State of the Map 2020/Call for venues/Rapperswil
Bid for State of the Map 2020 Rapperswil, Switzerland
This is the proposal for hosting the State of the Map (SotM) conference 2020 in Rapperswil near Zurich (Switzerland).
About Rapperswil (near Zurich)
The town Rapperswil-Jona is a city that borders Northeastern Switzerland and Central Switzerland and lays directly at the end of Lake Zurich and 'Obersee'. Locals call Rapperswil just 'Rappi'. Rapperswil merged with the city of Jona a few years back - hence the full name Rapperswi-Jona of the municipality. It's a picturesque town and a popular destination for hikers, bikers, families and train/bird spotters at the weekend in the vicinity of Zurich. Rapperswil is well connected to Zurich, the business capital of Switzerland, hosting the Street Parade among others, being the biggest techno party of the world which is well known for its inclusive ambiente.
Castle from the opposite side (Feldbach)
HSR Campus at the lake side
Wooden bridge seen from the HSR campus
Castle of Rapperswil
See also Rapperswil on Instagram and on the official municipality website.
Infrastructure: Rapperswil has all the facilities you would expect from a Swiss town, like super markets, restaurants, banks and medical services. It has a train station and a harbour with regular boat services. The town offers a small historic city centre with lots of small shops, museums and a castle and a church on top of the hill. There is even a Zoo, a ice hockey, and a soccer/volleyball arena.
In the surroundings of Rapperswil, there's a water park in Pfäffikon/SZ and some hiking destinations, like the Etzel and the Bachtel mountains.
LGBT+: The region seems relatively friendly to LGBT+ people. Wikipedia has a good summary of the situation in Switzerland, which applies well to Rapperswil and the greater Zurich region. The tourism organisation of Zurich has also some resources on that topic here.
Who's the local team?
The local team is led by Stefan Keller (alias Geonick), Professor at HSR University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil together with his Geometa Lab team as well as the board members of the Swiss OpenStreetMap Association (SOSM). All of them are active mappers. Stefan and his secretary organized for example the FOSSGIS 2013 event, a big C++-event 2018 and Zurihac 2019, the biggest Haskell Hackathon in the world with 500 participants. Stefan's Geometa lab HSR is actively maintaining OSM-based services, like TagFinder, OSMaxx and OSMyBiz.
- Stefan Keller, HSR and SOSM
- Silvia Mazzoli, HSR
- Raphael Das Gupta, HSR and SOSM
- 4 interns at Geometa Lab HSR: Christopher, Johannes, Carlo and Maisa
- Simon Poole, SOSM
- Michael Spreng, SOSM
- Patrick Stählin, SOSM
- Roman Härdi, SOSM
- Manfred Stock, OSMF
- Lukas Toggenburger, active mapper
- Silvia Rohner
- Matthias Kuhn, OPENGIS.ch
- Pirmin Kalberer, Sourcepole.ch
- Further volunteers of OSM CH community (tbc.)
- Further volunteers of OSM worldwide community (tbc.)
When?
19-21 June 2020 - June, Friday 19th to Sunday 21th 2020.
Social Events:
- Friday, June 19th 2020: (Main) Conference Dinner at Castle Rapperswil.
- Saturday, June 20th 2020: Tours to Rapperswil at lake side and to the nearby Ufenau island.
- Sunday, June 21st 2020: Mapping activities (in cooperation with Wikimedia CH) in selected surrounding Swiss cities.
Venue
HSR University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil, Switzerland, Website www.hsr.ch is located just close to the train station and situated at the shore of the lake of Zurich.
All rooms are wheelchair accessible:
- Room No.4.100 Aula/Auditorium, 500 seats + Foyer (see photo above).
- Central foyer No. 1.100.
- Room No.3.008, 130 seats.
- Room No. 8.U00, 130 seats + Foyer.
- Room No. 4.113, 100 seats.
- Room No.5.002, 80 seats + Foyer.
- Two Rooms 5.001 and 5.003, 50 seats.
- About 4 Rooms 1.2xx, 50 seats each.
Additional infrastructure:
- Mensa (building 4) - Eating Room including a garden for outside eating
- A baby change room.
- Three changing rooms.
- An outside shower - after some sports or a bath at nearby public path facility.
Between HSR building 1 and 4
Between HSR building 5 and 1 and 4
HSR room 5.001
HSR room 5.002
Rapperswil central place
Transportation
Rapperswil is located in the Zürich metropolitan area and served by its suburban trains (Zürich S-Bahn). The S5, S7 and S15 lines all offer 2 trains/hour, with S5 and S15 taking 36 min from Zürich city centre and S7 40 min. Several commuter trains from Zurich, e.g S5, S15, S40 and S7, pass through or terminate in Rapperswil. Public transport is running even during the night although at larger intervals (mostly every hour).
Zurich Airport (Flughafen Zürich ZRH) is Switzerland's largest airport and it is 10 minutes by train from Zurich main station. The trains depart every 10-15 minutes during the day, but less frequently at earlier or later hours. On top of that tram number 10 from Zurich terminates at the airport, but is a rather slower option.
All connections are listed on the website of the public traffic homepages ZVV and SBB.
There exist bike rental facilities, e.g. near Jona station. At the harbour of Rapperswil there's even a boat rental.
The cities Lucerne or Romanshorn (situated on Lake Constance) can be reached by train from Rapperswil too. A scenic way of travelling to Rapperswil is with the steamship boats of the Zürichsee Schifffahrtsgesellschaft (ZSG). It's the same ticket, same price as with train, bus or tram.
More information can be found e.g. on WikiVoyage.
(tbc.)
Accommodation
There are hotels available in Rapperswil and in nearby municipalities as well across the dam (Pfäffikon/SZ) using the wooden bridge. More hotels are available in Rüti, Wetzikon and Uster along the (coincident) lines S5/S15 heading for Zurich. The Tourist Information Rapperswil Zürichsee has a listing of hotels in Rapperswil.
There will be a webpage at Tourist Information Rapperswil (in cooperation with Tourist Information Zurich) which will list further hotel accomodation in the Zurich city.
There's a youth hostel Rapperswil within walking distance. Close by there's also a camping ground "Stampf".
Finally, Airbnb and private accommodation are always an option.
Miscellaneous
- Language: Rapperswil is in the German part of Switzerland. Many Swiss are used to communicating in several languages including English.
- Public Safety: In Switzerland you can move safely even at night - of course with the usual caution.
- Infrastructure of Rapperswil: See intro above with links to the city homepage.
- Eating: This is a map of all restaurants in Rapperswil.
- Drinking & Going out: Rapperswil has some centrality functions but it's a small town. There are few pubs, like Nelson Pub and Nautic Pub. Actually, Zurich is close by...
(tbc.)