Stefan is 28 years old and just finished his studies in resource and sustainability management (Joint Degree for Sustainable Development). Right now, he is looking for a job. He uses OpenStreetMap not only on a daily base for personal use, but also for his university research in order to visualise the distribution of cultural resources in cities. In future, Stefan would like to learn how to build his own map layers to show otherwise invisible buildings and infrastructures.

How did you discover OpenStreetMap?

The first time I heard about OpenStreetmap was at university. It was also mentioned in an edition of Arte, titled “Le dessous des cartes”. But I only really started mapping after participating in a conference on the use of maps for the visualisation of sustainable economy and community initiatives. This initiative, called Transformap, hopes to produce thematic maps based on OpenStreetMap. After this conference, I took part in a monthly meeting of the OpenStreetMappers user group in Graz, Austria - where I was studying at that time. It is a very active group. Unsurprisingly, Graz is very well mapped. That motivated me to participate, so I started to map my own area, Hesbaye.

Do you use OpenStreetMap?

I spend a lot of time looking at maps. There is no other media that helps to understand, discover, or rediscover an area as well as maps. Maps also have the enormous potential to participate in the development of an area. I also have a smartphone with an OpenStreetMap navigation application, called OsmAnd. I use that app for navigation as well as an “ordinary” map of the place that I am visiting.

What kind of mapper are you?

… See full entry

English Text

Fredy Rivera vive en un pequeño pueblo en los Andes de Colombia, es desarrollador de software y trabaja en proyectos sociales por medio de la fundación vivirenlafinca.org Su nick “Humano”, es una respuesta al mundo digital y su trabajo social donde quiere rescatar que lo mas importante de la tecnología son las personas.

Q: Como y cuando descubriste a Openstreetmap?

… See full entry

This time we travel to South-America for our Mapper in the Spotlight series. The interview and the English translation are done by Joost Schouppe.

Fredy Rivera lives in a small town in the Colombian Andes. He’s a software developer and works on social projects through the vivirenlafinca.org foundation. His nick “Humano” is a reminder of how in the digital world and social work, humans are still the most important aspect of technology.

Q: When and how did you discover OpenStreetMap ?

… See full entry

Nederlandse Tekst

Polyglot is a Belgian network administrator who’s hobbies are changing a bit over time: learning languages, cycling, horsebackriding, and oh …. OpenStreetMap became a major time sink!

How did you discover OpenStreetMap?

Apparently, it’s been eight years already. I wanted to give something back to the free software world. I’m not a real programmer, so for a few years I contributed to the English Wiktionary. However, at one point it was more fighting against vandalism than bringing in new and interesting data about words and translations, so I gave up on that. OpenStreetMap had the advantage that, on the one hand, it’s an outdoor activity, and on the other hand you get to use a computer in interesting ways. Every time you enter the surveyed data, you sort of relive the itinerary you followed, which intensifies the experience. Since I discovered Mapillary, my way of mapping/surveying changed again. Taking a huge amount of pictures, which serve as source material, became a goal in itself. I produce so many of them now that it is no longer feasible to process all of the data I collect myself. Before Mapillary I just took pictures of what I was going to add on OpenStreetmap. This process took about the same amount of time as the surveying itself. Nowadays weeding out the failed pictures from the thousands I made is work enough as it is.

… See full entry

One of my favorite maps based on OpenStreetMap data is the Historic Places map. I have been contributing several pieces of data that show up on this map, as well as helping a bit with the translation. During those tasks I met Lutz, one of the people behind this map. So it is with great pleasure that I can present this interview with him.

Who are you?

My name is Lutz Lange, and I live in a 1000 year old city in Saxony, one of the most beautiful regions of Germany. Professionally, I am an electrician on construction sites throughout Germany on road.

When and how did you discover OpenStreetMap?

In 2006 I was informed via the former German Mapping project maps4free about OSM. I was immediately impressed by the simplicity of the model, that allowed to create a on-line map with only a handful of key / value pairs. The motivations to join, where of course the expensive maps and software for my Palm.

What you map?

… See full entry

Wer sind Sie?

Mein Name ist Lutz Lange, und ich lebe in einer über 1000 Jährigen Stadt in Sachsen, dem schönsten Bundesland von Deutschland. Beruflich bin ich als Elektromonteur auf Baustellen in ganz Deutschland unterwegs.

Wann und wie haben Sie OpenStreetMap entdeckt?

In dem ehemaligen deutschen Mapperprojekt www.maps4free.de wurde ich 2006 auf OSM aufmerksam gemacht. Mich beeindruckte damals, wie einfach mit einer Handvoll key/value-Paaren eine Online-Karte erstellt wurde. Motivationsgrund waren natürlich auch die teuren Karten und Software für meinen Palm.

Was mappen Sie? Gibt es Unterschiede zu dem, was/wie Sie anfangs gemappt haben?

Zur Zeit mappe ich mit Vorliebe historische Sachen, Gebäude, Steine, die eine Geschichte erzählen können. Die ersten Jahre habe ich alles gemappt, was mir über den Weg lief. Diesen Ansatz verfolge ich nicht mehr.

Wie mappen Sie?

… See full entry

The Historical Places map just got a nice feature for the Northern part Belgium. For the whole of Flanders, Brussels and a part of Wallonia you can now see the Vandermaelen map. This maps dates from 1846-1854.

How can you explore this map ? First go to the Historical map, hover over “Here is the map” and pick the language of your choice.

On the map navigate to any place in Flanders, then click the globe in the right corner. You should see

… See full entry

Who are you?

… See full entry

I first saw DaCor’s avatar on the help-site, where he gave friendly and detailed answers. Later on, I saw him doing the same on the Irish mailing list. After seeing Jo Walsh’s presentation (video) in which he is mentioned at the end, I knew I would love to interview him.

## Who are you? Hi, I’m Dave Corley, from Ireland. My day job is in Quality Engineering in the medical device sector, specifically in the field of Interventional Cardiology. It’s a role I had never planned on going into but one which I really enjoy as no 2 days are ever the same. It’s given me the chance to learn many new skills over the years from project management to problem solving to developing new processes. In a nutshell, my job is to look at problems, use data to break them down into their smallest parts to find causes and implement the simplest solutions.

I would have to say OSM is my main hobby. When I have it, it pretty much soaks up all my free time.

When/how did you discover OpenStreetMap?

… See full entry

We have been interviewing Belgian mappers for a year now. Since I still like the concept, I want to extend it outside our little Belgian community. Therefore I will contact mappers from all over the world. I have compiled a list of some 30 names now of people that I met on different mailing lists and fora. From time to time I will contact one, and ask her or him to answer a few questions. The focus will be on individual mappers, unlike the very interesting interviews conducted by OpenCage, that focus more on developers and country profiles.

We start with Clifford Snow. I met him on the talk-us mailing list and we exchanged a few ideas about a presentation on OSM earlier this year.

Who are you ?

… See full entry

Olivier Roussel, or Dagou on OpenStreetMap, is originally from Brussels, but lives for the moment in Arlon. He got a PhD in chemistry and works in a research and developement lab of a private company in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. OpenStreetMap is really a hobby for him.

When and where did you discover OpenStreetMap ?

When I was writing my PhD thesis in 2006, I was using LaTeX, which is an open source programme for desktop publishing. Later on, I moved on to GNU/Linux, after that I started to use Wikipedia and finally I started to use OpenStreetMap. But all of this, without contributing back. I only started to contribute to OpenStreetMap in 2013, when I started to travel to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In order to get to my job, I first took the train, followed by a bike ride to the industrial area. One of the roads in this area is reserved to public transport, cyclist and pedestrians. There was a S-shaped barrier, which could only be opened by the bus driver. When I drove by on my bike, I noticed numerous cars and trucks that had to make U-turn at the barrier, even when the “dead-end” was announced at the beginning of the street. People were blindly following their navigation system, which ignored or did not know about the barrier. OpenStreetMap had the same problem, and that is why I decided to become contributor: the small modification I had to make to prevent people from making a U-turn in front of a barrier. From then on, I learned more and more about the different tags and contribute more and more.

Are you using OpenStreetMap yourself ?

I do not have a car with a built-in a navigation system, so I use OsmAnd+ on my mobile phone or tablet. Furthermore I regularly look at the map on OpenStreetMap.org. I use it rarely for my job. I only have to travel two or three times for work, and often to the same places. So I use OsmAnd more often for my vacations.

What type of mapper are you and where do you map?

… See full entry

Mapillary announced improved navigation through the photos in their on line viewer.

I can now click and hold the picture in https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/vYGu9Nsz8VcueZ4-nRvNiA/photo and see this side of the building !

Unfortunately, it goes wrong on this sequence: https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/5P7E8NTtYCDJkAoJ8TKk4Q/photo.

Vincent Van Eyken recently got his civil engineering degree, specialism architecture. With this background, it is not surprising that he has an healthy interest in topics such as urban planning and public space landscaping. But he also has a long lasting and strong passion for geography and cartography. Therefore it is almost natural that he ended up in the OpenStreetMap world. He maps under the nickname QuercE, which is derived from the Latin translation of his family name; ‘quercus’ (adj. ‘querceus’) is latin for ‘eik(en) / eyken’. Eik is the Dutch word for oak.

When did you start contributing ?

… See full entry

I had some after-holiday-fun adding the details for the Ehrenmal in Oberschönau, Thüringa.

… See full entry

Matthieu Gaillet is a technical electrician and is now responsible for the technical aspects in a cultural center. His motivation to map comes from his passion for collaboration in map making and his intensive use of maps for cycling and hiking trips.

Where and when did you discover OpenStreetMap ?

Just like everybody else probably: by accident, in 2010 :-) I immediately liked the concept of a map created by collaboration. But at that moment I was not completely convinced that the project would become popular and accepted enough to compete with Google maps. Since then I started using open source based servers and software and the virus got me. It was not before 2013 that I started using OpenStreetMap and my first contributions with JOSM are also from that time.

Do you use OpenStreetMap yourself ?

I use it both privately and professionally, mainly since the arrival of Mapbox, umap, etc, since it is now possible to personalize maps.

Which type of mapper are you ?

… See full entry

Since some members of the Mapper of the month team have been on holiday and the people we contacted for an interview prefered to stay anonymous, we have to use this backup scenario of an interview of Escada. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy reading it. The French and Dutch translation will be available later this week on osm.be.

Marc Gemis is a 48 year old software engineer for a multi-national in Mortsel. His largest passion are his dogs, which he walks every day. His nickname, escada is the name of one of his dogs.

When did you discover OpenStreetMap?

… See full entry

Somewhere in April, I bought a smartphone and installed OsmAnd on it. During my first ride with it, I discovered that someone tagged a stretch of an highway with maxspeed=50. I noticed it, because OsmAnd suddenly warned my that I was speeding.

The same day I changed it back to the normal 120 and I left a changeset comment. Today I got a reply to that comment (in Dutch):

“Deze werd in OSM geplaatst voor een onderzoek naar de temporele kwaliteit van OpenStreetMap. Alle gemaakte fouten, die nog niet verbeterd werden door de gemeenschap, worden vandaag verbeterd.”

The translation is something like

“Those errors were placed into OSM for a research in the temporal quality of OpenStreetMap. All deliberately made mistakes, that are not yet corrected by the community, will be corrected today”

Any thoughts ?

Nederlandse Tekst

Texte français

Joost Schouppe is a sociologist. He followed those studies because in his opinion, they are the least specialized that exist. He works in a social studies research center that covers a wide range of subjects. Most of the time the projects have both statistical and geographical aspects, trying to convert data hidden in databases into knowledge. This gave him the opportunity to study data processing in SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences )and made him discover the fascinating world of ArcGIS. A lot of his there is published on the neighborhood monitor of the city of Antwerp, a geostatistical platform. Besides his job, Joost loves being in nature and is fan of atlases, encyclopedia and travel guides. He prefers them in an open and digital format, but does not neglect the others.

How did you discover OpenStreetMap?

… See full entry

Nederlandse tekst

Texte français

Brice (eMerzh) lives in Jette. He is 30 and programmer in a small start-up in Brussels that is active in social analytics. He is passionate about open source and everything around it. For his job he works on Archlinux + KDE and his preferred OpenStreetMap editor is of course JOSM!

When and where did you discover OpenStreetMap?

I discovered OpenStreetMap by accident in 2007, when it was mentioned on a website with Linux information, (http://linuxfr.org). I was attracted by the collaboration and open aspects of the project. I soon discovered that my street was not mapped yet and see… I was bitten by the bug.

Do you use OpenStreetMap yourself?

I regularly use OpenStreetMap for looking up information and visualising it on the internet. Sometimes I also use OsmAnd on a smartphone when I am abroad. But I have to confess that I still use Google Maps a lot, probably until OpenStreetMap and Mapillary have reached the same level.

… See full entry

Nederlandse tekst

Texte français

Josefien and Ruben (M!dgard) are 20 and 19 years old. Between their mapping activities, they are going to college. In high school, they were best mates; and now they walk the streets of Blankenberge and neighbouring villages with their self-made OpenStreetMap badge. Ruben is more interested in the technical aspects, while Josefien spends her free time to design and make two OpenStreetMap T-shirts to wear during their surveys. They love to help others, e.g. they give blood plasma every two weeks in Ghent.

How and when did you Learn about OpenStreetMap?

Ruben: In 2012 I looked at Google Maps and saw that a path in my neighbourhood was mapped incorrectly. I decided to change it with the new Map Maker. Unfortunately, the change only became visible months later. My dad had heard of OpenStreetMap and thought I would enjoy it more. So I browsed to openstreetmap.org, and shortly after that I had made an account.

… See full entry