The OpenStreetMap Foundation, State of the Map Working Group, (SotM-WG) announced today that State of the Map 2013 will be held in Birmingham, England, from 6th – 8th September 2013.

More at blog.osmfoundation.org

January 31st the Call for Venues for State of the Map 2013 closes.
So far only 1 bid is in, your chances of winning will never be better!

Please submit your proposal here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2013/Call_for_venues

You want more SotM?

The US State of the Map conference is right around the corner, happening on October 13-14 in Portland, OR. Check it out if you want more OpenStreetMap sessions and conversations, or couldn’t make the Tokyo event.

Full details are at http://stateofthemap.us.

Tokyo has too many choices for having dinner or a drink. And most of them can’t host very large groups.
To simplify meeting others around Shibuya and Shinjuku Station we publish this list of restaurants and pubs:

Shinjuku

• Dubliners (Irish pub)
  http://www.ginzalion.jp/shop/brand/dubliners.html
• Ginza Lion (restaurant, same building’s ground floor)
  http://www.ginzalion.jp/shop/brand/lion.html

Shibuya

• Hobgoblin (1st or 2nd floor)
  http://www.hobgoblin.jp/Shibuya/tabid/120/language/ja-JP/Default.aspx
• Abbots Choice

Today’s social event is a Japanese dinner cruise. How to get to the starting point of the dinner cruise is explained in this PDF document.

However, best thing to do is to join a local expert to lead you through the Tokyo train network … and don’t forget your SotM ticket 😉

Please be sure to get there in time.

We hope you enjoy this typical Japanese dinner party!

Main: Convention Hall (2F)
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sotm-main

Second: Conference Room (3F)
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sotm-second

Two of our Japanese sponsors, IMES/CCC and KDDI, asked us if we could provide an open session format to get in touch with the OSM community, exchange ideas and discuss with like-minded people.

If you’re interested in the following topics, you’re welcome to join these working group sessions on Friday:

16:00 to 16:30 – “New mapping standards for the web”

W3C is developing the next generation standard for SVG as SVG 2, and Satoru Takagi (KDDI) has been the driving force behind SVG Map and a Tiling and Layering Module for SVG, to be included in SVG 2. In short, the purpose of this web standard proposal is to make mapping a basic function of WWW.

Satoru Takagi is interested to learn more about the OSM community, to meet developers with interest in map rendering techniques and standards, and to discuss about map rendering related topics.

16:30 to 17:00 – “Indoor Positioning and Mapping”

The IMES (Indoor Messaging System) consortium and Creative City Consortium want to present their latest activities in an “Indoor Positioning and Mapping Project” at the Edge City, Futako-Tamagawa in Tokyo.

During the session the project team will explain what IMES is and present their indoor positioning and mapping experiences in Futako-Tamagawa, a so called Edge City for living, working and shopping. Beside a demonstration of IMES and how to integrate the collected data into OSM they would like to meet other OSM community members, that are active or interested in indoor mapping, and discuss about specific indoor mapping topics.

Shu Higashi is going to organize a pre-SotM unofficial Mapping Party in Akihabara on Wednesday 5th.

• Location: Akihabara.
• Meeting place: Akihabara Electric Town Exit of JR-line.
• Meeting date: 10am 5th September 2012.

You can easily find the guide to the “Akihabara Electric Town Exit” in English everywhere in Akihabara Station and Shu Higashi will be waiting 2 times (10:00 and 13:30) at Akihabara Electric Exit of Akihabara Station (outside of the gate) with OSM Paper lantern.

More details: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Akihabara_mapping_party_20120905

Please come on and join us!

OpenScienceMap is a project with the aim to provide the complete OSM data as vector tiles for mobile devices. It features multi-scale vector data, super-fast OpenGL rendering, and efficient data compression.

Accompanying the talk “OpenScienceMap: Multi-Scale Vector Tile Maps” by Falko Schmid on Friday 11am you can download the App for your Android device (runs from 2.3 on) from: http://code.google.com/p/vector-tile-map/downloads

Did you miss the call for papers?
Or do you want to present your latest OSM achievements?

Then sign-up and add your name and talk title to the conference Wiki for a “Lightning Talk” and we will give you 5 minutes to impress the audience.
There will be an English and a Japanese LT session on Thursday and one more in English on Friday.

If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you register now!