State of the Map 2025/Call for venues/Paris
The french team from OpenStreetMap France apply to organize SotM 2025 in Paris.
This would be the first time that such an event would be organised in France. Sotm-World would exceptionally replace the annual Sotm-Fr event in France. Local team is well-organized and mature to provide support for such an international event.
OSM-Fr
Sotm-Fr
OpenStreetMap France organize each year since 2013 (except Covid years) the State-of-the-Map France which brings together approx. 300 persons.
The latest edition of the event, Sotm-Fr 2023, was hold in June 2023 in the city of Marseille. Next event, SotM-Fr 2024 will be hold in Lyon (event website)
The event is traditionally held in Universities or high schools and lasts 3 days: 2 days of conferences, 1 day of workshops, plus social events in the evening.
The conferences are dispatched within 4 or 5 joint tracks, depending on constraints.
Team
The core event team is made of 4 contributors living in or near Paris:
overflorian (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)- Vincent_95 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
gendy54 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)- cquest (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
They are part of the OpenStreetMap France association and can easily mobilize dozens of contributors to organize the event.
The mailing-list to organize every year the Sot̥M in France is sotm@listes.openstreetmap.fr with more than 40 subscribers. This email address will remain the main communication link for local coordination with the dedicated forum category, in complement with a dedicated telegram group.
Event
Venue
Considering the previous SotM in Europe (400 attendees in Firenze and 569 in Heidelberg), the expected attendees amount would be approximately between 400 to 650.
The considered venue is the Gustave Eiffel University campus 1091734078
1091734078, located at Champs-sur-Marne, East suburb of Paris.
On this campus, the ENSG (École Nationale des Sciences Géographiques / National Geographical Science School) school, operated by IGN (Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière / National Institute of geographic and forest information) would welcome us.
The main building is located 500 meters (7 minutes walking) from Noisy-Champs train station 195306266
195306266.
- Main school building (managed by ENSG / ENPC): 200 seats amphitheatre 39344438 39344438
- Bienvenüe building 356043960 356043960
- Copernic building (managed by UGE): 300 seats amphitheatre 154155232 154155232
- ESIEE building: 400 seats amphitheatre 654727072 654727072
- Reservation with a venue operator?
- At which date is the venue available?
- What is the capacity of the venue (how many visitors allowed at the venue)?
- Size of auditoriums
- Size of foyer
- Are there spaces for breakout sessions?
- Is there wheelchair access?
- Add photos of the venues and the rooms if possible
Catering
In past we provided lunch and two coffee breaks, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon.
- Midday: the university restaurant 9125041521 9125041521 could be exceptionaly opened during week-end. Its capacity allows to welcome 600 visitors, even during a week day when the students and university personnel is present.
- Evening: in Parisǃ [...]
Accommodation
Paris
City
- The city of Paris is well known as one of the most LGBT friendly in the world. City center Le Marais neighbourhood is the epicentre of LGBT and night life.
- Healthcare is free of charge for most of the medical interventions in the public hospitals, even for foreigners.
- Since 2015 Bataclan terrorist attack, military presence has been reinforced in the public areas, in particular in the capital, applying an ambitious government's Vigipirate plan. Crime rate is low. It is safe to go out during the night in Paris.
- The country is considered as sustainable with a Fragile States Index 2022 (FSI) of 28.8 (source). As a consequence, the risk of cancelling the event because of a national issue is extremely low.
Travel
Paris has a very central place in France as all the major roads leads to the capital. Infrastructures have been particularly renewed recently as the Olympic Games are to be organized in Paris during summer 2024.
- It is very well connected to Europe and the World with 2 international airports, 6 great train stations and a very dense transit network.
- As part of the Schengen zone, France is open to all Europeans without any visa. It is also widely open to foreigners (see https://france-visas.gouv.fr for details).
- There is a large accommodation offer, including AirBnB and Abritel, more than 1641 hotels in Paris city (sourceː OpenStreetMap, 13 may 2024) and 2774 in Paris region (sourceː OpenStreetMap, 13 may 2024).
Transportation
The venue is 7 minutes walking from Noisy-Champs train station 195306266 195306266.
This station is very well deserved. It is connected to
- Paris city center (Gare de Lyon station) within 20 minutes (frequency: one train every 4 to 7 minutes / time range: from 05:15 in the morning to 1ː00 in the night)
- Marne-la-Vallée Chessy (Disneyland Paris attraction parc, with a very large accommodation offer) within 17 minutes (frequency: one train every 4 to 7 minutes / time range: from 05:30 in the morning to 00ː45 in the night)
- Charles-de-Gaulle international airport within 1 hour and 5 minutes (same frequency and time range, 1 change)
Other special features
Videos
Since several years, OSM-Fr works with K-prod to film its conferences.
For this event, every conference room would be equipped with 1. a professional camera on a tripod 2. a lapel microphone for the speaker 3. a computer connected to a video projector, used by the presenter.
Therefore the technician in the room would record 3 feeds: video, audio and the computer screen (using OBS Studio software) for professional quality videos.
Live feed
All conferences would be live-broadcasted on PeerTube and Youtube, allowing contributors who do not physically attend to watch the conferences.
Live studio
A proper live studio would be setup, covering the entire event. 1 journalist and 1 technician would be entirely dedicated to this task. This would allow to have a primary live feed including live comments, interviews and more. T-prod company is used to setup such temporarily studios.
PeerTube videos
After the event, the videos would be mounted by T-prod (mixing videos and screen feeds) and published over OSM-Fr already existing PeerTube instanceː https://peertube.openstreetmap.fr
As for 2022 and 2023, all videos would be collaboratively sub-titled in French and English (and potentially more languages).
Live translation
We suggest to let every speaker decide to give talks either in French or English.
We will organise live french-English / English-french translation. Many headsets would available in each conference room with 2 translators working live in every room.
We made a first estimation with Blue Whale Global Media. Depending on options, the budget would be from 10k€ to 20k€.
This has already been successfully organised during Sotm-Africa at Abidjan in 2019.