September is maptember

21.09.2016 - Joost Schouppe

What happens when you allow everyone to map the world, as they see fit, no questions asked?

You get a map that allows you to navigate any country in the world for free, to plan a vaccination campaign in the Kivu, help you find the nearest bar with wifi.

This is OpenStreetMap.

600.000 people mapping away. Every month, we’re adding millions of buildings and a couple of thousand places to unleash your dog. Together, we’ve mapped 44 million kilometers of roads. That’s enough to travel around the world a thousand times!

The global community building this map is coming to Brussels! On Thursday, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team summit (HOT) will present work in the NGO focused mapping community.

That same day, the Belgian community for open source geo software will focus on the tools that make these projects possible.

In the evening, everyone - including you - is invited to come map with us. Together we will map for Doctors Without Borders.

Friday to Sunday, the general OpenStreetMap community will talk about interesting data uses, cutting edge mapping technologies and community building challenges. There will be presenters and participants from all over the world. There will be individual mapping enthusiasts and organisations like the Red Cross, the French railways (SNCF), the World Bank and several more companies and NGOs.

On Monday the more technically oriented will have a hack day to turn all those fresh ideas into code and new projects.