A Recap of the March Local Chapters & Communities Congress

What is the Local Chapters & Communities Congress? The Local Chapters and Communities Congress 2026 (LCCC 2026) is a virtual event where leaders and members of various OSM communities, whether they are officially recognized Local Chapters of the OSM Foundation or just a regular user group of OSM mappers, come together to share stories and learn from each other. Each year we convenet to see what kinds of organizational efforts we can share together to support and grow our mapping communities. You can see LCCC notes and the full agenda/more info on the wiki page. What did we discuss? The group met on a Saturday, March 28, and over the course of 2 hours more than 30 particants joined the Congress from Italy, Indonesia, Greece, the USA, Belgium, Kenya, Canada, Brazil, Malawi, and more! To kick things off, the group went around the room and the participants shared some things their communities were working on. This included mapping rivers and streams in the Philippines, mapping toponyms in Indonesia, Spain having their first SOTM, mapping in Greece, work of the MapRVA group in Richmond VA USA, mapathons in Kenya, mapping in a shareable format for Quebec, and more fun things. An update from the OSMF Board In the next part of the event, members of the OSMF Board shared information about the OSMF and what things they have been up to over the year. In 2025 it welcomed new corporate members (e.g., Niantic Spatial, Regione Marche) and secured a Sovereign Tech Fund grant of €384,000 and welcomed AC3 in Colombia as a new local chapter. They are presently fundraising for an additional operations position, planning a Madrid board F2F, establishing a Belgium subsidiary, and organizing SotM 2026 in Paris (Aug 28–30). Catch up with them at the Board AMA in Paris in August! Open Discussion: Overcoming Challenges in OSM The next part of the congress was time for the participants to share perspective and experience, with some questions as guidance. The LCCWG used the Menti tool to get feedback asynch from participants and then space was held to discuss. You can see the full notes at this Hackpad. If a new mapper asked you ‘what’s the hardest part about being in the OSM community’ what would you say? Answers included challenges with language, unclear entry points, and feeling unwelcome in the community. Here are a few quotes: - Documentation mostly in English - Hard to explain why OSM is needed when Google Maps, Waze & Apple Maps already exist - Not being demotivated by expert mappers who might “yell” at them for doing mistakes while mapping - Encountering negative/unproductive discourse in OSM fora, which can be discourage participation from new users - If you are not already technologically literate, it’s a lot to learn and unclear where to start What makes it hard to grow or sustain your community? Many participants found it hard to find time or funding to organize events and projects, and find it difficult to connect with mappers across a region. Here are a few quotes: - The distributed nature of the work can make it hard to reach out to people in the region. I feel we could havea better integrated tool to talk to local mappers directly. - Even in English, it’s difficult to find good resources like tutuorials for getting people started with mapping. - Volunteer time is in the cracks between ‘more serious’ work. So while it is easy to get new folks in the community it’s hard to get consistent investment over longer time periods. - Most members from the community prefer money-yielding activities and the idea of volunteer driven initiatives are not so welcomed. Is there a gap between the ‘global OSM’ and your local reality? Where do you feel it? - Yes, in tagging practices and how to adapt to the local reality - There is a gap. People are drawn to local and immediate concerns by default and it’s hard to make people excited about global concerns and problems outside of conferences like SotM. - Core infrastructure needs work and innovation, and OSMF seems to struggle making progress. We need more transparency and openness to community input. Local communities need to shape our shared website. What support do you wish the OSMF or the wider community provided but doesn’t? Answers to this question mentioned funding, appreciation, clear leadership, and a more friendly community space. Here are additional quotes: - Make sure the core software project are active and support/discuss with the community - Technical & practical starting packages for community building - A mix of more formal and informal meetups, from “let’s hear a presentation about the person’s mapping project” to “let’s meet at a bar and hang out as friends” What are ways you get your community together? Answers to this question included virtual mappy hours, annual in person events/sotms, social media & chat groups for messages and announcements, and organized trainings. Here are a few quotes: - Online meetings, and make them useful for both new and experienced users so we all learn from each other - Daily communication via chat makes us feel close between bigger events - Doing projects with free participation w/ a co-work mentality What ideas do you have to help grow and sustain OSM? This final question brought in a lot of great ideas. You can see them all in the graphic below. How to Participate in the Local Chapters & Communities Working Group As you can see, the LCCC is for everyone to share ideas and meet fellow OSM enthusiasts from around the world. And we’d love for you to join us! Here are a few ways to get involved. - Join the upcoming in person LCCC at State of the Map in Paris, France on August 28 - Join a monthly LCCWG meeting. Contact local@osmfoundation.org. We meet at 10amET /14:00UTC first Thursday of the month - Help plan the next virtual LCCC in March 2027 – and join the conversation! Thanks, hope to see you soon!