Announcing SotM 2022 Firenze, 19-21 August 2022

After two successful online editions, we are excited to announce that State of the Map 2022 will take place in-person in Firenze, Italy on August 19-21, as well as online!

SotM 2022 will be a 3-day hybrid conference making it possible to take part in the annual global celebration of OpenStreetMap either in-person or online, or both.

The conference will take place before the FOSS4G 2022 conference, which is also in Firenze on August 22 to 28, 2022. The local team is committed to providing participants with a safe conference environment in accordance with the latest safety and health guidelines set by authorities.

Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We are very looking forward to collaborating with the Firenze team to organize an innovative and safe experience at State of the Map 2022, with sessions accessible and inclusive as much as possible for our passionate audience.

More details about the organization, call for presentations and tickets will be soon communicated.
See you in Firenze in August!

SotM Organising Committee

Follow us @sotm to stay updated on the next steps of the process!
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.
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.

Self-introduction of the new iD developer contracted by OSMF

The OpenStreetMap Foundation board welcomes Martin Raifer, whom we contracted to work on the maintenance and development of iD, the default editor at openstreetmap.org. Below you will find his self-introduction. Martin will continue working for 20% of his time for HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) and he will have regular meetings with the OpenStreetMap community regarding iD. We would like to remind that any iD-related disputes will be dealt by the OSMF Software dispute resolution panel.

Hello, my name is Martin Raifer, on OSM I use the username tyr_asd. I’m happy to announce that starting with November 2021, I will take over the maintenance and continue the development of the iD editor (OSM’s default mapping web-application) as a freelancer and will be paid for that by the OSMF. I’m feeling humbled that the OSMF entrusted me with this important task!

my goals for iD

To put it simply: I want iD to be the best possible mapping tool! It should optimally fulfill its prominent, important and also delicate role of being the OSM’s default map editor.

iD should remain an intuitive tool which everyone can use, from beginners performing their first edits to the most experienced of mappers. Since many users will continue to have their first point of contact with mapping using the iD editor, there is the need for a strong focus on good usability and user experience design. At the same time, I find it also important to not neglect the needs of more advanced users who like to work efficiently and sometimes need more specialized ways to manipulate OSM data.

In many ways, iD already does a quite good job of affording people to edit the map. Of course there are always things to improve, stuff to optimize and features to change.

my background

I’m an active OSM mapper since 2009, and have been contributing to the OSM software ecosystem in various ways. Some of you might know overpass-turbo – the web front end I created for the Overpass API – or some of my other OSM-related projects. Professionally, I have worked with OSM data first at an urban bike mobility startup, then as a freelancer for a project of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and became a research associate at Heidelberg University/HeiGIT (more about that below) where I helped organizing the State of the Map conference in Heidelberg in 2019.

In the past, I already contributed occasionally to the development of several OSM’s core software: for example the osm website, the editor-layer-index and the iD editor. For iD I helped with beta-testing in the early days, added presets, submitted bug fixes and implemented a few small features like the support for WMS background layers.

my affiliation with HeiGIT

I will continue to work for the HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology at Heidelberg University) alongside my work on the iD editor to a small extent of one day per week. At HeiGIT, I will continue to collaborate on mostly OSM-related research activities, with a strong focus on data quality. In addition, I will also support some teaching activities such as lectures at Heidelberg University.

The main chunk of my time will of course go into the development of the iD editor! I will do my best to cleanly separate my activities at HeiGIT from my work for the OSMF. Should at any point in time a conflict of interest occur, I will directly report it to the OSMF and HeiGIT to resolve.

my next steps

Initially, I will prioritize fixing of bugs, publishing of updates and documenting of the status quo such that decisions about future changes can be made in an informed way. Working through the accumulated reported issues on GitHub will probably take a while.

After that I would like to focus on step-by-step improvements of the iD editor. This could include stuff like enhanced support for road lane tagging, lifecycle prefixes, opening hours, or productivity tools like a building or way improving mode.

I am open to feedback from the whole OSM community, so get in touch on iD’s issue tracker on github or through some of the many OSM communication channels (I will try to follow as many of them as possible). Of course code contributions from you are also very welcome!

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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. It has no full-time employees and it is supporting the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Join the OpenStreetMap Foundation for just £15 a year or for free if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

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You’re invited to the 2021 Local Chapters and Communities Congress

The LCCWG is excited to invite OpenStreetMap local chapters and community organisers and leaders to the 2021 Local Chapters and Communities Congress!

*Local Chapters & Communities Congress poster* *– please share widely!*

The LCCC 2021 is a virtual event where leaders and members of various OSM communities, whether they are officially recognized Local Chapters of the OSM Foundation or just a regular user group of OSM mappers, come together to share stories and learn from each other.

Last year, 35 community leaders came together from more than 20 different countries and the LCCWG is asking you to spread the word far and wide so that even more communities come to exchange knowledge and build networks this year!

The LCCC takes place online on 06 November from 1200 – 1500 UTC and you can find more details on the OSM wiki, here.

Report by the OSMF microgrants committee on the trial run of microgrants

In 2020 the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) board funded 12 OpenStreetMap projects proposed by community members, groups and organisations. All the project proposals (funded or not) are visible on the OSM wiki and some of the 12 selected proposals were presented on the OSM blog. The program was overseen by the microgrants committee, whose composition was determined by the OSMF board. Initially, the program was set to fund 10 projects with a budget of up to 5000 Euros per project and for a maximum of 50.000 Euros. The policy framework can be read here.

Report by the OSMF Microgrants Committee

The trial run of the OSMF microgrants program has now ended. You can

read the detailed final report (.odt, 29 KB) by the Microgrants Committee, submitted in September 2021 to the board, and
see the presentation (.pdf, 53 KB) by Hanna Krüger (Microgrants Committee) during the September board meeting.

Project reports by grantees

Almost all projects have sent their final reports and you can read them on the OSM wiki. The respective project proposal is linked towards the top of each page.

More details

You can see the microgrants timeline here and find more details in the Microgrants Committee’s minutes until June 2020 and in the OSMF board minutes.

Future

The final report by the Microgrants Committee was sent recently, so at the time of writing there is no evaluation published by the board or a decision taken on whether there will be a second microgrants round.

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Looking for moderators for OSM lists!

In December, the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) Board asked for help to instate a moderator team for the OSMF-talk and talk mailing lists. This task was passed to the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG) who subsequently set up a moderation subcommittee to lead this work.

Over the last 9 months, the subcommittee has led efforts to revise the Etiquette Guidelines and Process for Moderation but it will be the role of the Moderation team to put this guidance into practice and continue to define moderation practices in OSM spaces.

Volunteers are needed from all corners of the global OpenStreetMap community to participate in this Moderation Team to lead efforts to keep the lists safe, welcoming, and inclusive. The moderators will help to steer conversations on topic and encourage effective and respectful communication on the OSMF-talk and talk mailing lists.

Interested? Please complete this form and a member of the subcommittee will be in touch. The goal is to have a team in place by the OSMF election season (aiming for the end of October), so don’t delay!

OSMF election 2021- How to become a board candidate

OpenStreetMap Foundation members will vote to elect a new board in December.

Who can become a board candidate

Any natural person may be elected to become a board member, provided that:

they have been a normal OSM Foundation member [1] (not an associate member [2]) during the full 180 days before the General Meeting (start date of normal membership before 14 June 2021), and
are willing to act as a board member, and
are permitted by law to do so.

[1] Normal members provide their full residential address and can vote on all issues. Their residential address may be disclosed to other members.
[2] Associate members provide just their country of residence - which may also be disclosed to other members - and can vote - but not on all issues. Additionally, they cannot be board candidates.

If you want to find out the type of your OpenStreetMap Foundation membership (normal or associate), please check the most recent approval/renewal membership email or email the volunteers of the Membership Working Group at membership@osmfoundation.org

Available seats in this election

The 2021 board election will have at least 4 board seats available: of M. Maron, A. R. McCann, A. Mustard and G. Rischard. The terms of T. Knerr, JM Liotier and E. A. Villar will continue.

Currently there are seven seats on the foundation board. Board members are volunteers.

What the board is/is not, rules and responsibilities and why run

Please read the links on the OSM wiki.

A lot of the foundation’s work is done by the volunteers of our working groups, and if you want to help the foundation, you can also look at joining those.

How to nominate yourself

Update: The self-nomination window has now closed. Thank you to everyone who put their name forward!

Self-nominations of board candidates will open on 16 October 2021 and you will be able to nominate yourself on this OpenStreetMap wiki page: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board#Candidates

You can create an account on the OSM wiki here and you will be able to add your name to the table that will be added on that date by editing the page here (please wait until 16 October 2021 to do so).

Resources about the 2021 board election and Annual General Meeting

The main two pages that will have the information about the 2021 board election and Annual General Meeting are:

OSM wiki: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/AGM21/Election_to_Board and

OSMF website: https://www.osmfoundation.org/Annual_General_Meetings/2021

How you can help

A few of the current and past board members have mentioned that the thought of being a candidate did not cross their mind until it was suggested to them. So, you might want to think if you’d like to run for the board or to suggest being a candidate to others.

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Join the OSMF Engineering Working Group to support the OSM developer ecosystem

To support the development of open source software around OpenStreetMap, the OSM Foundation has recently launched the Engineering Working Group (EWG). The group intends to support open source software projects with direct funding, mentorship programs, and by offering a platform for coordination.

Why this working group?

OpenStreetMap relies on a vast ecosystem of open source software. This includes the tools used by mappers to understand and contribute data, the software powering our database servers and website, the libraries and frameworks used by developers to build consumer-facing applications around OSM data, and many of these applications themselves.

The development teams creating these software products are generally independent entities, separate from the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). This is by design: The OSM community values do-ocracy and decentralization, so the OSMF does not manage software projects. However, that does not mean there is no room for the OSMF to support this vital ecosystem!

What we do

The Engineering Working Group (EWG) is charged with

Handling software development paid for by the OSMF, including the distribution of grants. This will involve putting out calls for proposals on tasks of interest, and accepting proposals on other tasks.
Offering a platform for coordination of software development efforts across the OSM ecosystem. We want to encourage standardization and shared efforts between projects by bringing together developers with similar interests. This work also includes responding to emails and directing people at other people or appropriate resources.
Managing OSM’s participation in software mentorship programs such as Google Summer of Code, which help grow the OSM developer community.

For handling paid development, “tasks” include development of new features, maintenance of code, documentation, and other tasks that improve the developer experience. When we are ready to start providing grants, we will encourage applications from skilled individuals who aren’t professional developers, professional contractors or companies, as well as those who are.

The OSMF has previously supported software projects through microgrants as well as separately with funding for Nominatim, osm2pgsql, Potlatch 2 and iD. With EWG, this kind of support will be placed on a more solid foundation.

In our first round we will look for projects that don’t need much management and focus the bulk of our efforts on core software. Like with all work paid for by the OSMF, the principles of the Hiring Framework will apply.

Whom we seek

As a group that is just getting started, we’re eagerly looking for additional working group members.

We would particularly welcome people knowledgeable about technology used in key OSM systems, such as the rails port, Ruby on Rails in general, and the cgimap implementation of the main OSM API, as well as those who can help with knowledge domains, such as user interface design, which are not well covered by the existing members.

However, you do not need to know any particular technology to participate! So if you have experience with the OSM software ecosystem, developing software, or managing software development, consider joining us!

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Projects of the Czech OSM community

The following post was put together by several members of Czech OSM community, and the main contributor was Mikoláš Štrajt. OpenStreetMap Česká republika z.s. is one of the OSM Foundation Local Chapters.

OpenStreetMap Česká republika z.s. association was founded in 2018 with a primary aim to have a stable entity for ownership of already existing website of the local community on domains openstreetmap.cz and osmap.cz. Since 2020 the association acts as a local chapter of OpenStreetMap Foundation in the Czech Republic.

*Screenshot of https://openstreetmap.cz/* *Map data* *© OpenStreetMap contributors*

In the long term, we, as a Czech community, engage in the following mapping projects:

similarly to Slovakia, we are mapping a widespread network of tourist routes,
(not only) to its supervision we run a database of photos Fody, with a primary focus on tourist objects like guideposts, info boards, and maps,
we import some data from Český úřad zeměměřický a katastrální (Czech national mapping agency):
- automatically, address points (operated by poloha.net project),
- semi-automatically, buildings (from the RÚIAN database) and fields and meadows (from the LPIS database) using the JOSM plugin called Tracer,
we are updating post boxes according to open data by Česká pošta (Czech Post) and we report any discrepancy found,
as needed, we sometimes do collective edits. Recently, we have been for example improving the tags about recycling containers or controlling if we do not have telephone booths, which were cancelled the other day, hanging in the map.

Besides that, we

translate the WeeklyOSM into Czech,
organise the State of the Map CZ+SK conference (as part of wider OpenAlt conference or standalone action), and we are publishing video recordings of the speeches,
quarterly, call for a personal meeting of mappers – so-called “quarterly beer”,
organise mapathons,
clean up after vandals operating in the area of the Czech Republic, communicate with the newbies, state offices, and commercial subjects.

Members of our community operate their own projects, e.g.:

– MTB map – a map for mountain bike riders,
– tourist maps for Garmin, other Garmin maps,
– maps of the Czech Republic for applications based on the mapsforge library,
– POI importer used to easily import various datasets into OSM,
– Osmose backend for CZ,PL,DE,FI,DK,AT,
– Taginfo for the Czech Republic,
– OsmHiCheck – QA applications for hiking routes,
– Archive of extracts of OSM data for the Czech Republic with very old versions,
– Monthly generated map tiles for the Czech Republic starting 04.2006.

Talk-cz mailing list serves as the primary communication channel, which is supported by a jabber chat connected to a Matrix channel and our own section under the openstreetmap.org forum.

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OpenStreetMap RSS/Torrent functionality for planet files

OpenStreetMap is open data, available to all for free on https://planet.openstreetmap.org. We release six large files, totaling 428 GB every week. These files contain the complete OpenStreetMap data, including files with the full history of OSM.

To make it easier to share the load of downloading these files, we also supply BitTorrent files, which allow spreading the load across multiple web servers as well as using peer-to-peer file transfers.

mnalis has recently implemented RSS feeds which announce when the torrents come out. This allows users to automatically subscribe to sharing new planet files as they are produced, thus reducing the load on the planet.openstreetmap.org servers, which are bandwidth-limited.

More information is available on:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#BitTorrent_RSS.2FAtom_feed

Operations Working Group, Mnalis

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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. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups, such as the Operations Working Group. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation.

Apply to maintain and develop iD

iD is the editor through which 80% of OpenStreetMap users contribute to the common edifice. The OpenStreetMap Foundation is committed to its support and seeks to staff iD development.

iD development is a funded position with the OpenStreetMap Foundation, with remuneration at market rates according to skills and commitments.

Please submit your application to board@osmfoundation.org. Include CV, cover letter, and/or examples of work as attachments. Also please indicate your preferences of full-time or part-time, work location, contractor status, and anything else we should consider.

What we are looking for

iD development involves a wide range of roles that may be held by one single polyvalent person – or by more than one, with skills and motivations that complement each other.

The overarching concern will remain addressing and balancing the needs of a diverse range of stakeholders, including:

iD mappers and OpenStreetMap community members from around the world
Corporate and non-profit players in the OpenStreetMap space
Downstream forks and instances of iD
Peer projects that rely on components of iD, or that iD relies on

Project management responsibilities will put an emphasis on communications:

Foster a welcoming, professional, online public space
Maintain and communicate a project roadmap based on input from stakeholders
Gather feedback and build consensus around major changes
Host regular online audio/video meetings to give updates, receive feedback, and hold discussion
Leverage the community to reach out and mobilize beyond the development team’s immediate circle

Of course, the basics of open source software project management shall also be fulfilled:

Provide support for existing functionality
Design solutions to enable new functionality
Review and assist with pull requests from contributors of all skill levels
Publish periodic updates with detailed release notes
Ensure that a third party can build an independent instance as completely as possible

Some domain-specific knowledge will play an important part in understanding user needs:

Some familiarity with the modern field of geospatial technology
An understanding of the OpenStreetMap data model, including tags
The culture of OpenStreetMap, and the free software and volunteered open data world in general

iD is a web application widely used in a varietiy of technological and social contexts – hence the following areas to which its design must pay careful attention:

Usability: ensure that tasks are intuitive to accomplish
Accessibility: accommodate a wide range of users’ abilities
Localization: adapt the app across language, region, and culture
Cross-platform: support all major systems and browsers
Tablet support: handle touch and stylus interactions as well as mouse and keyboard
Privacy: limit web tracking to the minimum required for operation and keep the Privacy Policy up-to-date
Performance: optimize operations for compatibility with the older hardware available to the economically disadvantaged

Development technologies: