OpenStreetMap's 'State of the Map US' conference (portland)

OpenStreetMap, the free wiki world map, is hosting its annual US national conference October 13th and 14th in Portland, OR. If you’re not familiar with OpenStreetMap (OSM) it’s one of the most comprehensive world maps in existence, but what makes OSM really cool is that is owned by the people who create it – thousands of volunteers all over the world – and anyone can become a contributor to or consumer of the data for free. OSM is a great resource not only because of the high quality of its map data (which is superior to its  proprietary counterparts in many regions of the world, including the Portland area), but also because of the open source, supplementary tools that have been developed by the OSM community that allow us to utilize, convert, and manipulate OSM data for everything from map tiles, to routing, to spatial analysis and more. 

This conference will bring together people contributing to all phases of the OpenStreetMap project as well as those aiming to learn about OSM, and will look to the future of where the project is going and how to continue to generate map data and tools that challenge competitors like Google, Bing, and Apple. State of the Map US is a part of a month of October in Portland that will be packed with geo conferences: starting with URISA’s GIS-Pro September 30th through October 4th and concluding with the NACIS cartography conference October 17th through 19th. We’re right between the two and will be integrated with WhereCampPDX, so if you’re an out-of-towner it’s a great time to visit and if you’re a local you should take this opportunity to hone your geospatial knowledge and skills without having to leave the comfort of your home town!

Event Details: 
State of the Map is a community-based conference, and there's an open call for session proposals – which are due **Friday, August 31**. If you're working with OpenStreetMap – whether on a project, in an app, contributing to the dataset, or in any other way that you’d like to share – we’d love for you to submit a session.

Registration for the conference is open and the two-day event costs $80. You will receive a $30 discount if you are a member if the OpenStreetMap US Chapter, which costs only $20 for a one year membership (and $15 for students). If you’re interested in volunteering for the conference please contact Bonnie Bogle at bonnie@mapbox.com 

For more information visit the conference website at http://stateofthemap.us.