State of the Map in Girona

Today I’m off to State of the Map in Girona, Spain. State of the Map or SotM is the annual OpenStreetMap conference. SotM is a mix of the businesses surrounding OpenStreetMap as well as the community. The three day conference encompasses three days, one business day and two community days.

I’ll be there speaking about some of the work we’ve been doing related to open data as well as specifically OpenStreetMap. Friday is the business day at SotM this year, I’ll be speaking in the “OSM: We’re in Business” track about our work in on open data with different levels of government. The title of the talk is “From Arkansas to Afghanistan – Open data sharing and collaboration for better engagement.” Sunday there is a humanitarian track, which includes a talk from Nicolas Chavent of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team on our work in Haiti. Afterwards I’m speaking about running OpenStreetMap with GeoCommons offline for humanitarian response. Even now six months after the earthquake Internet access varies by location in Haiti. There is a need for low and no bandwidth solutions for effective data creation and sharing.

In addition to talks I’m excited to meet people from the OSM community I’ve only previous known online. A diverse group spread out all over the world, State of the Map is the main opportunity to get many people together in person. There are a variety of “Birds of a Feather” sessions including one for OpenAerialMap and the first in person meeting of the OpenStreetMap Strategy Working Group. I’ll be participating in these somewhat “serious” events, but I’m also looking forward to more silly ones. On Saturday night there is a Concert Contest. Since I haven’t packed my bassoon I’m going to bow out of playing “Ode to a Duplicate Node” and cheer on the contestants. I’m sure it will be as good as “Map of the World as We Know It. (And I See Signs.)”