State Of The Map 2011

State of the Map 2011 is fortunate to have an amazing family of sponsors this year, and we welcome Deloitte as a gold patron.

For the third year in a row, we welcome Trails as our sponsor at State of the Map!

Check out what Trails has to offer:

Trails is the first GPS iPhone app that allows you to record, import and export tracks onto your iPhone.

Record maps while hiking, on bike trips or while jogging directly on your iPhone. Easily import tracks and follow hikes of others!

You can export your tracks with two clicks in the standard GPX Format. This allows you to geotag and geocode your non-iPhone photos (via e.g. HoudahGeo) or to share your track with others via Google Earth, etc

Trails is featured in the New York Times Gadgetwise Blog and is recommended by MacLife as one of their 101 iPhone Apps.

Trails beats Garmin: A field experiment (german) shows that Trails (2.99 US$) on the iPhone is more precise than the Garmin Edge 305 (200 US$).

You can meet the Trails team this year in Denver at State of the Map!

State of the Map is all about OpenStreetMap. The leading community based geo-project. Together we are making the best map of the world.
Talking about together ….. why not go to State of the Map together with a buddy?

With our buddy-project you can get a second ticket with 50% off. That’s double the fun, for half the price!
To apply for this buddy program, just select one of the buddy tickets on the registration page.

Have you already bought a passport (all-days) ticket and you want to bring a buddy along? Send an e-mail to buddy@stateofthemap.org, and we’ll send you instructions how to get your buddy a ticket for SotM.

Share the State of the Map experience with your buddy. The best way to let him/her see what OpenStreetMap is all about.

Small print: The buddy-program is eligible for passport-tickets. You can apply for only one buddy-ticket. Passport-tickets that are part of the buddy program are not eligible.

Here is the tentative schedule of how tracks will run in September. We will have a more confirmed list of specific talks, once we have reaffirmed with our speakers. Check back often!

The SotM11 video contest resulted in two remarkable entries. And it was not an easy choice for us to select the winner…

And here’s the winning video:

Gregory Marler: Congratulations with your trip to State of the Map!

Interested in meeting Gregory and other people who made OpenStreetMap the most comprehensive free and open map datasource? You can still register for our conference.

Curious about the talk tracks this year? Look for feature sneak peeks here, for what’s to come in September!

#1 OSM in Japan before and after the tsunami

OpenStreetMap has been an invaluable resource in aiding the responses to humanitarian disasters.

For example, since the Haiti earthquake of 2010, OpenStreetMap has been recognised widely for its contributions to the response. OSM members formed a special task force to map areas of critical need and locations of resources, all of which were important in the response to the disaster.

When disaster struck in Japan this year, OSM again played a critical role. In Japan, OpenStreetMap had grown steadily throughout 2010, and the community had ambitious plans for 2011. An OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan had been established over Christmas 2010, and the project received a large donation of vector data. Then, soon after the announcement of the data donation, Japan was hit by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that killed thousands of people and devastated wide areas of the Pacific coast of eastern Japan.

At State of the Map 2011 Daniel Kasti of the OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan will discuss how the earthquake changed the situation for OpenStreetMap in Japan, how priorities and plans shifted from one day to the next, and how the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and local Japanese communities were on hand to help. Daniel will outline how, in a short time, volunteers from various projects and communities helped to set up the infrastructure to collect, organise and distribute existing data sources and to improve the coverage & quality of the local OpenStreetMap data. Furthermore he will describe the challenges and unique characteristics of mapping in Japan, and how localized information and software is a crucial factor in the success of OpenStreetMap.

This talk is just one of the many presentations at State of the Map 2011 in Denver, Colo., USA, that will illuminate the unique, vital and fascinating ways that OSM data is used around the world. Come join us Sept. 9-11, 2011 at the Auraria Campus of the University of Colorado to hear these presentations and meet some of the people from around the world volunteering their time and efforts for these amazing projects and for OSM in general.

With about 2.5 months to go, more and more people register for the 5th edition of the main OpenStreetMap event of the year: State of the Map. Eric Brelsford, an avid mapper from Brooklyn, New York, is our 100th registrant.

Eric: “Having bought a GPS receiver and realizing that I would have to pay for most maps for it–and having an open source/free culture mindset–it was natural to take part in OSM.” Coming to Brooklyn, the area was mostly untouched TIGER data which Eric helped to clean. “Lately I am most interested in adding house numbers in my area, especially where TIGER falls short.” Eric adds.
But it’s not only Brooklyn that attracts his attention. “I worked for a few months with Map Kibera cleaning up some of the data, rationalizing schemas, and playing with Mapnik, in 2010. Most of my projects now are applications that use OpenLayers and tiles rendered using OSM data.” These mostly include community food projects such as Food Census, Farming Concrete, and Garden Maps.

Asked what he expects of the conference, Eric answers: “I am looking forward to getting to know more of the community, in a face-to-face way, and I would encourage anyone else who is thinking about it to come along!”
All we have to say: what’s holding you? hint, hint

We are proud to announce Bing as a returning sponsor of State of the Map event in Denver, Colorado.

Here’s what Bing has to say, “Events like 2011 State of the Map fuel the expansion of the global mapping community.  We are excited to be a sponsor and looking forward to Denver.”

Bing joins this year as a platinum level patron and we look forward to their participation.

In 2010, Bing announced the use of their aerial imagery for tracing in our OpenStreetMap editors.

Perhaps they will have another exciting announcement in September?

OpenStreetMap Video Competition

Want to attend State of the Map in Denver with a little bit of fame to your name?

Here’s your chance to win a free* trip in September to the annual OpenStreetMap event of the year!

Create a 1-3 minute video with the following criteria to guide you:

1. The video should be fun, unique and show what OpenStreetMap means to you.

2. Explain why we should choose you to be at State of the Map 2011!

3. Normal necessities and niceties:

No vulgar language

No nudity

No animal cruelty

4. Video must have CC, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licensing

5.  Post your video to YouTube.com with the hash symbol: #sotm11

6. Email your submission (plus link to video) to video@stateofthemap.org.

Hint: Promote your video on twitter, blogs, FaceBook, etc to get more views!

The competition is open now until July 8^th, 2011 11:59pm PST.

Winner will be announced by July 15^th, 2011.

Winner will be chosen by a combination of video popularity and by the SotM organizing committee.

Enter as many times as you like!

No purchase necessary.

*Free trip includes round-trip flight, hotel for three nights and one (1) Passport ticket to State of the Map 2011.

The State of the Map Committee is excited to announce a program to cover full travel and accommodations costs for mappers to attend State of the Map 2011 in Denver, Colorado (United States). We’re seeking nominations from the community for potential mappers.

We are seeking people from places where costs would prohibit attendance, developing countries, and places that are “interesting” geopolitically. The ideal candidates for funding are from countries with a small OSM community, perhaps just a few mappers in total. They have made a significant start at mapping their city, either through imagery or with their own GPS, and are directly familiar with the process of OSM. They may have started communicating among themselves, and made plans and scoped out the process for their local district. But, the community is nowhere near critical mass, and they need the inspiration and support to take OSM to the next level.

We need to act fast! State of the Map is just over 3 and a half months away, tickets and visas need to be arranged. In order to allow enough time for all the arrangements, the nomination period will be short, and ending at Sunday, June 25th. The number of scholarships rewarded will be based on the success of fund-raising. From the nominations received, we’ll review and invite scholars in late June.

Please send your nominations to scholarship@stateofthemap.org. For each nomination, include the mappers name, OSM user name, email address, location, and a paragraph or two on why they’d be great to have at SOTM. Self nominations are accepted.

Please forward this message to other relevant local OSM and mapping lists and social media!

As for regions, here are a few regions that seem to fit the bill, but nominations are not limited to these places at all.

• Eastern and Southern Europe: Belarus, Kosovo, Bulgaria
• Arab States: Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan
• Asia: Nepal, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia
• Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Guatemala
• Africa: Liberia, Ivory Coast, Swaziland

Sponsor-a-Mapper

In previous years there has been a scholarship program to help mappers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend get to State of the Map. This year we are announces an “Sponsor-A-Mapper” program. There are plenty of deserving individuals from all of the world that can’t afford to attend SotM. To help them be able to come join the community in person in Denver why don’t you consider paying to cover a portion of the cost of their ticket?

We are attempting to raise an average of $2,500 USD per mapper in order to be sure to cover their costs. This will vary slightly by transportation costs depending from where the select scholarships are traveling.

The more money we raise the more mappers we can sponsor!

To Sponsor-a-Mapper please email scholarship@stateofthemap.org

Thank you!