Useful resources
OpenStreetMap UK is here to help but we’re not able to (and don’t want to) reinvent the wheel when useful resources already exist elsewhere. We hope you find the following links helpful.
Forums & meetings
Working out how to best to engage with the OpenStreetMap community can be difficult. There is no single portal to go to and communities have popped up in different places and on different platforms. To make it a little easier we recommend the following places depending on whether you want to ask questions, discuss ideas or come to a collaborative decision.
Ask questions: Have a question that you want answering? OpenStreetMap has a number of community forums, including a UK specific subforum. Browse or sign in with your OSM credentials.
Discuss: Conversations related to OpenStreetMap happen in many places. In the UK the main online platforms are the mailing lists such as talk-gb, developers and imports (subscribe and you’ll receive emails all subscribed members).
Meet: The global calendar of events includes listings for regular UK meetings in Scotland, the Midlands and London, as well as one-off events like Missing Maps Mapathons. For a bigger audience why not attend a State of the Map conference, whilst this overview of OpenStreetMap contributors can be helpful to find individuals in parts of the country without regular meet-ups.
Other websites
There’s a lot of useful resources where you can find help with OpenStreetMap, some of the key ones you might use are:
The OpenStreetMap Wiki serves as documentation for the project, good for finding how to label/tag things in the map data, and communities around the world. It has various guides, articles on software choices, and gets into the technical detail of servers.
Welcome mat is a website which aims to inform corporate stakeholders of OpenStreetMap about the project. Does your organisation want to work with OSM? Find what you need to know!
Organised editing guidelines are provided by the OSM Foundation for those that undertake coordinated editing initiatives. While originally supported by individuals, the continuing growth and popularity of OpenStreetMap has led to organised mapping efforts by companies and unpaid groups.
Learn OSM is a resource created by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. Whilst we hope that the UK will not be requiring humanitarian assistance, the beginners guide is useful to new starters.
Switch2OSM explains how to make the switch to OpenStreetMap; the world’s best map data. Discover how you can build beautiful, low cost maps for your website or app.
Providing data to OpenStreetMap – a new guide for data owners is a PDF how-to guide for organisations that want to contribute their data to OSM. The guide covers all the prerequisites as well as explaining the different approaches for integrating data.