Next weekend is going to be the State of the Map 2026 conference in Paris and i am going to present a talk and a poster there.

Do maps have a future in OpenStreetMap?

The talk is going to be about if maps have a future in OpenStreetMap. If you think that question is silly, first consider what exactly you have in mind when you think about the term map.

The talk is going to look at the social history of maps as a means of communication and the central role maps play as a communication platform in OpenStreetMap. I am going to discuss how maps that are able to serve that function are in decline in OpenStreetMap and what that means for the OSM community and its future.

I am going to make the slides of the talk available afterwards.

Update: Slides of the talk are now available here, video here.

Taking OpenStreetMap map design to the next level

The poster is featuring two samples from my experimental OSM-Carto alternative colors map style from Paris, demonstrating various map design innovations from that style in an urban context. The poster is already available on the State of the Map website – as is the interactive guide i offer with it. That guide is meant to be used on a mobile device together with the printed poster, but you can also browse it separately or with the poster on screen in a PDF viewer.

The urban context of Paris, of course, only demonstrates a subset of the OSM-Carto alternative colors features – my focus is traditionally more on map design for rural environments. For a more comprehensive selection of rendering samples see the style sample gallery.

In the text on the poster i try, in particular, to highlight how much the OSM community is squandering its potential by not investing substantially in innovation and excellence in map design – as i have previously discussed in blog posts in the past (like here, here, here, here and here).