I organize the OpenStreetMap Salt Lake City monthly meetups. I don’t usually write reports on the individual meetups, but I had even more fun than usual last night so I thought I would write a quick report!

We had a great evening (as always) and with a good turnout too! We talked about SOTM US 2024, to be hosted in our fine city next June, and everyone signed up as a candidate volunteer for the event!

We also shared some knowledge about drones and related software; I know next to nothing about drones and haven’t kept up with the technology, so that was really interesting to me. We may pursue a small grant to acquire one for our OSM group. I am not sure from where yet.

As usual, we discussed recent business openings and closings to keep the map up to date. We have good resources like Gastronomic SLC (a weekly newsletter and website with news about restaurants and bars in the area) and City Weekly, a local newspaper, and of course our own observations.

We talked about what parts of the map would need to be improved to give our SOTM guests a mappy welcome next year. There’s plenty of time but also plenty of work. I think we already have some of the best and most up-to-date POI coverage, and to help keep us up-to-date, we have a MapRoulette challenge to review older POIs. One attendee is doing a lot of work on local bus routes, tedious work that I personally don’t have the stomach for.

We lamented the departure of two food vendors at the food hall that has become our regular meeting spot. They were already removed from OSM, so it should not have been a surprise. On my way out, I did notice a new food vendor that somehow all of us had overlooked so I had to put it on OSM on my way out, using Every Door.

We meet monthly, so if this sounds fun to you and you are in the area, please join us! The Meetup page will always have the latest details about our next meeting!