Category Archives: Conferences

JOSM Plugin receives DINAcon 2020 Award!

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Die Pokale der DINAcon 2020 Awards
(Source: DINAcon.ch 2020)

Last Friday, October 23, 2020, DINacon 2020 took place – unfortunately only virtually like all conferences during this time. DINAcon stands for “Digital Sustainability Conference” and is under the patronage of the CH Open association. At this event future-oriented projects and approaches from the Open Source and Open Data Communities, from public administration and the economy are presented, discussed and awarded.

The program also included a session on the “Public OSM Partnership” (POP Study) by Stefan Keller.

And again the DINAcon Awards were presented. The shortlist included the “Defikarte der Schweiz” (www.defikarte.ch) in the category “Community Award” and a JOSM Plugin in the category “Best Newcomer Award”.

DINAcon 2020 Best Newcomer
Trailer – DINAcon 2020 Best Newcomer Project – Shortlist. (Quelle: DINAcon.ch 2020)

And the winner is…

Finally the JOSM Plugin won in the category “Best Newcomer”! This category honors “Open Source projects that are not older than three years and offer exciting new approaches”.

The JOSM Plugin NeTEx Converter

The JOSM plugin “NeTEx Converter”, is a project for the JOSM editor, which collects and exports information about public transport – i.e. the infrastructure of stations – from OSM into this standardized XML structure. The NeTEx/XML file can then be further processed in various applications. Main developer is the student Labian Gashi who studies Computer Science in the masters program at HSR Rapperswil (now OST Campus Rapperswil). The work was supervised by Prof. Stefan Keller and specialists from the SBB.

It’s nice that another OpenStreetMap technology was awarded by this Open Source/Open Data conference. Already in 2019 the project OpenSchoolMaps won the trophy in the category “Best Open Education Project” (we reported here on SOSM.ch).

Weblinks

OpenSchoolMaps wins a DINAcon Award 2019

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The DINAcon Awards were presented at the Swiss Conference for Digital Sustainability (DINAcon) in mid-October 2019. And the winner in the category Best Open Education Project is “OpenSchoolMaps”.

OpenSchoolMaps is a small project to promote open maps and map data for schools and self-learners. It is mainly a collection of teaching materials and information about outdoor mapping events, OpenStreetMap and Open Source software.

The idea and concept for OpenSchoolMaps came from Stefan Keller, professor at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST) and member of the board of the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association. The decisive factor for the jury’s decision was that OpenSchoolMaps offers different possibilities for feedback and the open repository.

Browse the teaching materials yourself! Currently there are about 29 work and information sheets on the website. Here are some titles:

  • Using the OSM.org website in everyday life
  • Edit and use OpenStreetMap
  • Mapping the surroundings of yourself (outdoor mapping event)
  • Create a map with uMap
  • Introduction to QGIS and Geographic Information Systems

Logo OpenSchoolMaps.org
Click here for the OpenSchoolMaps website (see zip download in English).
Further information on the DINAcon Awards can be found on the DINAcon website (german).

Candidature for State of the Map 2020, HSR Rapperswil, 19-21 June 2020

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Update
The SotM 2020 will be in Cape Town. We congratulate the team from Southafrica and look forward to the conference next year.

We would like to inform you about some recent developments. Every year the OpenStreetMap community meets at the international conference “State of the Map” (SotM). This year the event will take place in Heidelberg.

Up to two weeks ago no applications for the SotM 2020 event had been received by the SotM working group. In light of that situation we, the HSR Hochschule Rapperswil and the association SOSM, were asked if we could submit a bid, which we have now done.

We see this as an opportunity to expand the Swiss community and to present ourselves as a cosmopolitan host.

Please reserve the 19-21 June 2020. We hope for an active participation, and that some volunteers will contact us as helpers as soon as it is clear which location will win the bid. The decision is expected by the end of September. 

Newsletter September 2018

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SOSM Activities

We were at the State of the Map in Milano with a table. We had contact with many mappers from all over the world. In particular, we have also made contact with the Italian-speaking community.

sosm table at State of the Map Milano. We offered some Swiss choclate to the conference attendants. cc-by-sa 4.0 Manfred Stock

Are you already a member of OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF)? Although the SOSM is an official local chapter, the SOSM members are not automatically OSMF members. By paying membership fees, the OSMF remains financially independent. As a member you can participate in the voting and thus have a say in the future of the project. Membership costs £15 per year.

Help sought

SOSM newsletter

At the last meeting, the wish for a newsletter was expressed. Here, help would be welcome in translating content and designing an appealing HTML mail.

osm.ch homepage

We would like to rework the homepage osm.ch: Make it more informative and visually appealing. We have already collected some content, but JavaScript and CSS styling are still missing. If you have some experience with this, your help would be very welcome. The current status can be found at https://osm.ch/next/osm-ch.html A design concept is available here.

Translations for sosm.ch

Thanks to the active help of an Italian mapper we now also have an Italian translation of sosm.ch. It would be nice if in the future, we also had multilingual blog entries. We would be glad about German, French and Italian translators, who would also translate the blog posts in each case. That’s about 10 posts per year.

vector tiles

If someone would like to deal with this topic, we would also like to offer Vector tiles on our servers. We are happy to support, but the whole topic is too time-consuming at the moment for our technician Michael to do that, along with the recurring maintenance of all other services.

 

DINAcon Awards – Open Source Hero

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On Friday October 20th, a delegation of three members of the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association had the pleasure to receive the DINAcon Open Source Hero Award for OpenStreetMap long term contributors.

Picture of the DINAcon 2017 Open Source Hero Award für OpenStreetMap Langzeit-Mitwirkende. A glass block with the inscription DINAcon 2017 Awards 2017. OpenStreetMap Longterm Contributors

DINAcon 2017 Open Source Hero Award for OpenStreetMap Longterm Contributors.
Picture: Simon Poole

In its laudation, the jury acknowledged that the work on OSM is a continuous process and a lot of manual work, and that a lot of persistence was needed to get the project to the state it is today. This award was accepted in the name of the whole Swiss OSM community and the OSM community world wide.

Kartendruck am GEOSummit 2016 in Bern

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Am 8. und 9. Juni findet in Bern wieder die Messe GEOSummit statt. OpenStreetMap ist zwar nicht mit einem eigenen Stand vertreten, aber wir machen dieses Jahr wieder die Aktion, dass wir am GEOSummit wieder Karten aus OSM Daten rendern. Diese werden freundlicherweise von Canon (Schweiz) vor Ort gedruckt. Hier der Bereich, den wir an der Messe anbieten können:

extent-small

Dieser Ausschnitt ist verfügbar zum Karten rendern am GEOSummit. Der hier gezeigte Stil ist OpenTopoMap.

Wir haben den OSM Standard, Swiss Style und auch OpenTopoMap Kartenstile im Angebot.

Wer nun eine schöne, A1 grosse, gedruckte OSM Karte haben möchte, soll doch am GEOSummit beim Stand A05 vorbeikommeOSM_flyer_CH2016rh-frontn. Da der GEOSummit Eintritt kostet, haben wir auch gratis Tickets abzugeben. Wer also eine gedruckte Karte möchte, und dafür ein Ticket benötigt, melde sich bitte bei uns. Der GEOSummit findet in der Bernexpo (Karte) statt.

Weiter werden am GEOSummit auch die druckfrischen A7 OSM-Flyer verteilt.

Aktive Mapper können gerne ein paar holen kommen.

Short (and incomplete) Report from SotM 2014

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It’s Sunday morning* and the third day of the State of the Map conference is about to begin here in Buenos Aires, AR—fashionably late, just like the past two days. Today, the breakfast, too, was considerably delayed. Though, I still find it notable, that not only lunch, but also snacks in the coffee breaks and breakfast are included with the conference attendance.

The conference wifi only became available around noon yesterday, as the technical guy the organizers had hired to set it up hadn’t shown up.

Also yesterday, the city deputy of Buenos Aires came by and held a short talk. She told about her dislike of maps back in school, how in her political duty she realized the importance of maps for a democratic society and learned to appreciate and like maps. She also told about her thirteen year old son who is mapping electoral districts after he was disappointed they’re not in the (paper) atlas he got.

*Posting this in the afternoon, as Wifi was overloaded this morning.

SotM 2014 in Buenos Aires: Dinner and (skipping) night life

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I skipped on the pre-event on Thursday night, because I was still too jet-lagged that evening and went to sleep early. So someone else will have to report on that.

Friday night, after the first day of the conference, we met an online acquaintance of mine who by chance is also currently spending time with his family in Buenos Aires and joined the SotM crowd in the Post Street Bar. Three of us left there early, so my acquaintance could take us to La Americana, a fast food restaurant serving empanadas, baked or fried bread-dough dumplings, with a variety of delicious fillings, often with ground beef, but also vegetarian ones. Afterwards we went to a café to have some drinks. While the others chose tea with lemon, I had a ‘submarine’: Hot mild in which one dissolves a dark chocolate bar to get something resembling hot chocolate. We made our way back to the hotels around 0:30, the time the Niceto club would have opened that was announced as the place-to-be for after the Post Street Bar.

Yesterday (Saturday) us German-speaking attendants and speakers decided to get some of the famous Argentinian steaks for dinner. The locals were about to lead some other SotM participants to a bar and we tagged along, as they promised to show us a fine restaurant on the way to there. Arriving there, all that were with us ended up in the same café, and even more arrived as the location had been tweeted as the official SotM dinner meeting place of the evening. The locals ordered us a variety of regional starters, and several rounds of that, so we ended up full without having had steak.

Tonight (Sunday), though, it will be steak, we decided: “Not negotiable.”

SOTM-EU

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sotmbannerFive members of SOSM are currently in Karlsruhe, where this years State of the Map EU takes place. It is at the University of Applied Sciences, located in a very nice green area.

On Friday, rendering was a topic, with alternatives to mapnik, alternative style sheet languages, rendering from vector tiles, and also 3D with OpenGL, WebGL and Blender. There were also a few presentations on quality assurance.

sotmeu-grillIn the evening there was a nice grill at the social event and we all had delicious food and good conversations.

On the second day there were a few talks about data maintenance. The state of the license was topic to another talk, with Mapbox presenting the problems they encountered with the current license.

There was also a group photo taken that day.groupfoto-sotmeu14