OpenStreetMap Belgium general status

08.11.2024 - Joost Schouppe

Hey, remember we have a newsletter? You can still subscribe here. Maybe it’s taken so long to send a new edition because we’ve been doing so many other things.

For example, during 2023, OSM.be was reborn as its own independent NGO! Our umbrella organization Open Knowledge Belgium went through hard times, and is now refocusing on its core projects. We’re glad to have been part of that community, and even happier that we now have everything under the control of the OpenStreetMap community.

The new organization has been able to keep most of our corporate members: TomTom & Toerisme Vlaanderen still financially support us. Thanks to Anyways.eu, we will have a stand at the next Trefdag Vlaanderen Digitaal together. Champs Libres took over the care for the free Belgian tiles, which now are updated twice a year. And lastly, we were joined by the Belgian National Crisis Centre, an organization that intensively uses and improves OSM data all the time.

We’re only just over 30 people who run the organization and decide what we spend money on. If you want to be actively involved in the organizational work, just send us a quick mail via board@osm.be

A second reason for us being busy, is that we spent a lot of time organizing the first State of the Map Europe in a decade in November 2023. For a long weekend, over 300 community members from around Europe and the world joined us in Antwerp for presentations and meeting each other. All the talks were recorded and can be re-watched at https://www.youtube.com/@StateoftheMapEurope