Last weekend was nothing short of magical. I had the incredible opportunity to attend my first ever global State of the Map conference in Nairobi, Kenya. This gathering of the OSM community was a fantastic space to connect with like-minded individuals and learn about the incredible work being done with geo-data technology across various sectors…Thanks to a generous travel grant from HOT Open Summit Program, I was now sure 100% I am going to make it to Nairobi. The conference itself spanned three days, from September 6th to 8th, and it was the shortest weekend I’ve ever experienced😄. Everyone was having such a great time that no one wanted to leave!

We arrived in Nairobi on September 5th, around 21:30 PM, and were greeted by the city’s chilly weather🥶. Despite the late hour and the cold, we managed to settle in and get ready for the conference. The next day, the conference kicked off, and I was both excited and nervous as I had a session scheduled for the first day, and I’d never presented in front of such a large and diverse audience before. However, the experience was incredibly rewarding, and I learned so much from the other speakers. I particularly enjoyed Diego Gonzalez Ferreiro’s presentation on UN-Maps: Supporting Peace with Open Data, Yvonne Darko’s talk on Photo Mapping from My Village to Pharmacies and Addresses, and of course, my own presentation on Women in Tech: What Worked Best for Me.😜😉

One of the best things about the conference was the opportunity to network with other attendees. I met some amazing people from all over the globe, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to strike up conversations. I am lowkey an introvert person🫣🤭 hahah so its kinda hard for me to start socializing with people but the people i met there were the coooolest people I have never see. I was comfortable talking to everyone around me (so cutesy,so demure as Hawa would say😅😅 ) . And the food? Let’s just say, the Kenyans did not disappoint! 🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

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It’s really a difficult task penning down experiences that even I could not express physically, but all the same I will walk you through the mapping horizons – my journey through the incredible State of the Map Nairobi.

State of the Map (SotM) Nairobi wasn’t just a conference; it was a homecoming. This year, the first-ever Afrikan-hosted, global SotM, buzzed with the energy of passionate mappers from across the globe.

“Who did you say you wanted to share the room with?”

“Have you booked your airport pickup, using Little Cab?”

“I don’t want my Letwin to get lost in Nairobi :D”

“The eagle has landed 🔥”

“Are you in Nairobi now?”

We keep it at that so curiosity kills the cat….

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What an incredible three days at State of the Map Africa 2024 in Nairobi! From 6th to 8th September, I had the privilege of connecting with brilliant minds and diving deep into the latest trends shaping the Open Geospatial world. The conference offered a rare behind-the-scenes look at the incredible work of the OpenStreetMap Foundation and the passionate global community driving it forward.

The sessions were nothing short of insightful. From learning about JOSM and Open Route Service to exploring the latest web version of MapSwipe, there was so much to take in. Hearing from various OSM communities across the world was particularly inspiring, with MapKibera’s presentation standing out. Their work in promoting OSM to tackle different challenges in Kenya was truly remarkable—an inspiring example of how open mapping can drive real-world change.

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We can improve user experience by providing verified, detailed and relevant information to OpenStreetMap. Let’s make OpenStreetMap a little bit better every day!

Now that I’ve taken a day off after the 14-hour bus trip from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam, I can finally sit and share my thoughts on State of the Map – the first time the global conference was held in Africa!!

Before starting my academic career last year, most of my 8+ years of work experience has been in the OSM and open mapping ecosystem. Check out my diary on OSM’s 19th birthday, where I shared more about my journey in this amazing community. To quote myself from that diary (I’m becoming a real academic now, haha): “OSM is a project that needs communicators, developers, managers, strategists, etc., working together to unlock its true value within the community.”

I was thrilled to see this in action in Nairobi! I met so many people working on diverse projects ranging from environment, health, climate, disaster, urban planning, etc. Most importantly, meeting people like myself (non-tech folks) focused on community organizing, communications, project management, etc, all under the OSM umbrella. This is why gatherings like these are crucial – they remind us that OSM is not just a map.

The conference experience was mixed for me because I was part of the organizing committee this time, so I got to see both sides (organizing and attending). If I had to choose, I’d probably prefer attending. But hey, if we all choose that, there would be nothing to attend, right!?

There were so many great talks! My favourite was probably On the Ground. The duo presentation was both fun and thought-provoking, making me think about how I’ve been mapping and what I could improve. Another highlight was the lightning talks - seeing young students and recent graduates so excited to share their OSM work and dreams was inspiring. It shows how OSM is shaping the next generation—boosting their confidence, networks, and more!

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Street Max Speed

This is a bit of an experiment on how to use this Diary thing!

9 September 2024

• I just moved to Brooks, Alberta from Calgary.
• After glancing at the ResultMaps page it seems like I might be the only active contributor in the area of Brooks/Newell County so that’s partly scary and partly exciting, as there’s still a lot of work to be done.
• My first order of business will probably be figuring out why half the roads in town use an abbreviated “W” or “E” suffix as opposed to using the full word spelled out. I’ll have to work on standardizing that, although I’ll have to do some sleuthing to figure out the correct format for those.
• I’m sure there will also be a lot of work to be done in terms of speed limits, sidewalks, stop signs, and other features that could be useful for navigation software.
• Perhaps I’ll come back and do some editing in Calgary from time to time as well, particularly in the Taza Park area which continues to make steady construction progress.
• I’m a busy man but love contributing to osm and hope to make some progress over the next couple of years. Thanks for reading my first diary entry~~!

I have no idea what stop is. Precisely saying, I have no idea what Site.key.table.entry.stop is.

Oh yes, it should be a variable of this site: I found it TranslateWikiNet as an untranslated-to-Japanese variable, Osm:Site.key.table.entry.stop/ja. And it should be a certain map feature (to which site.key.table.entry.* is dedicated to). But I have not been able to figure what it is: I spent half a year already to pick it up on this website, vainly browsing here and there.

Any other language translations? Oh yes, I’ve noticed it since my first day of search. They’re Stop, Halte, 停车站 and so on. It lulls me to put it into 停留所 (ja: bus stop), but Google Image Search kept me from this temptation: it shows me some train station images too, which shouldn’t be called so in my language. Et voila, here we have Site.key.table.entry.bus stop already! So Site.key.table.entry.stop is likely for something else.

I find myself in a deadlock. Your suggestion will be appreciated. At best the pointer on this site, or on wiki, or screenshot. But for any input I’ll be grateful.

Started using Open

Street Map and have enrolled for Transportation, Agriculture, Disaster Prevention and Disaster Recovery

Journal Entry No.1

1.) Learned how to use OpenStreetMap interface, studied tutorials and watched videos to learn how to utilize the software.

2.) Similarities to Angle Ranking, Clinical Notes, Detail Oriented observed in utilizing this software effectively and efficiently.

Time Spent today: 2 Hours

~ End of Note ~

The end of a thing they say is better than the beginning, but my experience with HOTOSM was nothing short of good from the start to the end. On the 27th of May, I met with some of the amazing people I would be working with; Kshitij and Shola, my mentors, my co-intern, Azhar, Sam and Eden, her mentors. From the very first moment, I felt welcomed and although there was still that little feeling of doubt you get on your first day at anything, I was sure I would have a great time. Next, I met Petya, the most amazing and supportive coordinator.

It was my first time connecting and working with people from other parts of the world and it was a wonderful experience. Something interesting that hit me from the start was that almost everyone I spoke with was chatty. That was quite a new zone for me. I was used to just giving brief answers to describe myself or my day. But I saw that sharing made it an even friendlier environment. Petya once said, that “sharing is caring”, and I have truly learned that. Shared experiences help people bond and relate to you better. Speaking well instead of vaguely is something I have now adopted and getting better at.

Every Wednesday was a time to look forward to, as that was when I had weekly progress reviews with my mentors. I learned new things in interesting ways, laughed with them, and got to know about them. My mentors were so open to sharing and imparting their knowledge, it was a community that was truly invested in my growth in their ways. The time zone difference was interesting, my wonderful mentor, Kshitij who is almost 6 hours ahead of my time still always gave his Wednesday evenings to fix my task blockers and help me grow in my career. Although I could tell he enjoyed working, I knew that was a sacrifice he made every Wednesday and I am very grateful for that. Shola and I are in the same time zone but with different commitments, she still always showed up and reached out to ensure I was doing okay.

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I’m running linux as my desktop OS and couldn’t find a tool I was happy with for viewing the GPS coordinates stored in a photograph’s metadata (exif). I whipped up this quick-and-dirty shell script to do it for me.

~/.local/bin/photolocation :

xdg-open $(seq 1 4 | while read i; do exif "$1" -m --ifd=GPS -t=0x000$i; done  | tr '\n' ' ' | awk  '{printf ("%s%.6f %s%.6f\n",$1,$2+$3/60+$4/3600,$5,$6+$7/60+$8/3600)}' |sed 's/[NE]//;s/[SW]/-/;' | awk '{printf "https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=" $1 "&mlon=" $2 "#map=18/" $1 "/" $2 "\n"}')

I also made a .desktop entry so I can run it from the file manager or from my image viewer by choosing “open with…”

.local/share/applications/photolocation.desktop :

[Desktop Entry]
Name=View location in OpenStreetMap
TryExec=photolocation
Exec=photolocation %f
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=image/jpeg;image/jpg;
Keywords=Picture;Photo;Photograph;Map;OpenStreetMap;

URL: osmapp.org

For those who doesn’t know, OsmAPP is trying to be the one integrated app for everyday use which runs both on web and on mobile. It should be as easy to use as Google Maps, but fully opensource with privacy in mind. We have still some way to go, but it is getting much better recently.

Release 1.5.0 brought some great changes from wonderful contributors @Dlurak, @amenk, @loviuz and also from the core team @jvaclavik and me. See https://github.com/zbycz/osmapp/releases/tag/v1.5.0

In search of Opening Hours Editor

Opening hour widget was something I wanted to do for a long time. It always seemed as a big task, until I read a message from user @Mapspot on the OpenStreetMap Discord server: “A little 2x7 text box interface where you type the opening/closing time for each day would typically suffice”. What could be so hard about 2x7 boxes, right?

My first requirement was, that I cannot ruin existing advanced opening_hours. That meant, that I have to parse the value in my intermediate objects, then build the text again, and if it doesn’t match, lets tell user, that they should better use YoHours :-) This also brought some challenges, that Editor should be shown even when original text was Sa,Su ..., but after parsing it becomes Sa-Su ....

There were only a few expections like 24/7 which was quite easy to catch, and opening_hour without specified days, which is internally translated to Mo-Su ....

In the end, it took two days of work and it was so satisfying to see it working in the end. Some issues like Multiple images for feature or Wikimedia Upload, takes months to finish (or even almost a year in the second case), and this was ready in such a short time. Also worth mentioning is, that this was possible by @Dlurak’s work on the opening_hours renderer also featured in this release.

More details and screenshots in Pull Request

One image is worth a thousand words

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Trip to New Zealand

In this diary, I’m going to explain how I draw buildings (and shape in general), with my tricks for doing the most precise work possible and achieving the greatest possible symmetry and alignment, but without measuring everything out either.

It’s my meticulous way of trying to do things as perfectly as possible, and everyone does it the way they want. There are many times when I do things more simply and less precisely

Tip 1: Use JOSM

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It was like getting back to the start point for all of us, revisiting the basics of OSM with my in-person training in Grab last June 30 for the KartaView x OSM Philippines meetup event. It was a great event that allowed me and fellow mappers to share about our knowledge in Basic ID editor and other mapping methods while also contributing to map data in areas recently affected by the Mt. Kanlaon eruption in the Philippines.

Truth be told, a lot of the participants are already quite experienced when it comes to OSM, but this also provided me the opportunity to have a more hands-on teaching session with those that are still learning or still getting used to the Basic ID Editor. It was a great experience to be able to teach and guide more closely and watch our beginner participants progress and be able to contribute to the task, beginning with creating an OSM Account, to adding features through ID editor and saving their changes!

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Either include my portion it’s on my map

Otilo

Hi, I’m known as catme0w on the internet, and I’m a contributor to Google Summer of Code 2024. Below are my contributions during GSoC.

This post is not yet complete and will be updated gradually with detailed progress throughout my GSoC journey.

Goals

These goals were initially discussed and finalized at https://github.com/stadiamaps/ferrostar/issues/102.

• ✅ Making requests to an arbitrary routing backend and parsing the response into a route
• ✅ Decide on a map framework (Leaflet -> MapLibre GL JS. This has taken some detours, I’ll cover it soon… )
• ✅ Search for the destination using an autocomplete search box
• ✅ Displaying the route on the map
• ✅ Showing the user’s location on the map
• ✅ Updating the user’s location on the map “live” if the web page is visible, and having a tracking mode that follows the user around
• ✅ Showing a banner indicating the next maneuver
• ✅ Updating the navigation state when a new location update arrives + update the UI

“Stretch goals”

• ⏳ A simple list view showing all remaining steps
• ⏳ Recalculating when the user strays too far off the route
• ✅ A MapLibre integration with “3D” / isometric perspective
• ✅ Speech synthesis using the Web Speech APIs

You can find all my contributions to Ferrostar at https://github.com/stadiamaps/ferrostar/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3ACatMe0w.

Final Product

Here’s a web demo: https://stadiamaps.github.io/ferrostar/web-demo/

• TODO: Other things?

Lastly, I would like to sincerely thank my mentor Ian and Jacob for their assistance. I’m glad to have met such an outstanding team. Without their support, none of this would have been possible.

Sailing today with P&E.

Forecast was for 10 knots with gusts to 18.

Easy out of the marina and then across the fjord to Nesodden. Very lumpy and heeling over. P&E learnt a new word “goffered” ie to get a wave in the face.

osm.org/user/mad_folio/traces/11441064