The State of the Map (SotM) conference is the annual OpenStreetMap (OSM) conference run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). It is organised by the SotM Working Group, a team of volunteers. This year, SotM 2022 will be a hybrid event, held in person in Firenze, Italy and online!
State of the Map is intended as an opportunity for the OpenStreetMap community to get to know each other, both personally and regarding their work in OpenStreetMap. We want to offer a programme that covers all topics relevant to OpenStreetMap. Sharing OpenStreetMap knowledge is the essence of SotM. Apart from presentations, we value the interaction between listeners and speakers, so we want to create an environment that boosts critical and healthy discussions, including contentious topics. This year we shall have the opportunity again to meet in person. At the same time we recognise that many people may not be able to travel due to personal reasons or governmental restrictions. Therefore, we intend to share the programme virtually as well and give the virtual visitors the opportunity to participate and interact.
We would love to see your submission for one or more of these tracks:
Don’t worry too much about the track categories; they are there to help us organise the conference, but if you find it difficult to select the right track for your talk, choose the one that fits best and we are willing to make adjustments if necessary.
OSM has grown a lot. Many newcomers or “newbies” have a great thirst for knowledge in areas that may seem uninteresting and basic to existing contributors. We reserve a number of slots for talks that help to satisfy this need. Considering we have a variety of participants from across the globe, it is important that you are an expert in the subject you want to talk about and are able to make it understandable. Please note in the submission what approximate level of previous knowledge is required for the participants.
Examples for this kind of talk are: Explaining the OSM data model; Education in OSM Editors or cartography tools; and Becoming a working group member. There is also a great interest in beginner’s workshops: OSM editing in JOSM and iD, using data with Overpass. How to render a map? How to print a map?
Want to recount your experiences while building a community? Or talk about the vision of OSMF? Or maybe discuss the strategy of the Board? Reflection on community diversity and questions on etiquette are suitable for this track. Other possible topics include why become an OSMF member, working group experiences, and everything related to OSM, OSMF and communities.
This track is all about mapping, surveying, data collection, tagging; tips and reflections on OSM editors, or new editor features; reflections on automated mapping, organised editing and imports.
Possible topics can include cartography and data visualisation, rendering raster and vector maps, map styles, CartoCSS, usage of Kosmtik, maps with QGIS, printing maps and more. All your ideas on how to create a beautiful, fun, quirky and out-of-this-world map!
This track awaits talks by or for developers of applications that make use of OSM data, e.g. OSM editors, (vector) tile servers, geocoding, routing, navigation, editor layer indices; tips and tricks with new PostGIS features, or new features of other tools and applications.
This track is dedicated to OSM data itself: analysis of OSM data quality; reflections about enhancing the data model; or discussing the way the OSM data is accessed through the API. Also submissions about deep learning are welcome in this track.
This track is all about the usage of OSM. Examples are how OSM is used in government, public transport, humanitarian response, and scientific context, among others, as well as OSM as an education tool in classrooms. You can present citizen projects that are using OSM data to understand and manage their environment. It also provides a space to present your artistic and creative projects that use OSM data or theme to eg. create clothing, jewellery, 3D printed objects, engravings, visualizations, computer or mobile games, virtual worlds, augmented reality, flyers, postcards, etc.
You may choose for most submission types whether you attend in person or participate virtually. We will try to make all events available for online and offline attendance. Exceptions are noted below. Please keep in mind that the conference will take place in the CEST timezone. We will try to take into account the timezone of participants as much as possible when scheduling events but we will be restricted to the usual conference hours between 9am and 6pm.
Classic talk of about 20 minutes for the talk itself followed by a question and answer session. This is the preferred submission type. Talks can either be held in-person at the conference or, if you cannot attend, you may submit a pre-recorded talk. The QA part of the talk is always live. Virtual speakers will join via video call. That means that even with a pre-recorded video you need to be available.
An extended talk with 40 minutes for the talk and 15 minutes for questions. These are for topics you want to explore in more depth. The same rules as for classic talks apply. You should outline why your talk deserves more time.
Workshops are sessions in which the participants are actively involved, for example by following some steps on their own devices. We welcome workshops that cover basic beginners’s topics as well as innovative technologies.
Please communicate any requirements for participants in order to attend your proposed workshop regarding technical equipment. Please ensure that your participants shouldn’t be told to create an account at a business platform or a platform with user tracking. Or if so communicate that in an exposed way in your submission and provide guest accounts for your participants.
Workshops will be held either in-person or virtually, not with a mixed audience. If you want to offer the workshop for both audiences, you are welcome to hold it twice. For virtual workshops, we will provide video conference rooms. Online workshops will have a limited number of places to ensure a successful session.
Panels are for hot, controversial discussions around OSM community, mapping and data. Topics may cover for example diversity, legal questions or the future of the database. You should outline the format on how you intend to organise the discussion and make sure to invite the key players for the discussion. Panel participants can either all join in-person or all virtually via video call. We welcome panels that include the audience. Just keep in mind that questions come from virtual and in-person participants. A designated moderator is therefore strongly recommended.
Your submission does not fit into any of these submission types? Please get in touch with the programme committee via email (program-sotm@openstreetmap.org) before the end of the call for participation.
We plan to provide space for other session types which cannot be submitted in advance. Details will be announced before the conference.
Lightning talks will be short 5 minute talks. There will be some spaces for last-minute in-person talks as well as spaces for pre-recorded videos. This will be announced separately.
Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are informal, spontaneous discussion rounds centered around a specific topic. It is not possible to submit a BoF session in advance. BoFs will usually be held in person only.
We will provide free spaces for working groups, local chapters, local groups, user groups for chitchat and more.
In rating submissions, we will apply the following criteria:
Sometimes we will make some changes or have suggestions:
The conference language of State of the Map is English. All presentations shall be held in English. It is an important aspect of the conference that participants can interact with the speakers for questions and discussions. Non-English speaking participants are welcome to meet in the Birds of a Feather sessions.
Video recordings and slides of the lectures will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution International 3.0 or later (CC BY 3.0+) license.
State of the Map is a non-commercial event where neither the organisers nor the speakers are being paid. Speakers have to get a conference ticket just like everyone else. Details will be announced later.
Your submissions will be reviewed by a programme committee consisting of OpenStreetMap community members from various parts of the world.
The programme committee is aware of possible conflict of interest situations. We try to balance that in the composition of the committee. Nevertheless, we have imposed some rules upon ourselves to handle conflict of interest situations:
We hope this detailed “Call for Presentations” helps to increase the transparency of our programme selection process. Questions are welcome. You can reach us at the following email address: program-sotm@openstreetmap.org.
Please submit your presentation proposal to our submission form.
The SotM 2022 Programme Committee, 14 March 2022