National Missing Maps Mapathon 2017

Help Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross to facilitate their rescue

After a succesful event last year, a new national Mapathon will take place on Saturday, March 25th, which is organized by the National Committee for Geography, in collaboration with OpenStreetMap Belgium. Several universities in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia open their doors a whole day for a large collective mapping event. Come contribute - do not miss this opportunity and help Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross to facilitate their work in crisis areas.

OpenStreetMap meeting in Louvain la Neuve

Let’s build a community with everybody interested in OpenStreetMap!

The target audience is everybody! From hearing the word OpenStreetMap a few seconds ago to the total expert in no time. There will be someone you can discuss and have a drink with we’re an interational community speaking English, Dutch, French so come join us!

Mapper of the Month: Lauri Kytömaa (Finland)

When and how did you discover OpenStreetMap?

I came across the Osm website in 2007, but I didn’t yet have a GPS and there was only landsat imagery, if I remember correctly. Near the end of 2008 I found a Garmin on sale, and remembered the osm site. After just a few gps tracks I was hooked, there was so much to improve in my home town, and in the meantime they had acquired the right to use Yahoo imagery, which was already usable, even if it had arbitrary distortions.

OpenStreetMap meeting in Brussels on February, 21

Let’s build a community with everybody interested in OpenStreetMap!

The target audience is everybody! From hearing the word OpenStreetMap a few seconds ago to the total expert in no time. There will be someone you can discuss and have a drink with we’re an interational community speaking English, Dutch, French so come join us!

OpenStreetMap in Antwerp informal meetup

Let’s build a community with everybody interested in OpenStreetMap!

We’ll be coming to get together again in the city of Antwerp and talk about OpenStreetMap and other interesting stuff with some beers or other beverages.

Everybody is welcome, whether you’ve been mapping for ten years, or you just encountered OpenStreetMap somewhere and you want to know more.

Mapper of the Month: Steve All (USA)

Who are you?

I am Steve All. In OSM I am stevea and in our wiki I am Stevea. I grew up in San Diego and live in Santa Cruz, California USA since age 17, coming here to attend the University of California and fell in love with the place: starting a business, buying a house, raising a son through the local schools and my alma mater, now he is getting his PhD. I double-majored in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and Applied Linguistics and became a software professional. I am a former employee of Apple and Adobe and work with various local software companies, improving quality as a Software Quality Engineer, Project Manager or Director of Software Quality. I love to hike and bike and am blessed with many beautiful local landscapes to enjoy these pursuits, including wonderful oceanside rides and deep wilderness hiking and camping. I have been fascinated with maps and geography back to age six when my grandfather sat with me and a world atlas, showing me The Old Country, the city where I was born and the bay we lived near in Southern California. He taught me a way to “fly” while looking at a map, to visualize the real world and a map together, synthesizing both experience and imagination. I think everybody can do this, though some things (say, perceiving 3D topographic contour lines as hills and valleys) take practice. “Flying with maps” still kind of thrills me, even today.

OpenStreetMap meeting in Brussels on January, 16

Let’s build a community with everybody interested in OpenStreetMap!

The target audience is everybody! From hearing the word OpenStreetMap a few seconds ago to the total expert in no time. There will be someone you can discuss and have a drink with we’re an interational community speaking English, Dutch, French so come join us!

Hackday GRB

Last Sunday 12 December, we had our first real OSM Belgium hackday! The plan was mainly to work on the GRB import. A dozen volunteers made it to Brussels and participated.

In Flanders, 1944 of our contributors have already mapped 1.4 million buildings. Most of that by hand, from aerial imagery. But recently the Flemish government released the ‘GRB (NL)’ as open data. This data contains over 4 million buildings, and they are drawn to centimeter level precision. So we want to improve the geometry of our existing buildings, then go for complete building coverage in Flanders.

OSM Belgium Hackday

Ben Abelshausen and Glenn Plas would like to invite you to the OpenStreetMap Hackday!

The most important thing we will work on is the preparation of the GRB buildings import. We’ll work on the final technical challenges, conceptual choices and documenting the process to get Data Working Group approval.

We propose Sunday, December 11th. We’re still looking for a place to organize this, but we’re aiming for something in or near Brussels, close to a big railway station.

Mapper in the Spotlight: Sarah Hoffman (Germany)

This is a translation of Sarah’s text in German. Any misrepresentation is our fault.

Who are you?

My name is Sarah, I am from Germany and live in Dresden. I studied computer sciences and work fulltime as software developer for a small local company. In OSM I am known as lonvia, which is a word play with the Latin form of ’long journey'.