Kathmandu Living Labs Successfully Hosted STATE OF THE MAP ASIA 2017

A two days conference on State of Open Map Data was successfully organized here at Nepal, this September 23-24,2017. Kathmandu Living Labs and OSM Community of Nepal together hosted the event. Event was conducted at Park Village hotel & Resort, Budhanilkantha, Kathmandu.

The conference was hosted by Dr. Nama Raj Budhathoki who welcomed the participants and provided overview of the conference. Dr. Lee Schwartz, Prof. Taichi Furuhashi and Kate Chapman were the Keynote speakers of the Conference.

This two day conference had various presentations, seminars, workshop and interaction section. Country representatives from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Vietnam gave presentation on the State of the Map focusing on their respective countries. Conference organized Workshop on following topics:

• MAPS.ME
• Open Data Manipulation

Government representatives from Nepal and other countries were present during the workshop. A Government panel was hosted to discuss the plans, actions, progress and challenges they were facing about Open Data and Open Mapping. 

Conference hosted presentation on topics like 

• Secondary Cities in action
• Tools and Projects around OSM
• The Future of OSM in Asia and Beyond
• Map Data Integrity

Use of Open Data and Open Streets Map has helped Volunteers, Armies, Rescue Personnel, Relief Campaigners, from Nepal & all over the world to fight Earthquake that happened back in 2015. This conference organized NEPAL EARTHQUAKE SESSION  where Ministry of Home Affairs, Nepal Army, Nepal Police, Central Bureau of Statistics and Kathmandu Living Labs share their experiences about how they used Open Data in that period of Emergency.

This was the Third State of the Map Conference. Last year the STATE OF THE MAP was conducted at Brussels, Belgium. This year Kathmandu Living Labs, an emerging Tech Organization which works rigorously on Geographical Data, Maps and various areas of Open Data is hosted the event which happened to be a grand success. 

Dr. Govinda Raj Pokhkarel, CEO, National Reconstruction Authority  formally ended the program with some insightful closing remarks. 

You can find more details about the #SOMASIA2017 conference on its official links, some of them are mentioned below:

• Twitter: Kathmandu Living Labs
• Event site: stateofthemap.asia
• Youtube: Live Feeds and Full Event Records 

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Kathmandu living Labs to Host State of The Map Asia 2017

Kathmandu Living Labs To Host STATE OF THE MAP ASIA 2017 Conference

Source: State of the map ASIA

A two days conference on State of Open Map Data  is going to be organized here at Nepal, this September 23-24,2017. This is the Third State of the Map Conference which is happening in ASIA specifically in Nepal. Last year the STATE OF THE MAP was conducted at Brussels, Belgium. This year Kathmandu Living Labs, an emerging Tech Organization which works rigorously on Geographical Data, Maps and various areas of Open Data is hosting the event. Along with Kathmandu Living Labs OSM Community of Nepal is also a Co-Host of this event.

Rob Savoye, a pioneering Open Source Contributor since the very beginning of Open Source Movement will be conducting workshop on Mapping via Open Street Map. State of the Map Asia is an event for all mappers and OpenStreetMap users. Enjoy two days in Nepal with talks, discussions, workshops, and networking all around the free and open map of the world. 

Please go through the details about the Conference here at STATE OF THE MAP ASIA 2017

Open Street Mapping with MAPS.ME

"Like wallet, your smart phone is also nowadays part of your journey." 

I travel a lot within my country during holidays.  It was my last trek to Namche Bazar where my Friend Ramesh Tiwari suggested me to try MAPS.ME. After that day, I've only one map application installed on my phone i.e. MAPS.ME. This map is so precise that when we were on our trek it would navigate us and show every house and routes.

My friend had downloaded the map of Nepal offline, so we were able to browse the map ofline. This application is so awesome also because it is an open source project. Unlike Google and Bing it doesn't claim it's proprietary ownership to the maps which we contribute. Following reasons made me to contribute to OSM:

• It's OpenSource. So the main advantage will be that all those researchers and developers who need information about my place can get all the information and data for free from this map or the Open Street Mapwebsite
• Nepal is a country with huge scope in tourism. Many tourists come to visit our country, so it's our duty to at least provide information about places like, treking routes, hospitals, busstands, homestays and restaurants, parks forests mountains etc.  This open initiative can also imprint a good impression of a country whole over the world.
• Being offline, also you can get directions, bookmark your places and also the 3D view feature is interesting.  

I wanted to show this contribution panel of MAPS.ME. After last trek to Namche in March, I have added 188 new places to the open street maps. Not only that I sometimes keep the GPS traces of my route which I upload to the website so that other can see it.  At the end of the year 2016 MAPS.ME was successful to map more than a million of object which was all contributed by volunteers like us. Picture below shows the number of schools, bus stop and more categories that we were able to map.Open Street Mapping is interesting, so I would like to invite every travelers to install the app and take benefit of it as well as contribute whenever they explore new places or new tracks during their journey.

To know more about MAPS.ME watch this video below: