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State Of The Map USA 2012
Portland, Oregon

October 13-14

The OpenStreetMap conference brings together people who care about OpenStreetMap to advance the world's free community map. Coordinate your plans over on the wiki.

Conference Schedule

Saturday

Conference Kickoff

9:00

Welcome

9:00

Welcome

Close Description

9:15

Keynote: Mapping the Next Decade of OpenStreetMap

Steve Coast

9:15

Keynote: Mapping the Next Decade of OpenStreetMap

by Steve Coast

People like you want to know when OpenStreetMap will be complete and how it will get there. Come to this keynote for a journey through the past, present, and future of the project with asides and references to interesting diversions along the way.

Close Description

9:45

Keynote: OpenStreetMap Foundation To Protect and Serve

Henk Hoff

9:45

Keynote: OpenStreetMap Foundation To Protect and Serve

by Henk Hoff

Our project has a large community of mappers and users who all do amazing things with OpenStreetMap. The OpenStreetMap Foundation supports the project. In this presentation, Henk will explain the goals of the Foundation, its relation to the community, and how you can get involved (and why you should).

Close Description

Coffee

10:15

Time for a coffee break!

Track 1: Switch to OSM

10:45

When Google Maps Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

Wm Leler

10:45

When Google Maps Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

by Wm Leler

Google Maps has long been the leading choice for embedding maps on a website or building map mashups. But Google Maps is a closed, proprietary solution, and its move to charge for maps or include ads on them has people looking at other options.

This talk will survey the leading open source and free alternatives to Google Maps and point out the significant advantages that many of them provide. It will cover various sources of free maps, including dozens based on OpenStreetMap data, and will discuss how a major user of Google Maps has switched over to open source alternatives.

Close Description

11:10

Using OpenStreetMap Data to Build a National Park Service Basemap

Mamata K. Akella

11:10

Using OpenStreetMap Data to Build a National Park Service Basemap

by Mamata K. Akella

The U.S. National Park Service protects nearly 400 places across the United States, including some of the nation's most cherished cultural and natural resources. The NPMap team works with National Park Service employees and partners to tell the story of these places using innovative web mapping techniques and technologies.

A major recent project is to build a NPS-styled multi-scale basemap to transfer the look and feel of National Park Service printed park maps to the web. This basemap will serve visitors of National Parks as well as employees and partners. In this talk, Mamata will discuss how the National Park Service is incorporating OpenStreetMap data into its basemap and the benefits and challenges of doing so. She'll also discuss future plans to work with park visitors and the National Park Service to contribute data back to the OSM community.

Close Description

11:35

Maps as Storytelling Devices Within Your CMS

Sean Larkin

11:35

Maps as Storytelling Devices Within Your CMS

by Sean Larkin

Content management system administrators have been embedding simple, point-based Google maps into CMS page content for a decade. However with the rise of MapBox, Leaflet, and a variety of rich open source tools, the possibilities for using maps as storytelling devices on CMS websites has grown substantially over the past few years.

This session will explore the Intertwine Alliance website as a case study for how complex maps can be deeply integrated with CMS content and digital strategy.

Close Description

12:00

OSM & Foursquare: Successes and Challenges

David Blackman

12:00

OSM & Foursquare: Successes and Challenges

by David Blackman

Foursquare has been using OSM map tiles on its site for almost half a year and is thrilled with the results. However, there have been challenges around using OpenStreetMap on the data backend side with both the license and the data. In this session, Dave will talk about how foursquare is looking to give back to OpenStreetMap and lay out possible solutions to the challenges of putting a business on an end-to-end OSM stack.

Close Description

Track 2: Cartography

10:45

Beyond Basemaps: How to Make Beautiful Thematic Maps

TJ Maciak

10:45

Beyond Basemaps: How to Make Beautiful Thematic Maps

by TJ Maciak

This session will look at how MAPAS tackled getting past using plain OpenStreetMap and styled its own unique basemap using a combination of WMS (with Mapnik 2.0), a tile cache system, and TileMill. TJ will discuss design decisions in the map and around making roads stand out when the basemap is overlayed with a thematic indicator shaded by geography levels (blocks, block groups, census tracts, counties, states etc.).

The project utilizes the open source tool Weave as the thematic mapping engine, along with the well designed (over the past 5 years) MAPAS user interface to provide a fresh experience for users. OpenStreetMap plays a big part in the new Weave-based platform's foundation by providing excellent street visuals to users.

Close Description

11:10

New Features in Mapnik 2.1

Dane Springmeyer, Artem Pavlenko

11:10

New Features in Mapnik 2.1

by Dane Springmeyer, Artem Pavlenko

Mapnik powers the map tiles on the front page of openstreetmap.org and on sites like mapbox.com, maps.stamen.com, and cartodb.com. It has grown along with the OSM project with the goal of making beautiful maps with open data. The recent Mapnik 2.1 release brings major advances in performance and beauty. This talk will highlight the most interesting new features for creatively visualizing open data.

Composting was added, and Mapnik now supports over 30 blending modes that work seamlessly across vector and raster datasources. SVG marker rendering was extended and now transformations like scaling and rotation can be data-driven and stroke and fill properties can be re-styled on the fly. Image-filters landed, allowing creative image effects like blurring, embossing, or sharpening to be applied to specific layers. These advances and more will be demonstrated within TileMill, a design studio for making Mapnik rendered maps.

Close Description

11:35

Transit Maps in TileMill and Print

Jessica Lord

11:35

Transit Maps in TileMill and Print

by Jessica Lord

This session will walk through creating and styling an interactive transit map in TileMill, covering tips for working with the CSS-like MSS structure, zoom conditions, best practices for data layers, and map style techniques (style you can control within TileMill as well as style elements you can create outside of of TileMill and import like textures and icons). Then Jessica will walk through how to take the file and use it in Illustrator to create a print version of the map. She'll give tips on how to do this as cleanly and efficiently as is possible within TileMill and with its current limitations.

Jessica is a Code for America fellow working with the city of Macon, Ga. The transit map is a project for the Macon Transit Authority.

Close Description

12:00

Create Your Own Terrain Maps

Nathaniel V. Kelso, Michal Migurski

12:00

Create Your Own Terrain Maps

by Nathaniel V. Kelso, Michal Migurski

Stamen has open sourced the tools, workflow, and assumptions used to create maps.stamen.com/terrain. Nathaniel and Mike will show how to combine OpenStreetMap data with shaded relief derived from SRTM, ASTER, National Elevation Dataset (NED), and natural colors via global and U.S.-specific landcover datasets to create, customize, and publish your own terrain maps.

Close Description

Track 3: Beginners

10:45

Workshop: Introduction to OpenStreetMap (2 hrs)

Alex Barth, Mikel Maron

10:45

Workshop: Introduction to OpenStreetMap (2 hrs)

by Alex Barth, Mikel Maron

You're interested in OpenStreetMap, but haven't actually worked with it. You've heard people talk about it, but want to find out what all the fuss is about. You've signed up, hit that edit button, and you're not sure whether you're doing the right thing.

Sound familiar? Then workshop is for you. We'll kick off with showing some great examples of how OpenStreetMap is being used and why. Then we'll dive into some hands on editing, walking through how to do surveys with GPS devices and walking papers, how to trace satellite imagery, how to get in touch with other mappers, and how to use the many resources for getting your questions answered. Expect to walk away knowing how to contribute and use OpenStreetMap data, and come ready to ask a lot of questions.

This session is open to the public. More details are available here.

Close Description

Lunch

12:30

Sponsored by Deloitte.

Track 1: Remap and Rebuild

2:05

Mapping the Future of Research on OpenStreetMap in the US

Eric Wolf

2:05

Mapping the Future of Research on OpenStreetMap in the US

by Eric Wolf

Lots of great work has been done to understand OpenStreetMap data. We know how many people actually edit the map. We know what those people look like. We now know that the data can be pretty good. And we know how many people need to be working in a given area to make it that good. We know that bulk-uploads are a double-edged sword. Much of the United States was mapped in the blink of an eye. And we know that the bulk-uploaded data is still lacking. Being a lazy* mapper, Eric wants your help to figure out what else we want to know before getting down to the dirty business of mapping. What kind of tools might help us learn these things?

This presentation will quickly review the results of past studies before opening the floor for input on future research directions.

*According to Larry Wall, laziness is the quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.

Close Description

2:30

The Remap-a-tron

Martijn van Exel

2:30

The Remap-a-tron

by Martijn van Exel

This session will introduce you to the Remap-a-tron, where the community remaps the U.S. road network one broken way at a time. Using a unique piecemeal approach, the Remap-a-tron appeals to both the casual and the hardcore mapper. Whether you have five minutes to spend or five hours, the Remap-A-Tron will serve up little remapping tasks as long as you keep pressing its buttons.

To put this in context, Martijn will talk about the remapping process in the United States and the need for a routable street network. He'll also discuss how the Remap-A-Tron can be adapted for other OpenStreetMap cleanup tasks.

Close Description

2:55

OSM Error Detection and Feedback

John Novak

2:55

OSM Error Detection and Feedback

by John Novak

This talk will discuss techniques used to detect connectivity, grade separation, and other error classes, as well as the tools and techniques used to publish these errors to the OpenStreetMap community.

Close Description

3:20

Licensed to Map (What Happened to Los Angeles?!)

Toby Murray

3:20

Licensed to Map (What Happened to Los Angeles?!)

by Toby Murray

The license change has been one of the biggest topics in the OpenStreetMap community this year. Toby will present some anecdotes from behind the scenes of the contact and remap campaign as well as some details about what the license redaction bot did to the U.S. map and how the community has been working to detect and fix it.

Close Description

Track 2: The OSM You Never Knew About

2:05

Learning About Walking from OpenStreetMap's Collection of GPS Traces

Eric Fischer

2:05

Learning About Walking from OpenStreetMap's Collection of GPS Traces

by Eric Fischer

Streets that are appealing to pedestrians are vitally important to cities, but the systematic effects of different street characteristics are poorly understood. Most previous research has closely studied how people act in a small number of locations, but the current flood of volunteered geodata opens the possibility of using the whole world's existing built environment as a laboratory for how people react to their surroundings. An important component of this is OpenStreetMap's collected GPS traces, which document in detail a million miles of actual walks.

Close Description

2:30

OSM and Online Time Machines

Jeff Meyer

2:30

OSM and Online Time Machines

by Jeff Meyer

OpenStreetMap has focused primarily on the here and now, but it provides a great infrastructure and foundation for the creation and collection of historic information. This presentation will review:

  • - Past efforts at using OSM to record historic information and lessons learned
  • - The beloved start_date and end_date tags
  • - Temporal rendering and storytelling challenges
  • - Current historic storytelling applications that could consume OSM historic data
  • - Establishment of a historic OSM sandbox environment

Close Description

2:55

Maps as Objects

Nikki Gunn Rodenbeck

2:55

Maps as Objects

by Nikki Gunn Rodenbeck

Soft Cities, manufacturer of OSM-based blankets, mapkins, and scarves, will talk about how fun it is to bring physical maps to excited (and paying) customers. This session will explore the relationship between OSM and physical products that both use and contribute to the dataset.

Close Description

3:20

Building the Other Tab: Satellite Maps for Your App

Nathan Vander Wilt

3:20

Building the Other Tab: Satellite Maps for Your App

by Nathan Vander Wilt

You've designed your own stylesheet and built out a set of custom street tiles using OSM data. What if your customers still want a satellite view?

Take a behind-the-scenes look at how we made Argyle Tiles, a tile service hosting a remix-friendly global satellite/aerial map layer. Get an overview of what it takes, learn which datasets and tools we use, and explore how you could build something like it on your own.

Close Description

Track 3: Mapping Toolbelt 1: editors

2:05

It All Starts with an Editor

Richard Fairhurst

2:05

It All Starts with an Editor

by Richard Fairhurst

OpenStreetMap's USP is its unique, community-contributed geodata - all of which is submitted to the project through an editor program. But whereas Wikipedia users edit using a familiar interface akin to the ubiquitous word processor, few prospective OSMers have any experience with a vector graphics app. How do we reach out across that gap, while still providing fast, efficient workflows for the expert contributor?

Richard Fairhurst is lead developer of the online editor, Potlatch. In this talk, he'll describe how OSM editors have evolved to suit the needs of the project from the very first Java applet onwards, look at the challenges involved in catering for an ever more diverse user base, and identify opportunities for future development.

There'll be an update on the in-progress JavaScript editor, iD, discussion of contrasting approaches to user interface, plus anecdotes ranging from French anarchists of the 1960s to the only editor ever to have been banned from OSM.

Close Description

2:30

Nifty Things You Can Do with OSM Data and ArcGIS

Christine White

2:30

Nifty Things You Can Do with OSM Data and ArcGIS

by Christine White

Esri's ArcGIS Editor for OSM team has developed new features that may streamline or unlock your OSM data workflows. In this talk, Christine will walk through features that support extracting specific OSM tags from the data during the download, creating your own custom .osm file from an extent, using OSM data to do network analysis, and creating custom editable feature services based on OSM data. Every day Esri's team hears feedback on how useful and effective OSM data is in someone's mapping and analysis work and hopes these tools will help you too. Christine will also be taking feedback and input on any workflow that you struggle with and would like to see supported.

Close Description

2:55

JOSM Workflow Plugin for OSM Inspector

Nikhil Shirahatti

2:55

JOSM Workflow Plugin for OSM Inspector

by Nikhil Shirahatti

This presentation will discuss creating a simple guideline/workflow to fix existing data errors in the OSM database. This workflow engine takes the form of a JOSM plugin that uses the power of JOSM to edit and commit data. OSM Inspector is used as a source of errors for this plugin. A feedback loop has to be built on the backend to run the update of errors on a regular basis.

The workflow consists of bringing in a section of OSM data and pulling the OSM Inspectors errors in the region (available via WFS). Once the errors are displayed on the map view, the user can then use key shortcuts to efficiently cycle through the errors in view. Once the errors are fixed, the user uploads the changes.

This workflow can be used to do targeted cleanup of the OSM Inspector errors as well as increase the throughput of both novice and power users.The plugin can be extended to pull tasks from a micro-tasking platform. The gamification of task completion can turn this plugin into an engaging and fun feature that will achieve its desired objective of increasing data quality and community participation.

Close Description

3:20

Pushpin OSM: A Mobile OpenStreetMap POI Editor

Zac McCormick

3:20

Pushpin OSM: A Mobile OpenStreetMap POI Editor

by Zac McCormick

The OpenStreetMap tagging system is extremely powerful, but can be overwhelming for adding simple things like points of interest. Using our mobile data collection app (Fulcrum), the OSM editing API, and Nominatim, the team at Spatial Networks built an app dedicated to editing POI's in OpenStreetMap with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.

This session will talk about how we started from the user interface and distilled the complex OSM schema into a user-friendly editor that allows anyone to contribute detailed data to OpenStreetMap without memorizing the Map Features page.

Close Description

Coffee

3:45

Time for a coffee break!

Track 1: New Communities

4:00

Helping Others with OSM, Joining the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

Kate Chapman

4:00

Helping Others with OSM, Joining the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

by Kate Chapman

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team uses OpenStreetMap to ensure freely available geographic data for disaster response and disaster preparedness. In cases of disaster response, volunteers from all over the world work together to update or add missing information that serves as base information for those responding in the field. The other side of HOT is mapping for preparedness; teams work with governments, civil society, and individuals in countries prone to disaster. Typically this involves missions to teach OpenStreetMap physically on the ground in those locations.

This talk will introduce the audience to what HOT currently does, where it is going, and how they can get involved.

Close Description

4:25

OSM and Disaster Risk Management: How the World Bank is Using Open Mapping to Build Resilient Communities

Robert Soden

4:25

OSM and Disaster Risk Management: How the World Bank is Using Open Mapping to Build Resilient Communities

by Robert Soden

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) is a joint World Bank-United Nations initiative that helps international development efforts build resilience to natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. A key part of this strategy is to develop sophisticated understanding of the risks posed by the intersection of naturally occurring hazards and societally produced vulnerabilities to them. GFDRR has partnered with HOT and other OSM communities to involve public participation in this research in a number of countries. This presentation will highlight several case studies of this partnership and look to the future evolution of OpenStreetMap as a critical tool for community-based disaster risk management.

Close Description

4:50

OSM and K-12 Education

Jeff Meyer

4:50

OSM and K-12 Education

by Jeff Meyer

The OpenStreetMap infrastructure is a potentially fantastic foundation for enhancing K-12 learning in the areas of geography, history, social studies, and even database technology. This session will focus on:

  • - Case studies of current OSM uses in K-12 education
  • - Summaries of best practices
  • - Current barriers to adoption
  • - Growth efforts for expanding the use of OSM for K-12 education

Close Description

5:15

The State of the Portland Map

Grant Humphries, Mele Sax-Barnett

5:15

The State of the Portland Map

by Grant Humphries, Mele Sax-Barnett

Within the United States, Portland is one of the most extensively and accurately mapped cities in OpenStreetMap. This level of quality is made evident by the fact that the data has become superior to corresponding jurisdictional and proprietary datasets for many intents and purposes. This session will examine how OSM data in the Portland metro region got to where it is, who was involved in getting it there, and how it can most effectively evolve going forward.

Among the elements used to convey these items will be a visualization illustrating how the data has improved since early 2011, mini-talks from local contributors detailing projects that they've undertaken, and a discussion of tasks that that will make the map more complete, but are in need of adoption.

The aim of this talk is to bring together the people that are invested in the data in the Portland area to learn from each other, share ideas, and to inform those that are considering making that investment. So if you’re local mapper, are considering becoming one, or are just curious about the state of the map in Portland, please join us for this session!

Close Description

Track 2: Ruby, Rails and Rake

4:00

Managing PostGIS data with Rake

Darrell Fuhriman

4:00

Managing PostGIS data with Rake

by Darrell Fuhriman

Do you have to manage regularly updated geographic data coming from a wide array of source? Feeling overwhelmed? Then have I got the tool for you – even though it doesn't have a nifty name, at least not yet. Building on the well known rake utility (and its predecessor make), the tool-with-no-name will:

  • - Help you manage GIS data
  • - Help you load data into PostGIS
  • - Help you keep that data up-to-date with upstream changes
  • - Build workflows that help you update only the data you need updated
  • - Help you get your data back out

In this presentation, I'll provide:

  • - A quick intro to rake
  • - An intro to the plugin's inner workings
  • - Demonstrations of OSM/Shapefile updating
  • - An intro to how to use the plugin to manage your own data

Close Description

4:25

OpenStreetMap Tech Now and Future

Tom MacWright

4:25

OpenStreetMap Tech Now and Future

by Tom MacWright

OpenStreetMap.org is a small bit of software that ties together many people. That software has done an impressive job at handling the world's largest open data street map and hundreds of thousands of users for the site's eight year history. During that time, it's changed platforms more than twice, inspired several rendering engines, tested its database's scalability, and much more.

This talk will review what the website, affectionately titled the Rails Port, has been up to this last year and where it's headed in terms of usability, performance, and most importantly data distribution. Major perceived problems, like usability and possible scalability problems, will be discussed, along with the potential for the evolution or recreation of the five-year-old codebase.

Close Description

4:50

Local Outreach, Local Communities, World Map

Kate Chapman

4:50

Local Outreach, Local Communities, World Map

by Kate Chapman

OpenStreetMap is a world map, but local effort is what makes much of the detailed information possible. This panel will look at the different approaches and efforts to conduct outreach across North America. What regional groups are having events? How do they get the word out? What has and has not worked? Where are good places to bring people together? What if nobody is interested (don't worry they will be)? How can you get started in your own locale?

These are just some of the questions to be discussed in this session. North America is a big place, but often mapping efforts start small. And you can start those efforts yourself.

Close Description

5:15

Knight Foundation's Investment in OpenStreetMap: What This Means, How You Can Help

Chris Barr, Alex Barth, Eric Gundersen

5:15

Knight Foundation's Investment in OpenStreetMap: What This Means, How You Can Help

by Chris Barr, Alex Barth, Eric Gundersen

The Knight Foundation recently awarded a $575,000 grant to the MapBox team to improve the core infrastructure of OpenStreetMap, specifically to make it easier to add and edit data, get data out of OSM and into maps, and coordinate with the the OSM community.

In this session, Chris Barr from Knight Foundation will discuss why they invested in the OpenStreetMap community and overall what they hope this grant can achieve. Eric and Alex from the MapBox team will talk specifics on what tools will be made with this grant, how you can get involved and give feedback, and what the overall goals will be.

Come prepared to ask questions, share ideas, and get involved.

Close Description

Track 3: Lightning Talks

4:00

Short talks on a variety of topics

Various

4:00

Short talks on a variety of topics

by Various

Ten or more speakers will talk for five minutes each on a mapping project, tool, idea, or related topic that they find fascinating. Come out for a quick preview of work being done by the OpenStreetMap community, find out who you want to talk with more at the conference, and learn a lot quickly.

Anyone can give a lightning talk until we run out of space. Sign up on the conference wiki or stop by registration.

Close Description

Geobeers

6:30

Party at The Refuge

6:30

Party at The Refuge

Let's keep the fun going after the last session on Saturday with a party at The Refuge. Join us for dinner and dessert from the Pacific Pie Company, an open bar all night stocked with local beer from Deschutes Brewery (plus others), music, and some games. Plan to head over after the last session on Saturday and party until you've had your fill.

Address: 116 Southeast Yamhill Street Portland, OR 97217

Close Description

Sunday

Track 1: OSM in Government

9:00

How National Mapping Agencies Can Use Volunteered Data

Barbara Poore

9:00

How National Mapping Agencies Can Use Volunteered Data

by Barbara Poore

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has historically sponsored volunteer data collection for its maps and data, as volunteered geographic information (VGI) presented an opportunity for the USGS to explore whether citizens could be engaged to collect digital geospatial data online for The National Map. This presentation focuses on a recently concluded phase of this project that used students from local universities to collect data on manmade structures (schools, churches, etc.). The USGS customized OpenStreetMap software and preloaded the system with data from the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Students were asked to improve the positional and attribute accuracy of existing structures data in four Denver-area quads and add data that were missing.

We'll discuss potential issues that arise in integrating VGI with data from national mapping agencies including:

  • - Copyright issues (ODBL versus public domain)
  • - Authoritative data versus VGI
  • - Organizational and technical challenges
  • - Modifying USGS workflow to accommodate volunteer data production
  • - Assessing the accuracy of data
  • - Working with volunteers

Close Description

9:25

Free and Public Domain: Data and Maps from the USGS

Sheri Schneider

9:25

Free and Public Domain: Data and Maps from the USGS

by Sheri Schneider

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) provides a wide array of data and maps including lidar point cloud, US Topos, historic topos, high resolution urban imagery, hydrographic data, geographic names, and much more. All of these are available through a free download from the USGS with no license or restrictions. USGS also provides a bulk delivery option of selected datasets. This session will discuss how you can access this data, and specifically the newer dataset US Topo.

The US Topo is the next generation of digital topographic maps from the USGS. They provide modern technical advantages that support wider and faster public distribution and enable basic, on-screen geographic analysis for all users while maintaining the look and feel of the traditional paper topographic maps. All scales and all editions of the approximately 250,000 topographic maps published by the USGS since the inception of the topographic mapping program in 1884 have recently been scanned. This is a comprehensive digital repository of USGS topographic maps, and like the US Topo, are available to the public at no cost.

Close Description

9:50

How Code for America Makes Maps

Nick Doiron

9:50

How Code for America Makes Maps

by Nick Doiron

Code for America fellows will present the technical and political challenges involved in making maps for local government. Follow a city's progress from pencil and paper to interactive web maps and open data. Discover how you can help your city adopt open maps and fork great apps.

Close Description

Track 2: Design

9:00

Processing OSM Data for Effective Cartography

AJ Ashton

9:00

Processing OSM Data for Effective Cartography

by AJ Ashton

When preparing OSM data in a PostGIS database for MapBox Streets, numerous adjustments and transformations to the data are necessary for rendering efficiency and aesthetic presentation. AJ will the specifics of what the MapBox team does and why. The processes include features built in to the database importing tool Imposm, custom extensions to that tool, and separate external steps handled in custom Python and SQL scripts.

Some of the steps are taken in order to achieve particular cartographic effects, such as tint bands via negative buffers and differentiating maritime administrative boundaries from land boundaries. Other steps are taken to make things more efficient for the Mapnik rendering model, such as storing labels for polygons as separate points tables. Many of the steps do both, such as simplifying shapes for lower zoom levels.

This presentation should be interesting to anyone who is rendering tiles from OpenStreetMap or interested in design options not directly possible with the raw data.

Close Description

9:25

Things are Heating Up in Geo: Heat Maps 101

Abe Usher

9:25

Things are Heating Up in Geo: Heat Maps 101

by Abe Usher

As mobile devices and location based services proliferate, there is a growing appetite for understanding the world from a geospatial perspective. There are numerous techniques for visualizing geospatial data - one of the most common (and most useful) is the kernel density visualization aka heat map.

This session will give some background on the history of heat maps, discuss some use cases for their application, and bring it together with two examples of using producing heat maps with OSM data.

Close Description

9:50

What the Flickr Community Can Do for Maps

Eric Gelinas

9:50

What the Flickr Community Can Do for Maps

by Eric Gelinas

Flickr and OpenStreetMap have a long history together, from working together to make sure photos of the Beijing Olympics had detailed maps back in 2008 to this year's introduction of Flickr's own map style using TileMill. The scale of the Flickr community makes for an interesting story when it comes to sustainably generating and hosting tiles. Flickr users have an interest in visiting remote places. They want maps to help tell a story about the time and place where their photo was taken. This is a bit different from the more common location based service or local search use case. This session will tell Flickr's mapping story and discuss some ideas for the future of OpenStreetMap on Flickr.

Some related reading:

Close Description

Track 3: Birds of a Feather

9:00

Self organized sessions

9:00

Self organized sessions

There will be a Birds of a Feather track running all day on Sunday. Look for the whiteboard to schedule a session and see what other folks will be talking about.
Close Description

Track 1: Routing

10:45

Visualizing Commute Times Using OSM, pgRouting, and Trulia Magic

Peter Black

10:45

Visualizing Commute Times Using OSM, pgRouting, and Trulia Magic

by Peter Black

Do delauney triangles excite your senses? Alpha shapes tickle the imagination? Well traverse these nodes and ways and learn about how Trulia is utilizing OpenStreetMap and pgRouting to help visualize travel times from any given intersection along the road network. This session will discuss Trulia's methodology in creating this tool, and the resultant polygons used to narrow down a user's real estate search.

Close Description

11:10

Traffic on OSM

Ryan Peterson

11:10

Traffic on OSM

by Ryan Peterson

Traffic information is an essential part of map display. Many commercial users of mapping data cannot replace their existing solutions until a mechanism is put in place to support traffic data display in OpenStreetMap. A standard exists for TMCs in the United States and other regions, but it's often proprietary data owned by either the commercial mapping vendors or other private parties. Thus, to encourage adoption we've developed a technology to encode OSM map data with a traffic identifier to enable traffic support. The presentation will cover this methodology and how to encourage use of it.

Close Description

11:35

OpenTripPlanner: A Multimodal Router for OSM

David Turner

11:35

OpenTripPlanner: A Multimodal Router for OSM

by David Turner

OpenTripPlanner is a highly configurable free and open source multimodal routing engine. This talk will discuss some of the ways that OpenTripPlanner uses OpenStreetMap data, along with GTFS transit data and elevation data from the National Elevation Dataset, to provide flexible routing. It will also discuss ways that the OSM community could help provide the data to support even better routing.

Close Description

12:00

TriMet's OpenStreetMap Improvement Project for OpenTripPlanner

Bibiana McHugh

12:00

TriMet's OpenStreetMap Improvement Project for OpenTripPlanner

by Bibiana McHugh

TriMet, Portland's tri-county public transportation service agency, collaborated with Metro, OpenPlans, and other developers to build an open source multi-modal trip planner, the OpenTripPlanner (OTP). OTP plans multi-modal transit, biking and walking trips. All components of the software are open source, built on an open architecture, and developed using an open source development method. OTP utilizes all open data, including OpenStreetMap, GTFS, and NED. Since OTP's inception three years ago, worldwide contributions include active deployments in over ten countries and translations into six languages.

Since 2011, TriMet and Metro have put significant resources into manually improving OpenStreetMap using regional jurisdictional data and aerial photography as a reference. It now rivals commercial routable networks. Working with the OSM community, improvements were made to support transit, biking, walking, and most recently, vehicular routing. TriMet is currently working with the Portland Police Bureau in a collaborative project to verify OSM data.

This presentation will provide an overview and demonstration of TriMet's new multi-modal trip planner and will detail the OSM improvement project: from the conversion of jurisdictional datasets, to tools and methodologies used to locate and repair errors and weaknesses in the data. Also examined are efforts to ensure the quality of the data through routing tests and the monitoring of map edits in our region.

Close Description

Track 2: Big Data

10:45

Addresses: The Findability Factor in OpenStreetMap

Steven Johnson

10:45

Addresses: The Findability Factor in OpenStreetMap

by Steven Johnson

How do you use address data in OpenStreetMap? This session centers on address data in OpenStreetMap. We will touch on:

  • - What constitutes an address?
  • - Why should I care about addresses and address data in OSM?
  • - The value of address data
  • - The state of address data in OpenStreetMap
  • - Toward continuous improvement of address data quality in OSM

Close Description

11:10

How Beneficial are Data Imports to OpenStreetMap: A U.S. Case Study

Dennis Zielstra, Pascal Neis, Hartwig H. Hochmair

11:10

How Beneficial are Data Imports to OpenStreetMap: A U.S. Case Study

by Dennis Zielstra, Pascal Neis, Hartwig H. Hochmair

Over the past few years, several research studies assessed the data quality of OpenStreetMap data regarding completeness and user contribution patterns. The geographical focus of these studies was primarily on European countries including the UK, Ireland, and Germany.

Results revealed that data contributions from volunteers lead to an impressive data coverage of the road network, which partially exceeded that of governmental and proprietary data sources. In the United States and a few other countries, free base data was loaded into OSM at one point. Recent discussions on whether further data imports are beneficial to the OSM project or not are ongoing in the OSM community.

This presentation will examine the completeness of multi-year OSM street network data of the entire U.S. (2008-2012) which will be compared to that of TIGER/Line (2008-2011) data. The analysis is conducted for each of the 50 U.S. states and the 70 largest urban areas. The multi-year datasets allow us to compare data growth between OSM and TIGER/Line data for the years after the completed TIGER/Line import to OSM in 2008, and therefore to assess whether future data imports from TIGER/Line data would benefit the quality of OSM street data in the US.

Close Description

11:35

Analyzing OpenStreetMap using CartoDB

Andrew Hill

11:35

Analyzing OpenStreetMap using CartoDB

by Andrew Hill

OpenStreetMap is much more than a beautiful base tile, it can be used for many different types of geospatial analysis. This is the power of free data - you can do much more than just visualize it.

CartoDB is an open source geospatial database based on PostGIS that can import OSM data. This session will feature a series of demos showing how you can benefit by analyzing and developing applications using OSM data. Most of the analysis will use SQL.

Close Description

12:00

Importing with ogr2osm

Paul Norman

12:00

Importing with ogr2osm

by Paul Norman

This presentation will focus on writing and testing ogr2osm translations, using the examples of a US NHD translation and a City of Surrey translation (details undetermined).

Close Description

Lunch

12:30

Time for lunch!

Track 1: Mobile

2:05

Big Business: Push to a Polygon

Ben Standefer

2:05

Big Business: Push to a Polygon

by Ben Standefer

Urban Airship is bringing OSM data to major brands and end consumers in the form of push notifications. Apps can push to mobile users based on their current or historical presence inside OSM polygons. The app receives opted-in location updates from mobile users, runs them through an R-tree full of OSM polygons, updates bucket indexes in a distributed kd-tree, and provides an SVG-based UI that lets app managers say push this to anybody who's been in Portland in the past seven days, or at 7:30 pm, push this to Giants fans inside ATT Park. OSM polygons can be joined with user preferences and in-app behaviors, enabling highly relevant push notifications. Come see how OSM data improves the signal-to-noise ratio as push messaging matures.

Close Description

2:30

Mapping Our National Parks: Chimani's Switch to OSM

Kerry Gallivan

2:30

Mapping Our National Parks: Chimani's Switch to OSM

by Kerry Gallivan

Chimani,a leading developer of mobile apps for U.S. national parks, recently switched its mapping data over to customized tiles based on OpenStreetMap and the TopOSM project. Learn more about the steps involved and Chimani's efforts to encourage park visitors to contribute to mapping national parks within OSM.

Close Description

2:55

Open Source Mapping on a Closed Platform

Justin Miller

2:55

Open Source Mapping on a Closed Platform

by Justin Miller

The MapBox iOS SDK is a completely open source alternative to MapKit on iPhones and iPads, which is provided by Apple. With MapBox, developers can bring in OpenStreetMap, their own custom-designed map layers, or any other map tile source that they desire, plus they can mix and match, layering them all in varying orders, using them offline, and otherwise completely customizing their apps' mapping experiences.

This session will go over what's in the box - getting up and running with the SDK using OpenStreetMap, an overview of basic customizability options, approaches and API for offline use, and future plans for the project. Attendees need not be iOS developers, but some application development experience would be useful.

Close Description

3:20

WhirlyGlobe: 3D Data Presentation on the iPad

Steve Gifford

3:20

WhirlyGlobe: 3D Data Presentation on the iPad

by Steve Gifford

Though Apple's App Store is gated, there's a robust open source community surrounding it. Many of those efforts are focused on map related problems. We'll discuss one of them in this session.

WhirlyGlobe is a native open source toolkit for iPad and iPhone that provides developers with a 3D rotating earth. With it, you can overlay vector features on image tile sets, such as those from OpenStreetMap. Datasets can range from the small to very large and WhirlyGlobe has support for swapping features in and out on the fly. The toolkit itself is in its second major revision and has been out for more than a year. It has a number of shipping apps to its credit with more in the pipeline. Most developers build very simple apps, often a base tile set with a few point features. A select few develop apps of iPad melting complexity with multiple overlays, large tile sets, and paged vector data.

This talk will cover some of the basic functionality in WhirlyGlobe (without resorting to source code), and discuss some of the challenges users have in obtaining and processing data. It will conclude with a look to the future, including a planned extension to flat maps.

Close Description

Track 2: Serving OSM Data

2:05

Changemonger: Human Consumable OSM Data

Serge Wroclawski

2:05

Changemonger: Human Consumable OSM Data

by Serge Wroclawski

OpenStreetMap data has traditionally been represented by either rendered pictorial maps or as complex data formats. In this presentation, Serge will unveil the new tool Changemonger, which takes raw OSM data and produces human readable text. This session will introduce the tool, explain how it works, and discuss its potential impact on the OpenStreetMap community.

Close Description

2:30

Custom Geocoding: Introducing Carmen, an Open Source Modular Geocoder

Alex Barth

2:30

Custom Geocoding: Introducing Carmen, an Open Source Modular Geocoder

by Alex Barth

With the goal of avoiding the black magic that often accompanies geocoding, MapBox is working on an open source geocoder named Carmen. Carmen is based on the open MBTiles and UTFGrid specs and is designed to allow swappable datasources for country, province, and municipal boundaries. Custom indexes allow you to search for anything on a map - from the Prairie Falcon on a map of bird species in North America to a star like Polaris on a map of well-known stars.

This session will give an overview of how Carmen works and show how OSM data can be plugged in and combined with other open datasources for tailored, custom geocoding.

Close Description

2:55

Multi-Tiling and a Map Server

Sandor Seres

2:55

Multi-Tiling and a Map Server

by Sandor Seres

When streaming map data to mobile clients, tiling is essential regardless of the data format. Because vector tiles can potentially be tens of times smaller than corresponding PNGs, this session will focus on vectors. Vector tiling on a server provides highly efficient transmission and dynamic rendering on the client side. Unfortunately pre-generation of small tiles can radically fragment lines and polygon objects and increase the amount of data the server has to process. Is it possible to provide a streaming tile server that's both efficient and suitable for compressed data?

VThis presentation will show that such a server is realistic. Results of research work, like a hybrid data format, multi-tiling and a radically new server model will be presented. The source data for demonstration is OSM data and roughly includes 10 area classes, 10 line-work classes, and 5 point object classes.

Close Description

3:20

Scaling OSM Queries

Jim Mlodgenski

3:20

Scaling OSM Queries

by Jim Mlodgenski

There is a ton of valuable information hidden inside OpenStreetMap data, but using complex queries to gather that information can bring your database to its knees. There is a recently released clustering solution based on PostgreSQL called Postgres-XC that allows queries to be run across multiple servers allowing your database to scale. This presentation will demonstrate how your OSM data can be distributed across multiple physical servers greatly increasing your query performance compared to a single PostGIS instance.

Close Description

Coffee

3:45

Time for a coffee break!

Track 1: Mapping Toolbelt 2: Surveying

4:00

Camera Mapping with Time Lapse Photos

Paul Norman

4:00

Camera Mapping with Time Lapse Photos

by Paul Norman

Ever wanted to take time lapse photos while driving around in your car? This session will outline how to do this, from what equipment is needed, to what photos you can expect to gather, to how to process them to what type of objects you can tag from them.

Close Description

4:25

Marine Mapping in Tampa Bay

Coleman McCormick

4:25

Marine Mapping in Tampa Bay

by Coleman McCormick

Coming from the Florida gulf coast means spending a lot of time on the water, and as a sailing enthusiast that means reading navigational charts and plotting trips via GPS. The OpenSeaMap project has been around since 2009 as a means to create a free and open nautical chart for the globe, harnessing the OpenStreetMap database. This talk is about techniques for surveying nautical information, the mapping Coleman has been doing in the Tampa Bay area, and the rich open charts he's produced using OpenSeaMap and other public sources.

Close Description

4:50

Community Centric Aerial Imaging and OSM

Mathew Lippincott

4:50

Community Centric Aerial Imaging and OSM

by Mathew Lippincott

Tracing OSM data from aerial imagery provides a quick way to integrate lots of new information, but licensing concerns for proprietary imagery, ground verification of an image's contents, the cost of acquiring one's own images, and civic concerns over aerial surveillance are all barriers to the widespread use of tracing. Over the past three years, the Grassroots Mapping Toolkit has been expanded and refined to simplify DIY image acquisition, rectification, and the generation of OSM data into a workflow that accounts for these challenges.

This session will discuss using the Grassroots Mapping Toolkit within community-led mapping projects and generating OSM data using the integrated functions of Potlatch 2 and Public Laboratory's Mapknitter. The Grassroots Mapping Toolkit is situated within a growing ecosystem of open source hardware and software tools for generating aerial imagery, and an overview of the technical, social, legal, and financial pros and cons of different low-cost aerial platforms will also be discussed.

Close Description

Track 2: Mapping Toolbelt III: Data Quality

4:00

Using ITO Map for Improving Data Quality in OpenStreetMap

Peter Miller

4:00

Using ITO Map for Improving Data Quality in OpenStreetMap

by Peter Miller

This session will look at how ITO map can be used to help improve data quality in OpenStreetMap. Peter will walk through new functions in ITO map, including some nice combination TIGER/OSM/Bing imagery views that allow people to quickly spot discrepancies between OSM and TIGER data and to determine which is correct. This session will also introduce new U.S. specific quality improvement maps on ITO Map.

Close Description

4:25

Indoor Maps in OSM

Dave Sutter

4:25

Indoor Maps in OSM

by Dave Sutter

Indoor Mapping is quickly catching on among map providers, including Google, Microsoft, Navteq, and others. This is happening partly because of the parallel development of indoor locations systems, and partly because the overall level of detail of maps is transitioning from a scale suitable for automobiles and driving to a scale suitable for people and walking. This session presents efforts to add indoor maps to OpenStreetMap.

Close Description

4:50

High Performance Display of OSM Tiles and Vector Maps on Tablets and Smart Phones

Marshall Brain

4:50

High Performance Display of OSM Tiles and Vector Maps on Tablets and Smart Phones

by Marshall Brain

Current rendering systems for operating systems such as iOS and Android tend to suffer from a lack of performance and the lack of an intrinsic spherical framework. This session will demonstrate the performant display of OSM tiles and vector maps on the sphere to improve user experience.

Close Description

Closing

5:30

Goodbye, see you next time!

Streaming Videos

Evening Events

Thursday at 7:00 PM

Deschutes Brewery

210 NW 11th Avenue
Portland, OR 97209

If you get into Portland early (or call it home), join us for beers Thursday night at Deschutes Brewery, just three blocks from the Ace Hotel in the Pearl District.

Friday at 6:00 PM

Geoloqi + Lotus Cardroom and Cafe

920 SW 3rd Avenue #400
Portland, OR 97204

WhereCamp PDX has invited us to party with them at Geoloqi's headquarters in downtown Portland. The party will start at 6:00 pm in their offices, and when it gets too crowded move right downstairs to the bar - the Lotus Cardroom and Cafe.

RSVP is needed to get up to Geoloqi.

Saturday at 6:30 PM

OSM Party at The Refuge

116 SE Yamhill Street
Portland Oregon, 97217

Let's keep the fun going after the last session on Saturday with a party at The Refuge. Join us for dinner, drinks, games, and music. Open bar all night and a feast of Portland eats. We'll head over right after the day's last session.

Venue Information

Oregon Convention Center

777 NE MLK, Jr. Blvd.
Portland, OR 97232

The Oregon Convention Center is known for being modern, green, and tech friendly. We have a cozy corner of the facility for breakout sessions, birds of a feather talks, code sprints, and a large space for us all to gather together.

Hotels, happy hours, and restaurants are just a short transit ride (or slightly longer walk or bike ride) away, and post-conference events will take advantage of the independent local coffee shops, breweries, and restaurants Portland is known for. You can even use OpenStreetMap to plan how you get around. TriMet, Portland's public transit agency, uses OSM as the basemap in its trip planner showing walking, biking, and public transit routes.

Portland is a leader in openness. In 2009 Mayor Sam Adams pledged that the city would consider open source over proprietary products and would open their data to the public, much of which has been contributed back to improve OpenStreetMap data in the region.

Other Mapping Events

NACIS

The DoubleTree by Hilton
1000 NE Multnomah Street

NACIS brings together some of the best cartographers in the world to share tips and tricks and move the field forward. Expect to see sessions and workshops on interactive web mapping and cartography with OpenStreetMap.

WherecampPDX

Metro Regional Center
600 NE Grand Ave.

Run unconference style, WhereCampPDX brings out developers, designers, map makers, and open source enthusiasts to learn from each other, demo technology, and make solutions.

Hotel Information

McMenamins Crystal Hotel

303 SW 12th Avenue
Portland, OR 97205

Located in downtown Portland, at this "Portland-unique" hotel you're an easy walk to restaurants and bars and a 15 minute bus ride (or a 1.5 mile walk/bike ride) to the venue. Rooms start at $95.

Ace Hotel

1022 SW Stark Street
Portland, OR 97205

Also located in downtown Portland, this hipster-y hotel is a straight 20 minute shot on the MAX Red Line to the venue and has a Stumptown Coffee in its lobby. Rooms start at $170/night.

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Portland

1000 NE Multnomah Street
Portland, Oregon, 97232, USA

Just a few blocks from the venue and central for public transit, this hotel will be especially easy in the mornings. Rooms starting at $159.

We also recommend checking out AirBnB, which has tons of listings through Portland.

Have a look at the conference wiki to see where people are staying and set up room shares.