This article was originally written in French here. This English version was partly translated with DeepL.com.

One of the most memorable phases of my OpenStreetMap journey was being part of the Autumn Mapping Sprint 2025, sponsored by Youth Innovation Lab. This was a funded mapping sprint that lasted for one full month, making it both exciting and challenging at the same time.

What made this experience even more intense was that, during the very same month, I was also involved in a one-month field campaign in Dolakha district as part of my studies. Managing both at the same time was not easy.

My days were filled with fieldwork—collecting data, traveling, and completing academic responsibilities. And yet, despite the physical exhaustion, I stayed committed to mapping. Every evening, I tried to make time—sometimes small, sometimes longer—to contribute to the sprint. It required discipline, time management, and a lot of determination.

There were moments when I felt overwhelmed, but I didn’t want to give up. Being part of a funded program and representing myself among advanced mappers motivated me to keep going. I reminded myself why I started this journey and how far I had already come.

Throughout the month, I continued mapping—adding buildings, improving roads, and refining data with care. Even with a busy schedule, I managed to stay consistent and complete my contributions.

Being recognized as one of the advanced mappers during this sprint made the experience even more meaningful. It wasn’t just about mapping anymore—it was about proving to myself that I could handle challenges and still stay committed to my goals.

Looking back, this month feels like a true test of my dedication. Balancing fieldwork and mapping taught me resilience, time management, and self-belief.

This experience showed me that no matter how busy life gets, with determination and passion, I can always find a way to keep going.

Looking back at my OpenStreetMap journey, two dates will always hold a very special place in my heart—June 21 and October 14.

On June 21, I achieved something I had been working toward for a long time: I became the top mapper in KU Youth Mappers. That moment felt surreal. From the days when I was just learning how to draw my first building on the map to reaching the top position—it was a journey filled with patience, consistency, and continuous learning. Every late night of mapping, every small correction, and every effort finally felt worth it.

But the journey didn’t stop there.

On October 14, I reached another incredible milestone—I became a top mapper in UN Mappers. This achievement felt even bigger, as it connected my work to a global level. Contributing alongside mappers from around the world and being recognized among them made me realize how far I had come.

These milestones are not just about rankings or titles. They represent growth, dedication, and the impact of consistent effort. From starting out as a beginner to becoming a leading contributor in both university and international communities, my journey has transformed me—not just as a mapper, but as a learner and contributor.

Sometimes I pause and think about how it all started with simple curiosity. And now, those small steps have led to achievements I once never imagined.

This journey reminds me that with passion and persistence, even the smallest edits can lead to the biggest milestones.

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

A future version of the UrbanEye3D plugin will support trees and other objects.

Hello people, I’ve been Hoping to help my local town of Exeter and nearby plymouth, ive so far made houses in both sherford and torpoint, ive also named the schools of Clyst vale and Stoke hill, And im hoping to do more to help the community of OpenStreetMap

-SouthWestTrains1

Westhay Moor & Honeygar Farm:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.19215/-2.78186

Hello

I have been using OpenStreetMaps for navigation across the globe for multiple years free of charge. I think the time has come for me to give something back to this community.

Thank you wonderful people at OpenStreetMap for such a wonderful project! I hope my contributions will help.

Kind regards

The Vilnius Stroller

Ive been mapping crosswalk corners using a single point for the curb (lowered or otherwise) on a small spur connecting the sidewalk to the crossing way, trying to balance:
- One entity per feature (not duplicating the curb)
- Not blocking the sidewal…

I am happy to annouce that, after a long time we, the OpenStreetMap Carto maintainers, have prepared a new major release of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default stylesheet on the OSM website). Once changes are deployed on openstreetmap.

Wasn't it just yesterday that Android 13 was shiny and new? (Missing backgrounds on Android devices)

After 3+ weeks of silence following the RFC discussion (no further comments/objections), the proposal is now officially in Voting Phase!

Rail trails with route relations with railway=abandoned to denote a rail trail is not working. When the named bike route enters city streets or along side walks where the railroad never went this becomes and tagging nightmare.

This is not about the Linux Foundations Overture Maps attempt to hoodwink the Open Geospatial Consortium into standardising Overtures GERS (Global Entity Reference System) .

Today I received an invitation to attend the bi-monthly OSM US Maintainers Working Group.

But due to timezone difficulties, I don’t think I’ll be able to attend it live.

The meeting agenda has been shared, mainly focusing on the topic of standards and interoperability. There are some interesting starter questions there, so I’m intrigued to answer those questions in an OSM diary instead, hoping that I’ll be able to join the discussion asynchronously.

So, here we go :

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“What standards (geospatial file or data formats, metadata schemas, wire protocols, structured text formats, encodings, etc.) does your project depend on or interact with?”

I frequently use GeoJSON format in several of my projects.

“Are there any standards that you wish would be evolved/extended but aren’t actively maintained? Or implementations that aren’t fully compliant that you wish would be?”

GeoJSON fits pretty much all of my required use cases. My only concern right now is how to make GeoJSON files more compact. I haven’t researched much about this since there’s currently no urgent performance issue that needs to be handled, but I love tweaking my apps for performance.

“Are there standard formats or protocols that you would like to use, but aren’t well supported in your language/ecosystem?”

The General Transit Feed Specification.

I’ve been interested in this data format for a long time, but I still don’t know how to properly tinker with it. Last time I worked on this, I had to make my own Python implementation to read and navigate GTFS files. I don’t know what the current situation is right now. Maybe it’s already supported, maybe not.

“What are your thoughts on Overture’s OGC proposal?”

I already posted my thoughts in a certain Slack thread somewhere. Here’s the verbatim quote:

“Does an OGC standard become legally binding worldwide or something?

I’ve been thinking for quite some time about the idea of having a single global geographic identifier for every place. Ideally, any online content that refers to a location — whether a blog post, tweet, video, or photo — would include that global GeoID so it could be reverse-searched more effectively, such as finding every piece of content that references a specific place. For now, I use OpenStreetMap node, way, or relation IDs as links whenever I mention a place as a rough workaround, but I still hope that vision could be developed further.”

“What role do you think maintainers in the OSM community should play in giving feedback on or submitting standards to formal bodies like OGC?”

I guess maintainers would only care about standards if those standards personally affect their lives (their projects depend on them).

One day, a certain still-popular web APIs were unilaterally deprecated by a certain majority market-share holder browser company. Several maintainers (me included) staged a protest on their mailing list, practically begging them not to cut our collective lifeline. A representative from that company personally told me a quick fix on how to navigate that situation, and I’ve been using that quick fix for years. I don’t know the rest of the story, but if my app is occasionally broken without a clear reason, I suspect that quick fix is no longer enough to resolve the deprecation issue. That was the last time I participated in a “standardization” discussion.

“Anything new with your project(s) you’d like to share?”

Not exactly my project per se, but several weeks ago I saw someone in an OSM diary who recommended SCEE as one of the best available OSM editors on mobile. So lately, I’ve tried doing field mapping with SCEE.

They were right, it’s so good.

But somehow preset tags are still missing (I can’t add ATM, recycling center, or power pole yet). I don’t know how to add new preset tags to the app. Is there a hidden menu somewhere, or should we make a pull request to the repository? I’m now quite interested in this topic.

Finished adding villages in Nagqu City with Tibetan names listed in the Place Names Database KNAB and having a Q-id in wikidata; Im continuing with Ngari Prefecture.

Tonight I finished mapping Maud, meaning the bulk of Fairview California is mapped. There are still some places along Fairview Avenue as it goes around in a circle and becomes Hayward but this is area shared by Hayward, Castro Valley and Fairview.

It feels so good to see my home there and recognizable.

I started this project in earnest on November 18th (although I did my own street back in June).

Automatic Pedestrian Detection at Signalized Crossings

Vibe coding an OSM / Overture conflation tool.

In May 2025 the OSM website introduced two new optional fields in user profiles: company and location.

Until recently, I mainly used the opening_hours evaluation tool to quickly generate valid OSM opening hours. However, it often requires some manual work to simplify the syntax afterwards.

Holux M-241, week rollover fixed with mtkbabel

I have created a tag, diet:excipient_free=* , which is about finding clean supplements, i.e., without harmful ingredients that can make us infertile, inflamed, obese or even epileptic.

For example, whenever we look for magnesium (bis)glycinate, we want one thing, but many so-called “magnesium” supplements come with a lot more ingredients that might reduce the price, or enhance the appearance, but of course, at a cost; to hurt and make us need another supplement to compensate with the side effects. (Maybe they should rename those “magnesium” supplements to corn syrup supplements instead.)

Almost if not all of those ingredients fall into one category, excipients. Let’s use diet:excipient_free=* on pharmacies and nutrition supplement stores to promote a healthier future without dyes, fillers, flavorants, preservatives and other inactive ingredients that can cost us our health.

OpenStreetMap old timers know about the infamous 2009 TIGER import of road data in the US that continues giving to this day.

I started a new wiki talk page discussion on the conflicting/controversial usage of the wetland=tidalflat tag regarding implied and explicit surface types:

Hoy comienzo la plenitud de mi sinceridad

Every map tells a story.
Some stories are drawn with roads and buildings. Others are written through people, voices, and lived experiences.

Nimman Road, Chiang Mai(Thailand) is a well-mapped, high-traffic corridor. It scores a B on network density: good intersection frequency, reasonable block lengths.

Portal North Bridge construction and study documents

Hi everyone,

My First Blog

Hello. Karen and I traveled to Atlanta, GA as part of our revolutionary campaign.

Hello. Karen and I traveled to Atlanta, GA as part of our revolutionary campaign.

OK. Last year I wrote a short guide on mapping Indian addresses but I lost it in my tiny pursuit to delete myself.

A few months ago, I worked on a new project: the OSM Tagging Schema MCP — a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built for AI assistants and LLM applications that interact with OpenStreetMap tagging data.

Remapped Little Saint James (epstein's island) [2025 Winter]

finding myself to osm was something I couldn’t understand at the time. Now with an open eye, in my field of water engineering introduced to geographical information system. I love it here my journey begins now mapping take me overseas. 😊

I successfully put Novato Baylands Point Blue Conservation Science as a pin on the map. However, I have not had success with editing the directions that maps provides to get you to the site. The directions still route you past the facility, rather than stopping right at the facility. They should tell you to go down Aberdeen Rd, and then the location is on your right. Thanks for any assistance with editing the route.

I’m new to editing OpenStreetMap, so this is my first change! I noticed that most neighbourhood areas in Lethbridge, my local city, don’t have a name shown in OSM. However, they’re all neatly shown on an official 2024 map from the government of Lethbridge, so I used it as a source. I did notice that some areas are already named in other ways, but I couldn’t find the item that holds the name. This induced visual clutter by doubling some names (those of the industrial parks, Copperwood, and seemingly Paradise Canyon), but I still added the names to the neighbourhood areas for consistency anyways. If anyone around knows how to get rid of this without removing the naming consistency, it would be great if this slight issue could be resolved. I haven’t actually tested the map yet, since I just uploaded the edit, but if what I’m describing is actually a problem, please help? Anyway, I intend on updating and adding a lot of things to Lethbridge (like adding addresses and new buildings) in the near-ish future, so it’d be fun to get to know the local OSM community.

Taking a break for 1 week because of ramadhan and installing gentoo as my main system.