The State of the Map Organizing Committee (SotM WG) is a volunteer-led working group that organizes international SotM conferences that bring together members from the worldwide OSM community. To achieve this, we partner with a local OSM community to bring home the SotM conference in their country. The local community is selected among other bids after our open Call for Venues.
The Call for Venue for SotM 2023 received three bids from local organizing communities:
- Paris, France (withdrawn)
- Prizren, Kosovo
- Yaoundé, Cameroon
SotM WG has held multiple voice meetings and discussions within the group. We have carefully reviewed the bid applications and considered the issues that may arise along with each.
Bid 1: Paris, France
The France team had withdrawn their bid application for SotM 2023.
Bid 2: Prizren, Kosovo
The Kosovo team had submitted a strong bid that clearly laid out all the details and plans for the conference. This was planned to be closely before or after FOSS4G 2023, similar to what happened in SotM 2022 in Italy.
However, the SotM WG acknowledges that in-person international SotMs had been held in Europe for three consecutive years, and overall (excluding online conferences in 2020-2021), 9 out of the 13 international SotM conferences were held in Europe (source: [1])
Bid 3: Yaoundé, Cameroon
The Cameroon team had also submitted a strong bid that clearly laid out all the details and plans for the conference. SotM Africa 2023 will take place in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and they had offered that if this bid is accepted, the conference will merge with the international SotM 2023, which would be the first-ever international SotM in Africa and an opportunity to reach new faces and OSM communities.
We looked very deeply into this bid and discussed all possibilities with the local team of Yaoundé. However, security and safety are pressing issues in Cameroon (sources: [2][3][4]), and members of the OSM community had also expressed concerns about this.
No SotM 2023, and plans for SotM 2024
After carefully considering and reviewing the bids for SotM 2023, we have decided not to organize an international State of the Map 2023. Instead, we will focus our efforts on finding a perfect venue for 2024 in Africa – or if there is no possibility in Africa for 2024, we will look for a country in a region which was underrepresented in the history of SotMs.
We hope to open the Call for Venue for SotM 2024 by early 2023.
Call to action: We’d like to invite you to join the SotM WG and help us with the work for SotM 2024. If you are interested, please send us a message by emailing sotm [at] openstreetmap [dot] org.
= State of the Map Working Group
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Wait, why it is cancelled instead of making online SOTM 2023?
Even tiny and small one?
How does this geographical fact exclude the possibility of an SoTM in Kosovo ? (I totally agree about a greater geographical diversity of SoTM) and the organization of SoTM 2024 in Cameroon, but I find it difficult to understand for Kosovo, especially since you indicate that the proposal was strong
Yes, that is also weird for me. Why no STOTM at all is preferable to one in insufficiently diverse location?
Unless actual reason was different and this is stated as camouflage.
Also, if no STOTM at all is preferable to STOTM in Europe – maybe it would be a good idea to mention such limitations so people will not spend time on making doomed bids?
This decision makes absolutely no sense to me.
With Kosovo there was the perfect candidate and it would have allowed to “put Kosovo on the map” and for many to discover the culture and amazing food of the second youngest country in the world, and the most welcoming place I ever visited.
No one would love more than I to travel to an African country for the SoM and I am have been dreaming about the places where the next conference could be, but I totally understand that if the security of our LGBTIQ members cannot be guaranteed it is an disqualification factor, this does not mean that the situation in the country cannot change and that an inclusive meeting can held in the near future.
I thus really don’t see why it can’t be in Kosovo.
This is confusing to me too that Prizren wasn’t chosen if it was indeed a strong bid, and no better candidate was available. Can we surmise that there will be no further SotM international conferences in Europe (even in its underrepresented southeastern parts), until some other continents are represented first?
Such regionalism insistence (instead of mere preference, which I support) seems strange to me, especially as previous conferences had no problem at all with some of the SotM international to be held multiple times even in same *country* (like Italy, UK, Japan), including the latest one in 2022. After all, Europe as an continent is hugely diverse in itself (IMHO much more so than, say, Western EU vs. North America).
Can it be explained what prompted such hard change in direction, and instructions about organizer suitability and preference documented at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map/Planning (or somewhere else)?
Especially strange to me seems that there were no online venue alternative, even if Prizren was for some (currently unstated) reason deemed inadequate.
Matija
Related discourse: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/feedback-on-the-decision-for-no-sotm-2023/4231
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