Description | The 2016 State of the Map US, the yearly national conference of OpenStreetMap, will take place in Seattle, Wash., for the first time. The conference, scheduled for July 23-25, 2016, will be located at Seattle University in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle. OpenStreetMap ( www.openstreetmap.org) (OSM), the Wikipedia of maps, is being created by more than 100,000 volunteers worldwide, who use the organization’s software tools to add a wide range of data to the global map. It is free to join OpenStreetMap, and the organization’s data is free for any application. OSM is a proponent of open-source geodata and software in order to make sophisticated mapping available to anyone worldwide. State of the Map US conferences bring together OpenStreetMap creators and users, including participants from government, business, education and nonprofit organizations. A number of participants come from overseas organizations that are using OpenStreetMap in disaster recovery, transportation improvement, medical services and community economic development. The theme for the 2016 meeting is “Building Community” with a focus on expending the diversity of OpenStreetMap contributors and users. The conference organizers plan special outreach to women and minority communities that have not participated widely in making or using OpenStreetMap, with sessions about how to participate in creating OSM and how to take advantage of the mapping data it provides. Other sessions will deal with technical topics in mapping, unique applications of OpenStreetMap data and OSM in education. |
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