which the participants are actively involved, for example by following some steps on their own devices. We welcome workshops that cover basic beginner’s topics as well as innovative technologies.

Please communicate the technical equipment that participants need to bring in order to attend your workshop. Please ensure that your participants shouldn’t be told to create an account at a commercial platform or a platform with user tracking. Or if so, communicate that in an clear way in your submission and provide guest accounts for your participants.

Workshops will be held either in-person or virtually, not with a mixed audience. If you want to offer the workshop for both audiences, you are welcome to hold it twice. For virtual workshops, we will provide video conference rooms. Online workshops will have a limited number of places to ensure a successful session.

Panel Discussion (60-90 minutes)

Panels are for hot, controversial discussions around OSM community, mapping and data. Topics may cover for example diversity, legal questions or the future of the data model. You should outline the format on how you intend to organise the discussion and make sure to invite the key players for the discussion. Panels must be held in person with all participants present at the conference. We welcome panels that include the audience. Just keep in mind that questions come from virtual and in-person participants. A designated moderator is therefore strongly recommended.

Other

Your submission does not fit into any of these submission types? Please get in touch with the programme committee via email (program-sotm@openstreetmap.org) before the end of the call for participation.

Spontaneously Organised Sessions

We plan to provide space for sessions which cannot be submitted in advance. Details will be announced before the conference.

Lightning Talk

Lightning talks will be short 5 minute talks. There will be some spaces for last-minute in-person talks with an on-site signup on a whiteboard as well as spaces for pre-recorded videos. This will be announced separately.

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are informal, spontaneous discussion rounds centered around a specific topic. It is not possible to submit a BoF session in advance. BoFs will usually be held in person only.

Free Spaces

We will try to provide free spaces to meet or just chitchat for working groups, local chapters, local groups, user groups, etc.

Rating Criteria

In rating submissions, we will apply the following criteria:

OSM as the subject: A submission where OSM is the main subject or an important ingredient will be rated higher than one that is more generic (e.g. a general talk about GIS software).
Preference of “open”: A submission about open data and open source software will be preferred over one that deals with proprietary data or proprietary software and closed platforms.
Preference of innovation: A submission about something new, or something not discussed at previous conferences, will be preferred over one that discusses more widely known issues (exception: OSM Basics).
We are hoping for talks from a multitude of speakers and hence we would prefer accepting a talk from a “new” speaker over accepting a second talk from someone who has already an accepted talk.
We will also try to avoid accepting too many talks from members of the same organisation.
We prefer talks from members of underrepresented groups.
We value transparency. We expect submitters to disclose affiliations and sponsors of their work.

Sometimes we will make some changes or have suggestions:

We might ask if several speakers can merge their talks.
We might also ask if a change of format would be possible (for example, we might suggest the lightning talk format instead of a regular talk when we find there is not enough space in the programme for a complete talk, but it is an interesting subject).

Language

The conference language of the State of the Map is English. All presentations shall thus be held in English. It is an important aspect of the conference that participants can interact with the speakers for questions and discussions. This restriction does not apply to Birds of a Feather sessions. They may be held in other languages, according to the preferences and needs of their participants.

Publication

Video recordings and slides of the lectures will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution International 3.0 or later (CC BY 3.0+) license.

Tickets

State of the Map is a non-commercial event where neither the organisers nor the speakers are being paid. Speakers have to get a conference ticket just like everyone else. Details will be announced later.

Programme Committee

Your submissions will be reviewed by a programme committee consisting of OpenStreetMap community members from various parts of the world.

Manfred Stock (lead programme committee, mapper, Switzerland)
Sarah Hoffmann (developer, Germany)
Arun Ganesh (mapper and cartographer, India)
Christine Karch (chairwoman SotM Working Group, Germany)
Federica Gaspari (OSM community, Italy)
Feye Andal (OSM Philippines)
Ilya Zverev (forum moderator, Russia)
John Bryant (geospatial consultant & mapper, Australia)
Laura Mugeha (local team, Kenya)
Miriam Gonzales (Geochicas, Mexico)
Raphael de Assis (president of UMBRAOSM/Union of Brazilian OpenStreetMap Mappers)
Satochi Iida (OSMF Japan, Japan)
Stefan Keller (Geometa Lab Campus Rapperswil, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (FH OST), Switzerland)
Séverin Menard (Geomatician, France)

The programme committee is aware of possible conflict of interest situations. We try to balance that in the composition of the committee. Nevertheless, we have imposed some rules upon ourselves to handle conflict of interest situations:

We do not rate submissions from our workmates, clients or relatives.
We act carefully and are aware about possible conflicts (especially the situation of horse trading. We act particularly careful in cases associated to a sponsor.
We communicate to other programme committee members when we are in a conflict of interest situation.
We report any outside attempt of influencing our decisions to the chair of the SotM Working Group.

We hope this detailed “Call for Participation” helps to increase the transparency of our programme selection process. Questions are welcome. You can reach us at the following email address: program-sotm@openstreetmap.org.

Timeline and Deadlines

23 April 2024 23:59:59 UTC: Deadline talk, workshop and panel submissions
End of May 2024: End of review phase, speakers will be informed
June 2024: Talk video production (test video and final video)
August 2024: Lightning talk video production
6-8 September 2024: State of the Map

Submit your presentation

Please submit your presentation proposal to our submission form.

— The SotM 2024 Programme Committee, 5 March 2024

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 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, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. Our volunteer Working Groups and small core staff work to support the OpenStreetMap project. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation Board looks ahead to 2024

2024 is already moving fast. The new OSMF Board is working hard, digging into their focus areas, and implementing the strategic plan. Following the “tradition” of the collective post in 2023, here are a few sentences from each of the Board members on where they want to contribute in 2023.

We welcome your input and participation. Contact us directly or, if you are an OSMF Member, join our monthly Board meeting.

Arnalie

Last year comes by so fast. I am not so proud of what I have accomplished as a board member as I have had some health challenges. It was a learning experience (the success and failures) for me!

This year, I will continue efforts to engage, grow and diversify the OpenStreetMap community, this includes:

Building more local chapters
- Last year, we have revised the Local Chapters page to clearly state eligibilities and document that are required to submit. In addition; LCCWG is taking the lead role to review applications for potential local chapters as well as taking proactive steps to encourage communities to apply.
- This year, we hope to establish 1-3 new local chapters especially in regions where there is no or less established local chapters. Our newest board member Dani will be my partner on this!
- To learn more about OSMF Local Chapters and how to apply: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Local_Chapters
Growing and diversifying OSMF membership
- Run a membership drive at first to second quarter of the year with volunteer team and community leaders
- Review OSMF WGs, their goals, processes, operations, etc to provide a baseline how to encourage more participation in OSMF WGs
- Review Active Contributor Membership application – ensuring that criteria are fit for people who it wish to benefit
- Exposure to local communities and community projects through community presentation during OSMF board meetings
- Revitalise the Diversity and Inlusion Committee to ensure that it is still fit for purpose and membership makeup/activeness
Ensuring OSMF’s support to regional and national SotMs (more on this)
Representing OSMF in various events/conferences to extend our reach (outside OSM, other open communities) and listen to local communities

More on this in my OSM diary: community in the map and at the table: my first year and continuing plans as OSMF board member

If you would like to talk and discuss about community, reach out to me arnalie[at]osmfoundation[dot]org or send me a message (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/arnalielsewhere)

Craig

When I first joined the Board I had never seen inside of the OSMF organisation so I initially wanted to fix some obvious external problems. But I now hold the post of Secretary and Chair of the Finance committee which has led me to be far more focused on the internal problems that impact on the operations of the Foundation. I am now putting in a lot of effort to improve systems and guide the foundation towards a future where members, corporate members, donors and data users speak of the OSM Foundation as a well managed, highly effective organisation that has a clear view of how it wants to develop in the next decade. My stress is not on making the Foundation bigger, but rather on making it much better at what it already does and then making sure that people know that it is better.

Dani

I am thrilled and grateful to embark on this journey as a member of the Board of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, representing YOU. The opportunity to contribute to such a dynamic and impactful community is both humbling and exhilarating. As I step into this role, I acknowledge that I have much to learn, and I eagerly anticipate the wealth of knowledge and experience that the community members will teach me. My primary goals for this year revolve around fostering a stronger sense of unity within the community, amplifying our fundraising efforts to ensure the sustainability of our initiatives, and serving as a dedicated liaison for all members of the OpenStreetMap community. I approach these objectives with humility and determination, understanding that collaboration and inclusivity are paramount to our success. I am genuinely excited to immerse myself in this vibrant community, to forge meaningful connections, and to work together towards our shared vision of empowering people through open mapping.

Guillaume

2024 will be a pivot year for the OSMF, and as board chairperson, my focus is on making sure that the big changes we have coming up happen smoothly.

The most exciting change will be vector tiles. We will be trying to have about one blog post each month throughout the year as our project progresses. You can already read our first one or play with Paul’s demo.

Our move to the EU is another interesting shift that we will be working on. Brexit has made our life in the UK too complicated, and while a move represents a lot of work, it’s something we have to do. While I have had very promising talks with officials from Luxembourg, we’re also looking at Belgium. Ease of doing business, community presence, OpenStreetMap usage, and financial and non-financial incentives all play a role.

This year is the first year when will work under our new budgeting system, letting us easily link every expenditure to the budget. This means we will get better at showing where your donations are going: it’s not only spreadsheets and numbers, but about trust and accountability. It has been the product of a lot of work, started back when I was OSMF treasurer. This will help us fundraise more effectively.

Fundraising is, indeed, an area where we need to work more to be able to achieve our goals. Some of the largest OSM data users don’t contribute at all to keeping it running. We have mostly fundraised from large tech companies (thank you!), and must also expand to other sectors that are part of our ecosystem, including governments, humanitarian NGOs and transit companies, to increase our income’s resilience against market cycles.

Attribution is another key area. It’s not about ego; it’s about creating a funnel for the virtuous circle that improves the map. Our copyright page is the single largest landing page on our site, and due for a revamp, transforming it into a recruitment tool for new mappers and donors rather than just a legal necessity.

Major vandalism incidents in Israel and Ukraine marked us in 2023. We have patched the most vulnerable spots ad hoc, and managed to discourage the vandals. If we could more easily moderate what gets submitted before it hits the API, we would address a core vulnerability and improve data quality. I’m picturing an auto-moderation engine for which DWG could write rules, like an email filter. It would, of course, be a major engineering project and require careful planning.

Improving the reliability of our operations is one of the most rewarding long-term projects. By improving many things a little bit at a time, we’re reducing the areas where our infrastructure is at risk from a single failure. If any of the open tickets inspires you, please help us out.

I have for the last few years worked to encourage the OSMF to hire more staff – we have enough work for a dozen people if we can get the funding. Managing our operations and projects has long been too much for volunteers to handle. I would like to make progress on hiring an executive director for the OSMF to be able to work on ideas like this full time.

These goals suffer not from a lack of vision or talent, but a lack of hands and time. If you care about making these happen, please donate, or join one of our working groups.

Mateusz

Since the start of my activity as an OSMF board member, a bit more than a year ago, I have spent in a total of 390 hours on various OSMF-specific work. Recently it was budgeting discussions but earlier also for example work on ensuring that OpenStreetMap is attributed when required, coordinating contact between organisers of upcoming SotM-EU and memebers of working groups, getting community feedback into strategic plan and various communication – with community in general, working groups and members of both. And a lot of discussions/meetings.

Currently, I am thinking about how the budgeting process can be improved for the next year, based on how it went this year.
I will work further on encouraging to attribute OpenStreetMap, as required by our license.
I also want to spend some time on making clear how we spend money and how we will spend it with more funds raised – both to make clear to the community what is happening with our funds and to encourage potential donors to help us fund cases where smartly spending money can help OpenStreetMap.

I also want to thank for all the work done – by all mappers, people helping as part of working group or without a defined structure, other board members, people who donated money, people who have released various software making it easier to edit or use OpenStreetMap data. And people who use OpenStreetMap data in various interesting and useful ways.

Roland

The volunteers of the Foundation heard in the past years loud and clearly the expectation to get longstanding software work done – on top of maintaining a stable platform including the responsibility for your SRE. For example, vector tiles on osm.org are no longer a vision, but now work in progress.

The board’s job within that framework is to ensure the funding for all of these goals. The board has heard loud and clearly the message last year that there is open homework despite the absoutely honorable mission. Alan Mustard’s keynote at the SotM EU has given a good overview what alreadly is done and what still is ongoing work.

The board will organize finances in a way such that they look much more familiar to people who are used to donate to benevolent causes. And thus the finances also become more transparent to our community than ever has been asked for! I’m very happy that Guillaume has convinced Harrison to bring his expertise in finances of non-profits to OpenStreetMap. The board has started to set up a budget, will maintain a forecast, and seek close communication with the working groups to assure both financial reliability and ensure the working groups can focus on their maximum contribution towards the Foundation’s mission to support OpenStreetMap.

Sarah

This year in the OSMF board has started with intense discussions on budget and spending. Fundraising for all the activities necessary to advance the strategic plan will still be an important task for 2024. But there are other things to organise around that: defining the rules for our financial management, getting some project management in place and learning how to work with our contractors. Last year I’ve also started looking into the practical steps of moving the OSMF into the EU and will continue to work on that throughout the year. Finally, we are celebrating our 20th birthday and I hope to see everybody in Nairobi at SotM to celebrate together.

Help Us Grow and Diversify OSMF Membership Worldwide

by Arnalie Vicario

Welcome to the 2024 OpenStreetMap Foundation Membership Campaign!

Today, members of the OpenStreetmap Foundation (OSMF) Board and several of the OSMF Working Groups are launching a worldwide OSMF Membership campaign with the goal of growing and diversifying OSMF membership in regions where there are no or very few OSMF members.

As you can see from this map, there are many such regions.

A visualization of OSMF membership by country, worldwide

OSM is known for being built by a vast, global community of mappers, GIS professionals, community builders, developers, engineers, trainers, etc. over the last twenty years of the map’s existence, all of whom contribute their local knowledge and maintain open and free geospatial data.

The OSM Foundation administers and supports the making of OSM by overseeing OSM’s technological systems and data. It also helps steer the long-term strategy and well-being of the map.

So, it’s very important to have the membership of the OSM Foundation be reflective of the vast diversity of its community.

Why Do We Need an #OSMFMembershipCampaign?

As headlined on the OSMF website, the OpenStreetMap Foundation is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anyone to use and share.

It’s important to note that you don’t have to be a member of the OSM Foundation to make a profile on OSM.org and begin editing OpenStreetMap. You don’t even have to be a member to volunteer for a local community or a Working Group, or go to a State of the Map event or participate in a mapping party.

However, if you want to make a difference in the overall future of OSM, becoming an OSMF member is a good idea. For example, OSMF members are entitled to vote in the affairs of the Foundation, including to select members of the Board. OSMF members can also self-nominate for the Board. As you can see from its charter, the OSM Foundation values OSM contributors, and the OSMF membership exists to give dedicated contributors a voice in how the Foundation is run.

However, of 16 January 2024, there are just 1,929 OSMF members. This is a small percentage of the overall number of active mappers in OSM. (Pascal Neis has provided many resources, including this one, which show the data about the tens of thousands of people who are mapping at any one time and the millions who have mapped over the last 20 years.)

The fact that there are only 1,929 OSMF members means that just a tiny percentage of OSM’ers are electing the board and helping shape the OSM strategic plan and finances.

Further, here is the regional distribution of the 1,929 OSMF members.

To be successful at its goal to represent the interests of the OSM community, the OSMF must increase its membership in regions and countries where there are no or very few OSMF members.

The only way this will happen is if many thousands of OSM users decide to join the OSM Foundation as a member–TODAY!

What Are The Benefits of Being a Member of the OSMF?

You get to play a direct role in choosing the leadership of the OSM Foundation. OSMF members vote every year at the Annual General Meeting, usually held in December, to elect the people who serve as volunteers on the OSMF Board. Importantly, you have to be a member in good standing 90 days before the election, so the time to join is now.
If you’re a member during the 180 days before the General Meeting, you can self-nominate to serve as a member of the OSMF Board. This allows you to influence the strategic plan, some of OSM’s finances and other matters of governance.
You show your support for the map and the community.

Here are additional reasons.

Please help shape the future of OSM by joining the OpenStreetMap Foundation

I Want to Help with the #OSMFMembershipCampaign

Be a Campaign Ambassador!

Post in your own social accounts and community channels about the Campaign! You can refer to the #OSMFMembershipCampaign Communications Plan.
If you are already an OSMF member, share why OSM mappers should be a member and encourage OSM contributors to join as an OSMF member! Use the testimonial guide and upload your testimonials in the OSM Community Forum thread or email arnalie.vicario [at] osmfoundation.org

Join the Team! Comment on the Call for Volunteers thread in the OSM Community Forum.

We are specifically looking for volunteer translators who can help us translate into different languages, specifically:
- French
- Spanish (Juan)
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Swahili
We are also looking for help to explore other spaces where we can reach OSM community members, for example by organizing webinars, researching spaces e.g. podcasts where we can promote the campaign, and going live on social media (e.g. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.).

Here is the OSMF Membership Drive 2024 Plan on the OSM Wiki.

For any additional questions and comments, reach out to us via the OSM Community Forum thread.

We appreciate your help and look forward to growing and diversifying OSMF membership with you!

The OSMF Membership Campaign Team

Welcome OpenStreetMap Belgium, the newest (and returning) OSMF Local Chapter

by Arnalie Vicario

We would like to congratulate OpenStreetMap Belgium on becoming an OpenStreetMap Local Chapter (again)!

The past year was a rebuilding year for OSM.be. Regaining Local Chapter status was the cherry on top. The official status confers a seriousness and professionalism when working with outside organizations, and fosters leadership opportunities for OSM.be members when it comes to OSM Foundation policy making.

In a statement for this blog post, the OpenStreetMap Belgium Board noted that:

We had a tough 2023 when we had to reinvent ourselves as a separate organization. The good thing about that is that we’re now a much less complex organization. Furthermore, our bylaws now have legal standing, and we were able to set rules that better fit OSM-style leadership.

OSM.be’s goals for 2024 include promoting important mapping tasks and supporting member projects. They will also continue their camera grant project and keep working with Mapillary to distribute more 360° cameras across Europe. Another exciting project is to set up a Panoramax instance for Belgium. This project is in the relationship building stage as they seek to partner with governments and universities on servers.

Background

OpenStreetMap Belgium first became a Local Chapter on May 24th 2018. At that time, OSM Belgium was operating under Open Knowledge Foundation Belgium (OKFN). The Local Chapter agreement was terminated in September 2023 after OSM Belgium had resigned from OKFN Belgium. In November 2023, OSM Belgium re-applied for Local Chapter status as an independent organisation. The OpenStreetMap Foundation Board approved the application on January 25th 2024.

Thank you to the OpenStreetMap Belgium community for spreading the good word about OSM, and educating people about the power of open data, local knowledge and community!

Interested in Becoming a Local Chapter?

Reach out to the Local Chapters and Communities Working group via email local@osmfoundation.org, or post any questions you may have in the community forum thread: Local Chapters: What To Know and How to Join.

Learn more about OSMF Local Chapters here:

Mappers, Universities, Companies, and nonprofits Contributed Over £373,000 to Support OSM in 2023

Last year, the global OpenStreetMap community, together with OSM’s corporate members and partners, donated an astounding £373,000 to support the map.

In an extraordinary show of support for OSM’s 19th birthday, the mapping community contributed over £113,000 through small donations. This enthusiastic broad base of community support resulted in approximately 3,089 donations from all over the world averaging £36 each. The OSM fundraising committee is especially grateful for the social media shares and the kind and encouraging comments on supporting.openstreetmap.com, in addition to the gifts. The positive response to the birthday fundraising campaign was a highlight of the year. Thank you!

OSM’s corporate partners also played a pivotal role, with total corporate memberships reaching £201,074. Additional, generous gifts, above and beyond corporate membership fees, from Microsoft, NextGIS, Smoca, and Elasticsearch helped bring us to the £373,000 total. We are also grateful to the corporate Advisory Board for their advice and collaboration which has been essential to the success of our partnerships.Thank you!

A special note of thanks goes out to NextGIS, which has pledged 10% of its profits from data sales to OSM, setting an impressive standard for its commitment to the project.

In an extraordinary show of support for OSM’s 19th birthday, the mapping community contributed over £113,000 through small donations. This enthusiastic broad base of community support resulted in approximately 3,089 donations from all over the world, averaging £36 each.

OSM is fortunate to be the recipient of mission critical, “in kind” support through donations hardware and other infrastructure. We are grateful to Fastly, who provide the content delivery network for the file service, and many others, including TomTom, Bytemark, AWS and University College London, as well as AARNet, AWS,Academic Computer Club, Umeå University, Appliwave, Bytemark, Equinix Amsterdam, Equinix Dublin, Exonetric, INX-ZA, NetAlerts, OSUOSL, OVH, and Scaleway and everyone else who contributes to OpenStreetMap.

We’d also like to add a special note of thanks to Kevin Bushaw, who gave us a steep discount on our new website, supporting.openstreetmap.org.

The funds raised in 2023 will go toward enhancing infrastructure, supporting our critical support staff including our SSRE, and helping build OSM into the future.

On behalf of OSM’s local communities, the OSMF board would like to thank the companies who sponsored SotMs in 2023, both regional and local. This kind of support is very important to local communities, because the OSMF itself cannot promise companies that their funding goes towards regional events, except where the money is earmarked as part of a Sponsorship Distribution Agreement. Companies who directly support regional events are making a positive difference for the community and the quality of the map.

Lastly, we want to point out that any generosity toward OpenStreetMap is generosity to the broader open source software and data community, not just the OSM project. The impact of your gifts extends far beyond the financial; it is a commitment to a world where open data serves as a cornerstone for creativity, problem-solving, and community building.

Thank you for supporting OpenStreetMap!