Yesterday, I attended the OpenStreetMap Local Chapters and Communities Congress 2026 online.

There were at least 15 participants who signed the attendance list on the event’s HackMD document, representing a range of countries including the Philippines, Italy, the United States, Canada, Greece, Indonesia, Belgium, Kenya, and Brazil. The document is available publicly here.

After introductions and updates from the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board, the session moved into a group discussion titled “Challenges in OpenStreetMap and overcoming those challenges.” This discussion was conducted through Mentimeter, allowing participants to submit anonymous responses to guided questions.

Here is a (selected) summary of the discussion results:

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Question 1 : If a new mapper asked you “what’s the hardest part about being in the OSM community?” what would you say.

“So many smart people. All with their strong opinions about how things should be done.”

“Dealing with abusive community members.”

“Not being demotivated by expert mappers that might yell at them for doing mistakes while mapping.”

“Encountering negative / unproductive discourse in OSM fora, which can discourage participation from new new users.”

“Documentation mostly in English.”

“If you are not already technologically literate, it’s a lot to learn and unclear where to start.”

“No clear entry point. Unclear governance”

“Not easy to know what tools/editors to use.”

“The idea of tagging might be confusing and tools/editors often hide these.”

“Data privacy issues in some structures”

“Security protocols with OSM APIs”

“Hard to explain why OSM is needed when Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps already exist”

Question 2 : What makes it hard to grow or sustain your local community?

“Lack of time.”

“There’s not enough experienced mappers to help newbies and grow the community.”

“Most members from the community prefer money-yielding activities and the idea of volunteer driven initiatives are not so welcomed.”

“The distributed nature of the work can make it hard to reach out to people in the region. I feel we could have better integrated tool to talk to local mappers directly.”

“Lack of funds to organise events and projects”

“Even in English, it’s difficult to find good resources like tutorials for getting people started with mapping.”

“Even small disagreements could lead to long-term bad blood and resentment.”

Question 3 : Is there a gap between the global OSM and your local reality? Where do you feel it?

“Yes. In tagging practices. How to adapt it to the local reality.”

“People are drawn to local and immediate concerns by default and it’s hard to make people excited about global concerns.”

“Core infra needs work and innovation. We need more transparency and openness to community input. Local communities need to shape our shared website.”

“The people who are affected by the gap might not be present at this meeting.”

Question 4 : What support do you wish the OSMF or the wider community provided but doesn’t?

“Money!”

“Appreciation”

“Clear leadership”

“Technological support and timely communication. All effort and local chapters should be accredited.”

“A mix of more formal and informal meetups. From “let’s hear a presentation about this person’s mapping project” to “let’s meet at a bar and hang out as friends”

Question 5 : What are ways you get your community together?

“Daily communication via chat makes us feel close between bigger events.”

“Our annual event. But not all mappers attend.”

“Annual SOTMUS”

“This really requires a core group of active people to get the ball rolling.”

“Telegram groups. Contacting key people one by one through personal chats or email”

Question 6 : What ideas do you have to help grow and sustain OSM?”

“OSMF should hire an executive director / CEO.”

“Clear point of contact for each working group.”

“Local panoramax instances”

“OSM US working on a learning sandbox for new mappers.”

“Introduce the concept of a ‘local fork’, where people can map and document their work in a private space, outside the OSM main database. Build an entirely new geodata crowdsourcing platform on top of the OSM main database, focusing on personalized activities, viewpoints and perspective. The downside of a wiki is that everyone is forced to adhere to a single set of rules. This alternative would instead celebrate diversity”

“Be that positive person on the interwebs! Just a simple ‘Thank you for that question’ / ‘Thank you for editing the map!’ goes a long long way towards the sustainability of the volunteer community”

“An online documentary of successful works used for greater global good. e.g. flood mapping data used by rescue organizations in critical situation.”

“Opportunities to realize paid partnership”

“Communication with local residents for communal mapping of basic infrastructure and services, led through attending town halls meeting.”