It has been a great experience attending the SotM Asia 2019 Conference as one of the scholars in Dhaka, Bangladesh this October where I met many intelligent and sharp international colleagues, experienced how everyone is relating themselves with OpenStreetMap. My journey started with OpenStreetMap 4yrs before and it was introduced by one of the enthusiastic mappers i.e Saikat Maiti. I would like to congratulate the organizing committee for arranging such a wonderful event. Kudos to Sawan Shariar from the administrative bench for such a supportive man. I fully enjoyed the 2 days of the event with so many interesting presentations and talks. On the first day workshops of “Map with AI” by Dr. David Yang were very informative. Lightning talks by Ashish Abraham Joseph showed the best use of open data, tools and technologies in the field of execution and its result and story of Chitmahals was something new and it gave me a different view to see the enclaves and exclaves. On second day talk of “GeoDASH: An Open Geo-Spatial Data Sharing Platform in Bangladesh” was very useful and insightful by Mr.Sk. Towhidur Rahaman. I also met wonderful people all around the world and from my home country as well. Besides that, Food at the conference was delicious and the way it was served on tables also deserves appreciation.

As a part of the community, I raised my concern there regarding “Gender Equality” because I truly believe when there is no gender balance, we are missing one perspective of a crowd. Addressing and overcoming gender gaps is probably the most powerful tool to strive for the realization of rights for all members of the community. Feel free to reach me if you have any thoughts or ideas on this issue. I also believe while talking about data, tools, technologies we all should mind the use of “One-time Plastic bottles” and we can move to paper water bottles or any other alternatives.

Happy Mapping!

Thank you for the opportunity to be your OSMF board member these past two years. The experience has been full of teaching moments while I attempted to support this beautiful project and community. It has been an honour to meet people from around the world in this community of communities. I am thankful for all the support and efforts to make OSM a healthy, global open project. It is a testament to the passion for the project. With that, I am sharing some reflections:

Board Dynamics

Boards are often a convergence of different skills, opinions, and ‘constituencies’. As with any board and/or team, there are differences in work style, time/effort, and opinion. One thing I have learned is to try to see the ‘middle ground’ or ‘middle way’. How can we meet each other half-way? Yet, the ‘my way or the highway’ mentality is no stranger to technical communities and OSMF has it in spades. [1] It is evident that each of my fellow board members (past and present) truly care about OSM. There were times when we really managed to collaborate with each other. There were other times that things went awry. Some of the conversations/debates left me completely exhausted and unable to dig in more due to the sheer volume and tone of the back/forth. In some circles, this is called ‘win by wearing down the others’. We need to find ways to negotiate more, not just in the board, but in the whole community. It is not a productive or healthy use of our time and mandate.

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The project “#7275 - Sangre Grande, Trinidad Building Mapping” seemed not to designate any imagery to use yet. It seemed roads were digitized based on Bing imagery.

Story behind

When we went to last year’s SotM Asia, which happened in IIM Bangalore, India, from there it was a desire to attend coming years’ OSM moreover GIS conferences. The reason was nothing else but the exposure to larger community, latest technology, and an opportunity for self development. So this year, it was a desire to attend max. conferences related to OSM. First, I tried for scholarship to SotM Heidelberg. Then I tried for Pista ng Mapa (which happened in August 2019 at Philippines), just because it seems to me South East Asia is more involved in OSM and I wanted to know what’s happening there. Unfortunately fate didn’t give me chance for that. By then, bad news from Heidelberg reached they can’t offer scholarship. Then comes the announcement of SotM Asia happening in November. Applied for the scholarship, and luckily I got the travel scholarship! For Indians, the major cost was for the travel.

Then preparations started! I got the all supporting documents from Sawan. Through booking.com, I got a stay at Hotel Givenci which was very nearby to the venue. Searched for the VISA agencies nearby. Found out a very good agent Lavender Tours & Travels within Trivandrum, Kerala and applied for VISA. Even though, it took almost 2 weeks time, finally I got the first stamping on my passport! :)

Then, the next was a mail from Sawan stating that each Scholars should make a presentation of their valuable contributions. By that time, I got engaged with a group for a leisure trip at North Eastern parts of India. Within the short time, somehow I managed to make a slight one. My worry was on what topic shall I present. Luckily, my mentor Arun M helped me out and he gave a direction to present the social impacts we saw during the execution of our mapping projects.

SotM Days

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I was at the #osmIRL and #digitalNewry meetup yesterday.

It is wonderful to see the people of a town coming together and speaking about the challenges they have in situ, boundaries, licences, old buildings clumped together in their town core. There was a diversity of interests, yet a common idea that getting Newry more mapped than it presently is.

Newry still misses a lot of details on buildings

Dear Amigos, State of the Map Asia 2019 was a serendipity, a sweet serendipity to be honest! Being a doctoral student, I keep on receiving mails about conferences and symposiums round the clock, it happened by chance that I looked at this mail with utter solemnity. And then the caravan begun! Sawan can be the best of any administrative chairs I have ever witnessed till now! He was replying to every mails, how trivial it sounds. Honestly, at times, I was feeling annoying of myself to mail him on petty issues since I know how toiling it is to be the organizing host(s). But Kudos to this person whose replies were not only patient, but convincing of all the doubts. My expedition from Bangalore, INDIA to Dhaka, BANGLADESH was not only bewitching, but quite riveting. Firstly, I’m a Bengali and secondly, my ancestral lineage belongs from there! Dhaka was no way different from Kolkata except two facets: There is more rickshaw noticed in the streets of Dhaka and folks of Dhaka are way more affable than the Bengalis of Kolkata (Sounds offensive but hard truth, and absolutely my perspective). The volunteers at the venue were so amiable and approachable; you get a polite retort for any queries. And food… aah… the aroma, the taste, it really helped my gustatory buds to feel the palatable taste of “HOME”! Staying away from home, when one fine day, you feel the homely touch in food and that too in another nation, that feeling is empyrean! No words shall be enough to fathom the depth of knowledge I received from the speakers, say it presentations or lightening talks! In a nutshell, SotM Asia 2019 has won my heart and I would like to congratulate each and every efforts that was bestowed on this scientific endeavor, starting from the security staff to the cleaning personnel(s) who were in charge for the restrooms to the stage management members to the catering folks! It requires a holistic approach to conduct such a quids in event!

অভিনন্দন!!!

I really only got into OSM in this last year, precipitated by a change in locale, I wholeheartedly set out to get to know my new town of St. Petersburg better. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about both the town and inevitably about the culture and mechanics of OSM as well.

My primary goals right now are: 1. Make my own locale usable in my maps app as a worthy replacement of google. 2. give back by joining other projects such as Mapping Metro Tulsa (which still needs more hands on deck if we want to finish it within 5 years).

For number 1, I’ve been adding sidewalks and crosswalks to make better walking predictions as well as slowly updating the center of town. It appears that the city has been rapidly changing both in terms of buildings and stores. The city that was mapped a few years ago is remarkably different than the one now. Adding stores and restaurants (as well as simply addresses) is one way of building the metaphorical nest. Additionally I’ve also focused on adding interesting aspects of the city: especially such as the SHINE Murals that are a major face of this place.

As for Number 2, I’m still learning all that I can. There are many gaps in the OSM project: such as truly FOSS, ad and tracker free navigation apps, tons of missing data, proper navigation, etc. With time I think I can contribute more than just drawing in houses for hours.

lets keep up fellas we are doing a good job here lets finish this all once huray

It seems the data is not ready, because I found out that they all have the same bearing: E. But it should have at least four bearing option: E, W, N, S.

Link

My plan is to delete all relations to public transport in the HBC then recreate them with the new information from AT’s website.

Currency new roads and or edits to the area have made them broken and incomplete.

Routes that need redoing

• 982
• 983
• 984
• 985
• NX1

Routes that are now redone

• 981
• 995

My Experience at SOTM ASIA’2019 - Dhaka, Bangladesh:

I was willing to be part of SOTM, when i have been the part of the SOTM ASIA ’2019 at the Krishibid Institution Bangladesh (KIB) Dhaka, Bangladesh, it gave me a excited experience. I have attended the event alone and it was my first international trip from India which build a stronger confidence level inside me and also gave chance to meet different people from all around the world and made few good friend among them in short time.

SOTM Asia’19 has gave me a amazing platform to talk and present a overview on RMSI’s project - India_Health_Facilities_Import

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Waiting For My Next Idea!

Wonderful conference

It wasn’t long after celebrating Diwali in India, which happened to fall on a weekend this year (around 27 October 2019 to be precise) that I was packing my bags for my next adventure. Where to? Well, to a country that is as close as it could be! I was heading to the Land of the Rickshaws: Dhaka, Bangladesh!

Ever since the moment I received an invitation to be a speaker at the State of the Map Asia 2019 Conference, I had been looking forward to it! Not only was it because, I was heading to the country that homed the Sunderbans Forest and the Cox’s Bazaar (the longest natural unbroken sea beach in the world), but also because life as a Software Engineer in India was rather taking a monotonic turn over the last 4 months, until this 4 day adventure came along to break the monotony! And once I received the notification for scholarship, there was just no two way about it!

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https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/O5l

I’m guessing there must be more. Please add anyone you know of! (heated=yes)

Cheers pangoSE

I’m continuing using the Tasking Manager and mapping around Zubaidiyah. I’m using Bing as reference image, but there’s newer Maxar imagery available. Trouble is, they’re misaligned by 5-10m. I’m trying out osm.wiki/JOSM/Plugins/Imagery_Offset_Database to keep the images aligned so I don’t have to switch back and forth between them.

State of the Map Asia 2019 Conference

It was a good chance for me to participate in the SOTM Asia 2019 Conference which was held at the Krishibid Institution Bangladesh (KIB) Dhaka, Bangladesh. I was one of the scholars to participate in the conference which was excited and well organized.

I had a chance to meet several participants such as students, academics, companies and the OSM community who were interested in the open data and OpenStreetMap.

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I never really used this space, and I want to get used to it. My main aim with OSM is to collaborate with CAI (a local hiking club) to map all the regional trails… and who knows, maybe in the future the whole national database will be uploaded on OSM. This is the page that I started and that I intend to use as a base to keep track of the work to be done. I’m also interested in regional/national parks in the surroundings, and I began from the Vena del Gesso and the Foreste Casentinesi ones.

Let’s see where all of this will bring me in the future :-)

Earlier this year I started looking into the mapping options available for skiers. On previous ski trips, I hadn’t discovered a satisfactory way of even just viewing a simple map, and it seemed that an interactive map with the ability to route over lifts and pistes ought to be possible.

I ended up combining OSM piste data and NASA SRTM elevation data to create a 3D view of ski resorts from the same angled view as the official paper maps. Each resort has it’s own discrete map with a bounded view, which feels more appropriate than a typical map which can pan indefinitely. The result is the app Ski Nav.

The coverage of data for ski resorts (piste:type=downhill and aerialway=chair_lift etc) is generally very good. Nonetheless, for routing it is still essential that the app intelligently processes this data to create artificial connections and “fill in the gaps”. Maps typically do not have explicit connection at a “hub”, a small area where many lifts and pistes terminate.

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I’ve create a private Tasking Manager project for myself to split up the work of mapping the area around Zubaidia (Az Zubaydiyah), Iraq, and just completed the first ‘square’. It looks funny - lots of detail surrounded by low-detailed area. Sticking to the very basic things for now - highways, canals, residential areas. Even so, it was a lot more work than expected. Will subdivide the squares into smaller tasks in the future.

Does anyone know how to best tag this:

I guess these are ponds of agricultural runoff water.