State Of The Map 2009

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is excited to provide full travel and accomodations costs for 15 mappers to attend State of the Map. We sought nominations of people from places where costs would prohibit attendance, especially developing countries and places that are “interesting” geopolitically. The scholarships will provide an opportunity for these leaders of nascent OSM communities to network, learn, and find the inspirations and support to take OSM to the next level.

From 35 nominations, in 19 countries, we had the difficult task of choosing 15 recipients. Barring any unexpected problems (and sorting out the arrangements in short time has been no easy task either), we will have the honor of welcoming the following mappers to Amsterdam.

• Abdel Hassan from Cairo, Egypt
• Anas Maraqa from Palestinian West Bank
• Anatolie Golovco from Moldova
• Arlindo Pereira from Brazil
• Arun Ganesh from Chennai, India
• Asif Rasul from Punjab, Pakistan
• Ciprian Talaba from Romania
• Claudomiro Nascimento Jr from Brazil
• Freddy Rivera from Colombia
• Giorgi Gujabidze from Tbilisi, Georgia
• H.S. Rai from Punjab, India
• Jorge Luis BATISTA Echevarría from Havana, Cuba
• Julio Costa Zambelli from Vina del Mar, Chile
• Khanh Le Ngoc Quoc from Vietnam
• Nic Roets from Johannesburg, South Africa

Many thanks go to the Open Society Institute for helping to make this happen.

State Of The Map posters are now available for download! Use them to promote State Of The Map – in your workplace, school, university, or anyplace you see fit. You can download both black and white versions, in A3 and A5 paper sizes through the links below. The posters are provided as high resolution PDF files. We’re looking forward to seeing them appear around the globe!

White background poster

Download A3 | A5

Black background poster

Download A3 | A5

Its great to welcome GPS Business News as official media sponsors of the State of the Map 2009. They’ll be covering the 3 days of talks, workshops and mapping discussions through their blog and video casts.

GPS Business News is a great source of news and commentary on the geo industry, covering the markets and business around navigation, tracking and all things geo. The people who read GPS Business News are working for companies like TomTom, Navteq, Garmin, Sirf and so on. Its a tribute to the hard work of OSMers that the established geo industry are taking a real interest in our work. Come along to the Pro Users’ Day to talk to some of the commercial, governmental and non-governmental organizations who are using OSM.

If you are a start-up or small business that is building applications or services on top of OpenStreetMap, the #GeoMob OpenStreetMap Application Challenge is the competition for you.

On Friday 10th July at the State of the Map, some of the hottest location based start-ups will be competing in a rapid-fire pitch-off that’s sure to stun and amaze the crowd. Here’s the lowdown on two of the entrants:

mapme.at lets you save and display you share places you visited on holiday, the path you ran in a marathon or any of geo information with your friends. The app gives users a large number of ways to update their location, including iPhone apps and email. mapme.at also provides an API that lets developer build applications that make use of mapme.at’s unique geo-tracking capabilities.

OffMaps let’s you take your maps offline. It is the ideal companion for any iPhone and iPod Touch user, who wants to access maps when travelling abroad (and avoid data roaming charges) and who wants to have fast access to maps at all times. This app (and the icon) just has to be on the right hand side of Apple’s built-in maps app.

To enter your start-up, project or small business into the challenge and win the respect of the OpenStreetMap community, fill out this form.

The long awaited programme for the State of the Map 2009 is now available here.  

For the first time this year, the first day of the State of the Map will focus on the emerging professional users of OpenStreetMap.  The last 12 months has seen a huge increase in the professional adoption of OpenStreetMap.  The State of the Map will feature presentations from GeoFabrik, ITO World, Traveline and CloudMade – some of the companies who are pioneering the commercial use of OpenStreetMap data.

The day will start with a keynote talk from geo-industry veteran, former Intergraph CTO and Spatial Networking Founder, Peter Batty. Peter’s talk will take a bird’s eye view of the entire geo industry, critically examining the role that crowd sourced geo data has to play.

The day will wrap up with the “OpenStreetMap-App Challenge” – a quickfire session hosted by #GeoMob in which 15 start-ups or small businesses will have the chance to pitch their company to the OSM crowd. If you’re a small business who wants to take part, you can apply here. You can find more about the “Pro-Users'” day, here

Some speaking slots at the business day are still available – to find out more, email Nick.

Three day tickets, including lunch, refreshments and t-shirts start from €90 for OSM community and Foundation members. Tickets are going fast – don’t leave it until too late to register!