State of the Map 2026

Contributing to Open Street Map has given me a ton of satisfaction. Knowing that my somewhat minor efforts to correct one address, add one feature, correct one trail will propagate to so many different places and help other people not get lost, find something new, or just be able to navigate more safely in the world makes me feel like I am leaving the world a better place more than a decade of working at FANG ever did.

I absolutely love OpenStreetMap. Back when I first started building (legal) mountain bike trails I realized that without a map they aren't the most useful. OSM gave me the system in which to document them, and then from there I was able to reuse the data to make print maps and eventually my current project: https://trailmaps.app

If you want a fun and easy way to contribute to OSM I recommend StreetComplete. You get a bunch of game-like quest icons for things like "what is the surface of this path?", and "does this road have a cycle path?", then you walk around and fill them in.

Very satisfying and feels like you're doing something actually useful. Also nudges you to visit parts of your neighborhood you might never have been to before.

Happening at "Cité Descartes". I see what you did there.

Michelin being a higher tier sponsor than Esri is interesting

Of course I learn about it exactly when I’m out of Paris for just a couple of days.

Weird little quirk I've recently encountered, somewhat related to OSM: the `mkgmap` tool used to convert OSM data to Garmin map files display Chinese pronunciation as English names next to POI names in Japanese, due to 1) Japanese OSM maps have a lot of entries written in Japanese without indication of language, 2) no one is doing anything about it, due to Wikipedia style community nuances or something, and 3) the tool have no "--assume-language=$LANG" style of options(plus Japanese script->pronunciation mapping isn't even remotely bijective).

e.g. There's a bicycle parking next to the parkside exit at Ueno station, "上野駅公園口自転車駐車場". This is:

  meaning:        Ueno    station   park    entrance   bicycle     parking  ground in English,
  read IRL:      ue   no    eki     kouen    guchi    jitensha     chusha    jou   in Japanese, but written
  on the map:  shang  ye    yi    gong yuan   kou   zi zhuan che  zhu che   chang  as Chinese(in Pinyin but I don't know how to type it).

...I would imagine that utility of that is limited for non-Japanese users. Makes me wonder what are the reasons why master OSM data hadn't had missing pronunciations autogenerated or mkgmap tool given an auto selected language flag, but I'm not intending to be OSMian nor am I wanting to be the one to define national borders for bunch of nation states, so there's that...

Interesting discussion. I didn’t know OSM handled official naming separately from community naming. Thanks for the explanation.

Does OpenStreetMap comply with US executive order naming?