State of the Map 2022 Live

State of the Map 2022 Live pinned «What's next? in five hours, there will be a YouthMappers' documentary premiere at the same venue, which I plan to attend. You'll need to register for that. The org is more interesting than I expected, so I anticipate a great watch. After that, at 17:00, I…»

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One more thing about the YouthMappers' documentary, from a mapper's point of view. Liz asked me how the movie looked to me as an osmer, and it looked pretty fine. At no point I wanted to comment, "actually...". No, it does a good job at showing usefullness and impact of our project.

But as a person with interest in UX, I couldn't help but cringe every time a screen was shown. Every editing experience we have is lacking, making people's lives harder than they need to be.

For example, three seconds JOSM has been on screen, a person used the Building Tools plugin. Which is extremely useful and like the second point on every JOSM tutorial. And the authors have refused bringing it to the core for 11 years, because "we have the extruder mode". You cannot edit the map with JOSM efficiently because you first need to know about plugins and which of these to install.

iD of course was also shown — inside the Tasking Manager interface, if I'm not mistaken. Which means, the actual map took just a third of a screen, with big panels for attributes and a current task taking the most of it. It's like mapping on a phone, while having all this extra screen estate just being static and unhelpful. And with an interactive map, you need all the place you can get.

And finally, the street mapping was done with Mapillary. Which is fun: you drive around making photos, then upload them back at a school, and you're done! Except you've done zero mapping: making photos is not it. OSM got nothing from your work, Facebook did. You have just increased Meta's market value without contributing anything to open mapping. Now you have to rely on people from far away, who may or may not look at your photos and make changes. And then, in a few months, this collaborative work might make a difference.

So yeah, mapping in OSM is hard right now, but it doesn't have to be. I hope in a year we'll look back at how we mapped before, and shudder.

When they turned off the lights, I felt like in a cinema. And then, a candle lights up on a screen. YouthMappers' documentary is just half an hour long, but packed with interviews and powerful imagery. It's not as much about what YM do — yes, they save the world, one building and power pole at a time, — as about who they are. Students see that a simple act of making a photo, or adding a road to the map, suddenly brings a change they can see. And that inspires them to do more: teach others, pursue map-related jobs, run projects. Again I felt a bit envious there was nothing like that when I was a student.

The documentary is built around a single issue, electric networks. No wonder it was chosen: seeing people study by whatever light they can find feels otherwordly for a european, in a bad sense. Like, this needs to be fixed yesterday. I liked that the movie was not about violence, as humanitarian messages sometimes are, but about learning and making a better future through maps. Feels empowering: not "ugh good thing there are trained people for that", but "wow I'd like to help".

This is a good short movie made by a director who knows what she's doing, and featuring voices and knowledge of all the key people of YM. Probably the first that shows OpenStreetMap at the forefront. Watch it in a month or two when it's published. Here's the trailer. Picture above by Gregory.

So these people have made together a book on YouthMappers (it wasn't a premiere just for the documentary!), which is available for free online (and hardcover for 50 €). And now they are answering questions from people who haven't read it yet. It goes better than expected!

⚠️⚠️⚠️ LOST & FOUND ⚠️⚠️⚠️

We have these things that someone forgot. Can you please check and see if they are yours?

If yes please come and pick them up at the venue either today or tomorrow 😊

What's next? in five hours, there will be a YouthMappers' documentary premiere at the same venue, which I plan to attend. You'll need to register for that. The org is more interesting than I expected, so I anticipate a great watch.

After that, at 17:00, I will do a brief workshop on how to use Every Door editor effectively, and then we maybe will go outside and practice mapping.

Tomorrow, FOSS4G starts. Subscribe to @foss4g2022firenze for news. With the help of Luca, I have made the same schedule for Giggity app and iPhone's calendar as for SotM: https://sotm.osmz.ru/f2022.html Not gonna attend any workshops, although now I think I could have submitted my own. So I'm free on Tuesday and open to suggestions.

Also tomorrow this channel goes public, to act as a blog on everything that's happened at SotM.

Fast-forwarding, in November there will be the State of the Map Asia in the Philippines! There's no website or wiki page yet, just a Facebook group with a city name (Cebu), a date (Nov 21-25), and a minute-long trailer for the conference.

And in January, there's the State of the Map Tanzania. No information yet, but keep your schedule open!

So... we're done! The State of the Map 2022 is over! It took like an hour to actually leave the building: saying goodbyes was awful hard. Even in final minutes I met new people, like Jana from MSF, with whom I'd talk more, but alas not this time. This truly was the best conference — because every SotM is the best. I will miss you all. Safe travels, and don't forget to map!

Photos from twitter by Jana Bauerová, Mapanauta, Patrick Stählin, Cristian Consonni, Poorni Badrinath, Laboratorio GeCo, Anisa Kuci, Ivo Reano, Yair Grinberger (not in order).

And here's the second part of the group photo: people who have been watching online. Do not forget this was a hybrid conference; watch them on @sotm_intro_bot, which will be put down forever on Tuesday.

Mapping party team! 🎉