State of the Map is one of the biggest OpenStreetMap conference where people who know about OpenStreetMap and want to learn about OpenStreetMap come together. Being part of SOTM-Asia conference in the Philippines with the community and talking to them in person was amazing. It was a great exposure for me to learn how community together built an amazing map of their country/town/village and know the stories behind them.

Sessions/Talks

This was my first State of the Map Asia conference and OpenStreetMap community from more than 10 countries, not just Asian but other parts of the world had also gathered to share their experiences and learnings with fellow community members. The conference exhibited 8 state of the country talks (Japan, India, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Nepal and Bangladesh) which presented great insights on how community is coming together to contribute in different countries and various challenges faced by them. The keynote address by Kate Chapman, Nama Budhathoki, Taichi Furuhashi and Dr. Mahar Lagmay were all very inspiring and encouraging.

… See full entry

For the past two years, I’ve been mostly mapping some of the rural areas in Karnataka, mainly connecting village roads/major district roads to State/National Highways. Thanks to some of the experienced mappers like docaneesh, indigomc and others who have been mapping this region since the inception when the entire region was blank, Karnataka, now has a fairly mapped road network in India OSM.

This can’t happen overnight and its interesting to see how this is being done over time by the OSM community. Below is a simple animated GIF that I created using Mapolution showing the evolution of OSM Map(only roads) in Karnataka.

If you’re interested to create a simple animation like the above one and if you’re on Ubuntu GNU/Linux, here’s the small how-to:

… See full entry