Attendees: Gareth, CJ, Steve, Stephen, Robert
Guests: Gregory
Apologies:

Operations

Financial Report

Stephen updated. There is £31,850 in the bank, including £4,381 for OSM UK and the rest ring-fenced for State of the Map EU.

State of the Map EU generated approximately £44,000 income. Costs are expected to be £21,000–£24,000, with around £20,000 remaining after expenses.

The board agreed to allocate £12,000 for the next State of the Map EU or similar large OSM event in the region.

Co-Op Bank has started Know Your Customer checks for directors, probably because of the financial movement recently.

Deferred income

The board discussed £2,150 of deferred income from 2019–2023.

Stephen explained that deferred income can be rolled forward where there are future expenses or member benefits to justify it. If not spent or deferred, it may become taxable profit.

The board discussed whether some of the remaining funds should be spent before being realised as taxable income.

Use of remaining funds

The board discussed possible uses for around £8,000 of remaining funds.

Options discussed included a microgrants programme, equipment purchases, hosting improvements, and a UK Panoramax instance.

The board noted that current reserves are around £4,000, which could sustain normal operations for several years.

The board may ask accountants about tax-efficient ways to use the funds.

Panoramax

The board discussed the possibility of hosting a UK instance of Panoramax for street-level imagery.

Gareth noted that OSM France has around 100TB of storage for around 20 million pictures, with a government agency project significantly larger.

The board discussed likely setup costs, ongoing storage costs, backups, power, and the need for technical expertise.

Steve suggested speaking to Mythic Beasts about hosting options, including storage and managed backups.

CJ and Gareth were concerned that ongoing storage costs may be high compared with the benefit.

Server hosting

CJ looked into the current AWS server and noted that it is relatively low-end and running Ubuntu.

CJ to find out what kind of resourcing the AWS server uses and send specs to Steve.

Steve to speak with Mythic Beasts about hosting and pricing, and get quotes from other VPS providers.

The board discussed possible savings and simpler setup from moving the server to a new host.

Membership

Membership renewals were discussed. There were 15 new members and 12 renewals in November.

Steve has created a one-page corporate welcome pack document.

AGM

The 2025 AGM was held successfully. Thankyou to Robert and CJ for hosting it.

The board discussed whether next year’s AGM should be online or in person.

Projects

Q4 2025 project – Industrial estates

The Q4 industrial estate mapping project is ongoing but has not generated much activity.

Address data

The board discussed progress on address data imports.

CJ noted that Sheffield address data has some issues because it lacks coordinates.

Robert discussed importing postal sectors from Leeds data and the need for careful curation to avoid mass import errors, e.g. “Leeds” has lots of typos in the dataset.

Gareth asked about the outcome of the November addresses call and suggested arranging another meeting in December or January.

The board discussed challenges with UK address data and geocoding.

Robert noted that Nominatim’s use of administrative boundaries may not work well for UK addressing.

The board discussed context objects to hold address information and associated named entities.

Gareth gave examples of how people may describe addresses differently from administrative or mapping contexts.

Vector tiles

The board discussed vector tiles and the OSMF Shortbread schema.

The schema may be limited for detailed mapping but could be customised with additional data layers.

CJ and Gareth discussed the possibility of a UK-styled version of the tiles, with additional data such as public rights of way.

Future events

State of the Map

State of the Map is scheduled for Paris next summer, which may affect attendance at other events.

Geomob London

Steve confirmed that he will attend Geomob London on 28 January.

AOB

The next meeting will be on 6 January.

Gareth to send the calendar invite for the 6 January meeting.

The board will continue discussing possible projects for spending remaining funds on Signal.