I want to share that I received the “State of the Map Asia 2023 Community Champion Awards” on November 17 as recognition for advocating the use of OpenStreetMap and community-building across different groups and regions in the Asia-Pacific region and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the community.

As a student leader passionate about exploring not just maps, but also the diverse tapestry of communities in the Asia-Pacific, I recognize that my efforts are a work in progress. I aim to continue advocating for OpenStreetMap’s advancement and I am deeply grateful to the State of the Map Asia team, my colleagues, mentors, family, friends, and everyone who has contributed to this remarkable journey.

It is one year since I was elected to OSMF board.

I am recording time spend on some things, including time spend on things resulting from being on OSMF board.

So I can report that since 2022-12-09 it was 355 hours.

It records time spend on what I do as result of being on OSMF board. So it excludes for example time spend on mapping and StreetComplete development. And it includes time on some things that I could complete without being on OSMF board like some attribution-related activities - that I do as result of being on OSMF board.

I feel like I owe the world this, I owe Zimbabwe this, we can’t step into the new year before I share this news with everyone. It was June of this year when I was voted as a New Voting Member. I am grateful for a supportive nominator Kingsley Chika CHUKWU and the HOT family as a whole. I might be the first Voting Member from Zimbabwe and for this I was compelled to share this step with the rest of this family especially.

Getting to be a Voting Member came with proving your worth and making sound suggestions and decisions I am already incorporating or taking part in. I am happy to be recognized to this extent and I promise to stand in for the community, to the community as we build a stronger community. You can read my responses here:

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My experience at Pista ng Mapa 2023, from November 21-23, was an exhilarating adventure as eleven Viscan YouthMappers (VYM) and I delved into a three-day conference at the University of the Philippines Tacloban College. The event seamlessly blended intellectual engagement, skill-building workshops, and a celebration of our dedication to open mapping.

The Summit Hotel in Tacloban City hosted the kick-off, featuring plenary sessions with insightful presentations by Mr. Mikko Tamura of Open Mapping Hub – Asia Pacific and Dr. Alfredo Mahar Francisco Lagmay of UP Resilience Institute. The day concluded with parallel sessions, providing a diverse look into mapping’s facets. The highlight of my Day 1 was presenting our VYM project, ‘Mapping of Fire Hydrants as Baseline Data for Fire Emergency Response in Leyte Province, Philippines.’ This was very memorable for me as this transitioned me from a participant last year at PNM2022 to a speaker this year.

Day 2 immersed us in hands-on workshops led by industry experts, from Geoladies’ Ms. Leigh Lunas’ “When Women Maps” to Action for Economic Reform’s Mr. Mark Aimon Pangan’s insights on Digital Data Collection to BNHR’s Mr. Ben Hur Pintor sharing knowledge about beyond shapefiles and file-based data management and “Getting started with Developing Geospatial Applications” by Mr. Luiz Caezar Ian Panganiban of Ausome Maps. These sessions not only enhanced my mapping skills but also fueled my inspiration for geospatial applications.

Day 3 centered on community connections, with meet-ups led by Mr. Mikko Tamura for the OSM Philippines, Mr. Ben Hur Pintor for the OSGeo, and Ms. Feye Andal for the YouthMappers. The YouthMappers Meet-up allowed us in Viscan Youthmappers to reflect on our achievements, identify challenges, and envision our future aspirations. Moreover, the afternoon featured an immersive field trip through Tacloban City and Palo, Leyte, connecting us with local culture and history.

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Okay then well today it looks like I’ll be beginning my amateur cartography hobby. Oh what fun.

Hello community! Today I joined for the first time a meeting and shared my skills with the guests.

Host: Dara,

Attendees: Brazil, Mahjabin, Ralph, Pete, Arnalie, Nicole, Eden, Hawa, Daniel, Franco

Introduction:

The recent HOT community meeting brought together passionate individuals from various corners of the globe, united by a common goal - humanitarian open mapping. Led by Dara, the meeting featured insightful introductions, icebreaker moments, and shoutouts to commendable efforts within the community. As we reflect on the highlights, it becomes clear that the spirit of collaboration and dedication is alive and thriving in the HOT community.

Icebreaker Moments:

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I am delighted to share that I have received the “State of the Map Asia 2023 Community Champion Awards” as a recognition for advocating the use of OpenStreetMap and community-building across different groups, spaces, and regions in the Asia-Pacific region and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the community. I am grateful to the SOTM Asia team, my colleagues, mentors, family and friends and everyone who has been part of this amazing journey.

Read the blog on YouthMappers Site

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Hi,

My name is Branko from Microsoft. Microsoft’s involvement with OSM spans several impactful contributions:

• Providing Bing imagery since 2010 for free use in OSM for whole world (and all the drama that comes with it)
• Creating Map builder – intuitive editor for Bing users that want to edit OSM map (and all the drama that comes with it)
• Maintaining iD in the interim period before Martin took over (sorry, no drama here, just plain good old maintainership)
• Released world coverage of AI-mined building footprints and road data as open data

This list is not intended to be PR for Microsoft, and I know this sounds like a corporate cliché, but this list is hopefully showing that Microsoft is really committed to success of OSM. Stuff that we did previously, stuff in that list above, is stuff that we think will benefit the community and improve OSM contributions. And we hope it did! A lot of us recently visited SotM EU 2023 and I hope you saw us all around. That event allowed us to see stuff from a different perspective and to try to think out of the box. So, we thought, what if we pause trying to figure out what is the best way to improve OSM contributions on our own and instead - ask YOU how Microsoft can help!? Yes, YOU, the community, directly here in the diary😊. I know this may sound unconventional, but hey – OSM is also not the most conventional project out there, so we thought this might just be the proper way to gather interesting ideas.

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A week ago, one of my riding companions lost her horse in a tragic traffic accident at a busy intersection. Now, the Colorado equestrian community is demanding change in our suburbs to prevent pedestrian, equestrian, and cyclist injuries and deaths. One of our starting steps is to map popular riding routes that use public roads so that our legislators can identify problem areas and work to resolve unsafe traffic conditions caused by inadequate infrastructure.

Spent all morning updating speed limits from 30mph to 20mph in Port Talbot, Goytre, Cwmavon, Margam, Sandfields and Baglan.

A PRECIOUS STONE WORTHY CELEBREATED A CASE OF STATE OF MAP AFRICA 2023.

The State of the Map Africa (SotM Africa) is a bi-annual regional conference that celebrates the culture of open mapping, open data, GIS, and its impact across Africa. The OSM community in Uganda hosted the first SotM Africa conference in 2017. In 2021, It was hosted in Abidjan and Grand-Bassam in Ivory Coast. The 2021 conference planned in Nairobi, Kenya was virtually hosted (online). This year’s conference was hosted in Yaoundé, Cameroon under the theme “Open Mapping as a Support Tool for Local Development in Africa“ [https://2023.stateofthemap.africa/about] The OSM Africa community has rapidly grown in recent years and as a way of embracing Africanism, SotMAfrica has been practised since 2017 and is regarded as the biggest gathering for all OSM African communities. Again this year from 30th November to 2 December 2023 the African biggest gathering was hosted in Yaounde, Mbankomo - Cameroon.

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Hello, my name is Janeth Mwakisole and I’m from Tanzania.

I had the opportunity to attend the State of the Map Africa conference in Yaounde, Cameroon from 30th November to 2nd December 2023. This conference was about celebrating and showcasing the culture of open mapping in Africa. I learned a lot about the significance of open mapping in supporting sustainable community development. One of the crucial things I grasped is the value of data-based decision-making. Open data is a dependable and efficient tool, especially in communities that have limited resources. By utilizing open mapping and the information it provides, communities can make well-informed decisions that optimize their scarce resources and contribute to long-term progress.

One of the things I found particularly interesting was how open mapping can contribute to climate resilience because it is related to my career background. I also learned about waste management and how it can be improved through open mapping. Of course, there are a lot of things to share, and I have mentioned only a few of them.

During the conference, I met and connected with people from different countries in Africa and worldwide. For example, I met Geoffrey Katerrega from Uganda, Kennedy Jomokela, and Charles Chifulya from Zambia, and many more from Cameroon and other parts of the world.

I had the opportunity to moderate and participate in the panels at the conference, which was a completely new experience. I’m grateful for the chance I was given, and I believe, through what I have learned at the conference, I’ll be able to make fruitful impacts in my community and further develop my career.

Dear OpenStreetMap Community and fellow mappers,

As we say goodbye to 2023, I reflect on a year of growth and development in the OpenStreetMap project.

This year has seen substantial increases across various metrics:

• Nodes: Increase of 731,936,003 since last year (9.09% annual increase, over 2 million daily)
• Ways: Increase of 83,077,150 (9.21% annual increase, over 200 thousand daily)
• Relations: Increase of 1,183,690 (11.37% annual increase, over 3,000 daily)
• Registered users: Increase of 1,161,850 (12.25% annual increase, over 3,000 daily)

These statistics, accessible here and here, not only quantify our growth but also demonstrate the dynamic evolution of our project.

Beyond these numbers, the real essence of OpenStreetMap lies in its community. The launch of our new community discourse has fostered more vibrant and quality discussions than ever before, thanks to the dedicated efforts of our moderation teams in maintaining a constructive and respectful environment. The migration of all old forum content was a major effort by the Operations Working Group.

The board, in collaboration with the communications working group, has enhanced transparency and engagement through more frequent blogging, and community consultations on major projects. We also updated our mission statement to better reflect the OSMF’s actual work.

Since late 2020, successive boards have been shaping the OSMF’s first strategic plan, informed by extensive feedback from OSMF members and the broader community. This plan, finalised in September, provides a clear direction on future endeavours in key areas like technical infrastructure, community development, institutional development, and financial governance.

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Today I participated in the training on road classification where I gained additional knowledge on different types of road classification in Java OpenStreetMap (JOSM). training@hotosm.org

At present, farming_system is used in Nepal to mark bari and khet , referring to specific farming practices in the area. I am proposing to use this tag with jhum to mark farmland in NE India / Myanmar where traditional jhum shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn farming) is practiced.

These are fields which are essentially permanent farmland, but which are left to re-wild for some years before being used again. Contrary to some beliefs about the method, the entirety of the jungle is not used for this type of farming. Instead, it is always the same fields that the communities cycle between.

Expansion of this tag to include jhum could enable greater tracking of such fields as part of ongoing scientific analyses of this methods of farming and their impact on the environment. Use of the farming_system tag does not affect rendering, or interfere with any other tags. As farming_system is already in wide use in Nepal but otherwise unused, it is the ideal option for tagging jhum land use.

edit: Discussion on the tagging forum here: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/proposal-for-farming-system-jhum/106877/4