State of the Map 2024 took place in Nairobi last weekend. I did not attend, although i tried to get an idea by watching some of the video streams. With tried being the operative word here – the streaming infrastructure did not seem to be quite up to the task. That was clearly not the fault of the local team though (with the exception of the microphoning and audio levels – which was severely challenging for the viewer).

Not going to write an in depth commentary here. To recapitulate the background: The year before (2023) State of the Map was meant to take place in Cameroon but the OSMF board threatened to intervene for political reasons so the SotM working group scuttled their plan – meaning no SotM in 2023. Bottom line: A lot of people were pissed, but for very different reasons.

When, for 2024, the SotM working group selected Nairobi, the opposition was less severe and the OSMF board kept quiet – so the conference went ahead. It was nice to see the African communities got some broader recognition. And given the severe lack of more substantial communication of the OSMF with the larger OSM community otherwise, the program items from the OSMF gave valuable insights into the inner-OSMF mindset that are otherwise not available to the ordinary OSM community member.

Beyond that i want to point interested readers to the commentary and impressions from Severin and Ilya from the conference. If you compare the official public communication from the OSMF to Ilya’s comments, that is truly a night-and-day difference – predominantly PR phrases and random pointers to communications of others vs. thoughtful personal impressions and critical commentary based on concrete individual experiences.

The OSMF has now for quite a few years tried to organize some streamlined synthetic corporate PR style communication (with fairly limited results even by corporate standards). At the same time they are essentially ignoring the substantial grassroots efforts and talents the OSM community has developed in the field of public communication because they do not fit into the OSMF corporate culture. The people who try to help the OSMF writing mastodon and twitter posts or entries on the official OSMF blog are surely well meaning and enthusiastic. But the idea to compete through engineered PR style communication with people freely and independently writing about the topics they are involved and experienced in is simply not a winning proposition. And, as a side effect, it alienates everyone in the wider OSM community who publicly shares their thoughts on OpenStreetMap topics with a wider audience and who has the ambition to do so independently and in a reflected way without being affected by organizational interests.

Ironically, this year’s SotM also showed how much talent and eagerness there is also in the African OSM communities in public communication, which is sadly not going to find the support from the OSMF to thrive and to develop the experience and self confidence to write and talk independently and critically about matters of interest for the global OSM community with a distinctly African perspective. My hope is that such support will at least to some extent come from the broader OSM community outside the OSMF.

Next year’s conference is announced to be in Manila, Philippines – from former British colony to former US colony i might critically add. But i am happy for the Philippine OSM community. They are a very active local community in OpenStreetMap with a very dynamic development of the map in the area. It is unlikely i am going to be there though. I might reconsider that if someone was interested enough in me talking there about map design, generalization, open data satellite imagery or any other topic of interest to finance me visiting the conference. But as is, there is neither enough use for my business in such a visit nor am i interested in becoming part of the international OSM jet set.

A short final remark regarding diversity of locations of SotM conferences. It has occurred to me that up to and including Manila 2025 all SotM conferences with the exception of Japan (2012 and 2017) will always have taken place in predominantly Christian countries. Coincidence?