Room: Talks IV/Workshops II/BoF III - Amphi Picard or Navier (Carnot)
Saturday, 17:30
Duration: 5 minutes (plus Q&A)
Language: en
OpenStreetMap is one of the most powerful open geospatial datasets in the world, yet for many who stand to benefit most from it, it remains invisible. NGO workers planning humanitarian responses, students conducting research, local planners building community infrastructure, and developers looking to build location-aware applications often don’t know where to start, which tools to use, or how OSM can realistically achieve their goals for their work.
UseOSM is a community-driven platform built to close that gap. It brings together tools, real-world use cases, and community stories in one accessible place, presented in plain language that anyone can understand, not just experienced mappers.
This talk will walk through the full vision and current state of UseOSM, covering:
Why UseOSM exists — the visibility and discovery gap that motivated the platform, and why making OSM’s impact legible to the wider world matters for data quality and community growth alike.
How anyone can get value from it — whether you’re an NGO seeking the right tools for field data collection, a researcher looking for project inspiration, or a developer hunting for OSM-powered software to build on or learn from.
How to contribute content: a walkthrough of the contribution guidelines for adding use cases, project spotlights, statistics, and stories that reflect the true breadth of what OSM data powers.
How developers can contribute — a clear onboarding path for technical contributors who want to help build and improve the platform itself.
What comes next — the repository maintenance workflow, governance model, and a preview of upcoming features on the platform roadmap.
The core argument is simple: the more people understand what OpenStreetMap makes possible, the more motivated they become to use and to contribute well. Every navigation app, every humanitarian response tool, every urban planning dataset quietly powered by OSM is a missed opportunity to inspire a new contributor or spark a new creative project. UseOSM turns those quiet successes into visible, shareable stories.
This session is relevant to anyone interested in OSM community growth, onboarding, outreach, and open data ecosystems. It sits at the intersection of advocacy, documentation, and platform development and is aimed at a broad audience, not just developers. The session will be interactive, with live demonstrations of the platform and an open call for community contributions. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how to use and contribute to UseOSM, and why surfacing OSM’s real-world impact is one of the most effective tools we have for growing a healthier, more diverse mapping community.