Each and every year I’m impressed by the progress the OSM community has made. Supporting that community is at the core of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. This year the OSMF had its own progress as well, including within the board.

We kicked of the year with a generous donation from the Pineapple Fund which was worth over €200,000. What a wonderful surprise to start the year!

Less of a surprise was work this year to work on making sure OSM and the OSMF are in compliance with GDPR. One of the board’s roles is to approve policies and guidelines, we did quite a bit of that this year. Some updates were because of GDPR and others were policies that did not exist, but were needed.

A few policies were updated this year primarily due to the hard work of the Legal Working Group. The Trademark Policy was updated. Additionally due to GDPR the Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service were updated.

The Organized Editing Policy was developed by the Data Working Group and approved by the board this year to provide guidelines for organizations and groups editing together in a directed fashion.

Fee Waiver Program is not new, but had not as of yet been implemented. The Membership Working Group developed a process for those unable to technically pay and will be developing further process for those with financial hardship. The OSMF Board has already begun an approval process for those requesting a waiver who wish to claim financial hardship.

The OSMF moved in two different ways this year as well. There was a data center move I really appreciate all the hard work the Operations Working Group put into this move.

The year our official address moved as well. Certainly less dramatic than the server move, but important nonetheless. Thanks to Andy Robinson for all the years of hosting as the mail center for the OSMF.

Our new address if you ever need it is: OpenStreetMap Foundation St John’s Innovation Centre Cowley Road Cambridge CB4 0WS United Kingdom

We also gained many new members this year. 660 new individual members total as well as 587 that renewed. It is great to see so many people interested in the OSMF. We also gained six Corporate members, you can see the full list of Corporate Members here. Growth in local chapters also continued as Belgium was also added as a local chapter. A few additional countries are currently in the application phase.

We had an excellent State of the Map this year in Milan and the State of the Map Working Group is hard at work planning for next year in Heidelburg. Thanks for bringing our community together in person.

Overall I think it was a great year to be an OSM contributor! I look forward to the coming years.

I wanted to personally thank Martijn van Exel and Peter Barth who are outgoing on the board. It was a pleasure to work together with you and I hope to continue to see you within OSM. My other fellow board members, we have another year ahead. There is still much I would like to accomplish, let’s get working.

Thank you also to our working groups. Without you we wouldn’t get anything done. The Communications Working Group was not mentioned above, but they told the story about all those great accomplishments. Thank you so much!

Dorothea Kazazi also created a series of reports for those that wish to see more additional information.

OSMF Overview https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/OSMF_overview_201812

Overview of Board meeting topics and votes https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_Minutes/Overview_201812

Local Chapters https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Local_Chapters/Overview_201812

AB members’ communications are here: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board/Communication#2018