«It stays open» – The map of shops that are still open #COVID19

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The map service bleibtoffen.ch allows everyone to find open shops and share information about open locations with a few clicks. The new service is based on the community project OpenStreetMap. Anyone can also report changes at bleibtoffen.ch. This information is then directly integrated into OpenStreetMap – in addition to the many volunteers who already add to OpenStreetMap on a daily basis.

A communication instrument for authorities and location promoters

In France, there are already some cities like Lyon and municipalities like Montrouge that are using “It stays open” (in French “ça reste ouvert”) as a means of communication in dealing with the Covid19 crisis.

Therefore, dear authorities and location promoters: inform your citizens and companies about this useful tool in dealing with and containing Covid19!

You can read more about this in the blog post of bleibtoffen.org (in german). Here you can go directly to bleibtoffen.ch. If you have any questions please contact us at SOSM (see contact).

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. 

2018 Activity Report

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At the annual general meeting end of March we presented our yearly activity report. Some of those activities were already reported in this blog:

osm.ch Website

Keen visitors may have noticed, we’ve re-launched our osm.ch site. Thanks to Flavio and Claudia and Michael for making the website more modern and professional looking. Comments on the new site are always welcome. Either here in the comments, as a mail to us, or by opening an issue on github or even a pull-request.

New logo and stickers

With a new logo designed by Roman, we finally came around to produce stickers. We distributed one sticker to each member with the invitation to our annual general meeting. In case you would like to get some stickers, just ask. We will gladly send you a couple of them.

Plans for 2019

  • Get a second hosting location operational
  • Further development of OpenSchoolMaps

Burgen-Dossier – Eine Kooperation von Wikimedia und OpenStreetMap (Schweiz)

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Wikimedia und OpenStreetMap wollen in der Schweiz enger zusammenarbeiten. Den Anfang soll ein gemeinsames schweizerisches Burgen-Verzeichnis mit Karte, Fotos und weiteren Informationen machen.

Für den Samstag, 27. April 2019, ist ein Arbeitstreffen beider Communities und weiterer Interessierter auf Schloss Lenzburg (AG) geplant, um die verschiedenen Arbeiten zu koordinieren und sich gegenseitig die verschiedenen Projekte und Unterprojekte näher zu bringen.

Wikipedianer und weitere Interessierte erhalten eine Einführung in OpenStreetMap. Mapper und weitere Interessierte bekommen Wikipedia-Projekte nähergebracht. Am Nachmittag stellen Experten die Projekte OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia sowie Wikivoyage, Commons (Fotos) und evtl. Wikidata näher vor. Sie werden zeigen, wie man editiert, und stehen für Fragen zur Verfügung. (“Ask Us Anything”)

Das Ziel ist die vollständige Darstellung aller Burgen und Schlösser auf OpenStreetMap (OSM) und Wikipedia (WP), angefangen mit den Kantonen Aargau und Zürich.

Weitere Informationen und Anmeldung zur kostenlosen Teilnahme auf dieser Wiki-Seite.

Allianz faires Urheberrecht

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Der Vorstand der SOSM hat diese Woche beschlossen, die Allianz für ein faires Urheberrecht in der Schweiz zu unterstützen.

Auch wenn wir von der am meist diskutierten vorgeschlagene Änderung, die “Linksteuer” nicht direkt betroffen wären, scheint es uns nicht sinnvoll Regelungen einzuführen die, zugunsten von einzelnen Unternehmungen, versuchen die Zeit zurück zudrehen, und in diesem spezifischen Fall auch noch handwerklich katastrophal sind.

Die weniger besprochene weitere Änderung, die Einführung eines Äquivalents des Lichtbildschutz, den wir aus anderen europäischen Ländern kennen, betrifft uns aber direkt.

Bisher hatte die Schweiz eine sehr hohe Hürde, die überwunden werden musste um einen urheberrechtlichen Schutz einer Fotographie zu erhalten (Bundesgerichtsurteil “Meili Foto” ). Dies wird nun ins Gegenteil gekehrt, mit dem Resultat, dass man davon ausgehen muss, dass auch automatisch und mechanisch aufgenommene Bilder in Zukunft geschützt sind (also Luftbilder, StreetView, Mapillary und so weiter) und ebenso daraus abgeleitete Werke nur noch mit der Erlaubnis des jeweiligen Rechteinhabers erstellt werden dürfen. Der Bundesrat schliesst dies zwar in seiner Botschaft zur Revision aus, der Gesetzestext selber scheint aber dazu im Widerspruch zu stehen.

Auf jeden Fall ist die Rechtssicherheit für uns bei der Benutzung solcher Quellen nicht mehr vorhanden, was nicht in unserem Interesse sein kann.

2019 Swiss OpenStreetMap Association Annual General Meeting

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The 2019 AGM will take place in Basel on Saturday March the 30th, 11:00.

The venue is at the

BORROMÄUM
Clubzimmer
Byfangweg 6
CH-4051 Basel

The event will follow our proven formula with a roughly one hour formal part starting at 11:00, with lunch following and a fairly unstructured mapping party as the activity in the afternoon from 13:30 onwards.

Guests, including such that simply want to learn something about OpenStreetMap, are welcome to both parts.

Could however both members and guests indicate to info@sosm.ch if they plan to attend, particularly for lunch, so that we can inform the restaurant how many guests they can expect.

Looking forward to seeing you in Basel.


Agenda for the 2019 Swiss OpenStreetMap Association Annual General Meeting

Agenda der Generalversammlung der Swiss OpenStreetMap Association 2019




Saturday, March 30th 2019, 11:00,
Samstag, den 30. März 2019, 11:00,


BORROMÄUM, Clubzimmer, Byfangweg 6, CH-4051 Basel

1. Opening and Welcome / Eröffnung und Begrüssung
2. Election of the minute taker and vote counters / Wahl des Protokollführers & der Stimmenzähler
3. Adoption of minutes of the 2018 AGM / Annahme des Protokolls der GV 2018
4. Activity report 2018 / Tätigkeitsbericht 2018
5. Financial results 2018 / Jahresrechnung 2018
– Presentation by the treasurer / Bericht des Kassiers
– Auditors report / Bericht der Kassenprüfer
6. Discharge of the Board / Entlastung des Vorstandes
7. Membership fees 2019 / Mitgliederbeiträge 2019
8. Budget 2019
9. Elections / Wahlen
– Board / Vorstand
Candidates for all positions are welcome.
Kandidaten für alle Positionen sind willkommen.
– Auditors / Kassenprüfer
10. Any other business / Varia

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.