Mapper of the Month: Jorieke Vyncke

Jorieke, a 28 years old Belgian, has spend a lot of time the past few years to support local OpenStreetMap communities all over the world. She worked on several projects in Africa, Europe and Asia to train people and to promote OpenStreetMap by local and international players.

Where and when did you discover OpenStreetMap?

I discovered OpenStreetMap at the end of 2010, “you will enjoy it”, and YES! I showed OpenStreetMap to my two brothers and together with them I mapped our village Wechelderzande Thanks to my student job as mailman, it was very easy, I knew half of the house numbers in the village by heart! Some time later, I discovered HOT, the Humanitarian OpenStreetmap Team, and Map Kibera. As social agoge, who had the ambition to work internationally and who was enormously interested in participation and spatiality, it simply had to interest me. My studies in ‘Conflict and Development’ gave me the opportunity to delve deeper in this type of mapping. I even got the chance to work for 6 weeks in Bangladesh for my master thesis. It gave me the possibility to talk with students and professors in architecture and spatial planning, the local OpenStreetMap community and a lot of people living in slums. And yes, it was them who really convinced me to use OpenStreetMap as a tool in humanitarian and development contexts. Precisely because they can put their neighborhood on the map themselves. After this project, everything went fast, a few months later I flew for the first time to Africa for the Eurosha project, in which HOT was one of the partners. And it never really stopped since then…

OpenStreetMap beers in Halle!

For the first time in the metropolis of Halle (Vlaams Brabant), all welcome to learn, teach or preach about OpenStreetMap.

Location:

’t Parlement
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4300440901#map=19/50.73721/4.23784

Time:

19:30

Mapper in the Spotlight: Jinal Foflia (India)

Jinal Foflia is living in Bengaluru, India. In her free time you’ll see her playing with words which she turns into poetries, she is an amature baker and is always trying to make something creative out from the waste. Jinal is engineer and works currently at Mapbox as a Data Analyst.

Just talk about OSM over a beer

Let’s talk about OpenStreeMap - newbies to experts, all welcome.

Missing Maps @ IPIS, Antwerp

We’re doing another Missing Maps mapathon in Antwerp, at our regular host IPIS.

If you’re coming to meet other OSM volunteers or want to help out, please register here. If you just want to map and be left alone, register at the [Eventbrite page]https://www.eventbrite.com/e/missing-maps-ipis-tickets-25131113838.

Mapper of the Month: Julien Fastré

Can you introduce yourself?

I have several occupations, and I appreciate that they are in very different domains, althought, it might be tiresome from time to time:

• I am a software developer at Champs-Libres, where a part of the activities is related to geography. We regularly use data from OpenStreetMap. We also install tile server, Nominatim, etc. Officially this is supposed to be a part-time job, but in reality, it takes much more time.
• I studied journalism, but after my studies I’ve always been a community worker. I also work part-time as coach for unemployed women at a feminist association.
• I have been (and sometime I am still) active in several different associations and movements such as GRACQ, which defends the rights of cyclist, de scouts, some unions, …

Last, but not least I am a father and I love spending a good part of my life on that!

Missing Maps @ MSF

We’re doing another Missing Maps mapathon, this time at the MSF offices in Brussels.

If you’re coming to meet othe OSM volunteers or want to help out, please register here. If you just want to map and be left alone, register at the [Eventbrite page]https://www.eventbrite.com/e/missing-maps-ipis-tickets-25131113838.

Mapper in the Spotlight: Pete Masters (Scotland)

Q: Who are you?

I am Pete Masters (OSM: pedrito1414 - a hangover from my time living in Mexico). I live in Glasgow and work for MSF, running the Missing Maps project. I am a fairly rubbish climber, a regular footballer and get out to the lochs and mountains as much as possible.

Mapper of the Month: Stijn Rombauts

Stijn Rombauts is a 37 year old bio-engineer who works for the Flanders Enviroment Agency, where he builds and maintains computermodels of streams and rivers. Those models are used to predict floods and to plan of e.g. fish steps and waiting basins. Because he spends a lot of time in front of the computer for his job, he tries to be active, in the nature, during his spare time: be it on foot, with the mountain bike or in a canoe.

National Missing Maps Mapathon 2016

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

In the context of the International Map Year 2015-2016, a national Mapathon will take place on Saturday, April 16th, which is organized by the National Committee for Geography, in collaboration with OpenStreetMap Belgium. Seven universities in Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia open their doors a whole day for a large collective mapping event. Would you like to contribute an hour or longer, do not miss this opportunity and help Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross to facilitate their work in crisis areas.