State of the Map 2025/Call for venues/Paris

The team from OpenStreetMap France applies to host State of the Map 2025 in Paris.

The international event of the OpenStreetMap community would be held in the country for the first time. SotM-World would exceptionally replace the national SotM-France. The local team is well-organised and mature to provide support for an event of this scale.

OpenStreetMap France [OSM-FR]

State of the Map France [SotM-FR]

SotM-FR 2024 group picture

SotM-FR 2024 retrospective video

OpenStreetMap France organizes each year since 2013 (except Covid years) the State of the Map France event which brings together approx. 300 persons.

Past editions

• 10th SotM-FR, June 2023, Marseille
• 11th SotM-FR, June 2024, Lyon (event website).

Organisation

The event is traditionally held in Universities or high schools over 3 days.

• 2 days of conferences (Friday - slightly more professional-oriented ; Saturday - slightly more community-oriented)
• 1 day of free activities and common workshops (Sunday)
• social events (Friday/Saturday evenings) and informal gatherings (Thursday/Sunday).

The conferences are distributed over 4 or 5 parallel tracks, depending on constraints.

Team

The core event team gathers contributors living in or near Paris, plus members of the State of the Map France organisation working groupː

• overflorian (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) living north of Paris, former member of SOtM-WG 2013
• Vincent_95 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) living south of Paris
• gendy54 (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) living south-west of Paris
• cquest (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.), living East of Paris
• nlehuby (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) living 10 minutes away from the university
• althio (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.) Benoit Fournier, former member of SotM-WG (organizing team for State of the Map [World] 2016-2019)
• Britzz (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• Tony.emery (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• Jean-Baptiste (Jean-Baptiste CHARRON on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)
• Vinber (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.), Vinber-Pro (on osm, edits, contrib, heatmap, chngset com.)

They are part of the OpenStreetMap France association and can easily mobilize dozens of contributors to help organize the event.

The forum section used to organize every year the Sot̥M-FR will remain the communication channel for local coordination along with a instant messaging group.

A dedicated discussion (in french) is currently going-on to write this page collaboratively.

Event

Introduction video for SotM-2025 in Paris

Venue

On July 16th 2024, the 3 schools wrote this letter of support confirming their will to host the event.

The venue is the Gustave Eiffel University campus 1091734078 1091734078, located at Champs-sur-Marne, East suburb of Paris.

On this campus, 3 schools are to co-host the eventː

• ENSG (École Nationale des Sciences Géographiques), the National Geographical Science School, operated by the National Institute of geographic and forest information (IGN Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière), the main organizer. The main building is located 500 meters (7 minutes walking) from Noisy-Champs train station 195306266 195306266.
• ENPC (École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées), the National School of Bridges and Roads
• UGE (Université Gustave Eiffel), civil engineering and urban planning research school

The whole venue is wheelchair accessible.

-> See the map of currently considered places on the campus

Building	Main amphitheatre capacity	Location	Picture	Comment
Main school building (managed by ENSG / ENPC)	Amphi Cauchy, 238 seats + Picard, 100 seats + Navier, 100 seats	39344438 39344438		Can be used for the plenary session (with live video feed being streamed to the Caquot amphi. There is a permanent video connexion between these 2 rooms. Cauchy amphi can be used all event long a the "main stage"
Bienvenüe building	Amphi Bienvenüe, 244 seats	356043960 356043960
Copernic building (managed by UGE)	Amphi Maurice Gross, 280 seats	154155232 154155232
Coriolis building (250m from main ENSG building)	Amphi Caquot, 400 seats	260269362 260269362

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 (our target being 600-650).

Foyer and additional rooms

A large (600 m2) indoor open area is located in the ENSG building near the Cauchy, Picard and Navier rooms. It is usually used to install booths and is located near the ENSG cafeteria.

A large outdoor open area is located just in front of the building.

Additional smaller (school size) rooms would be available too for luggage storage, material and more.

Date

Depending on the school constraints, the following dates are under review:

• Friday 11 to 13 July, depending on the students final exam dates, less favorite option for the school
• Friday 29 to 31 August
• Friday 5 to 7 September: favourite option for the school
• Friday 12 to 14 September

The final dates are to be agreed between the SotM-WG, OSM-Fr and with the school team.

Catering

• A cafeteria is located inside the main building, available for both morning and afternoon breaks during the whole event.

• Midday: the university restaurant 9125041521 9125041521 could be exceptionally opened during week-end. Its capacity allows to welcome 600 visitors, even during a week day when the students and university personnel is present. The service provider is the university's and cannot be replaced with another.
• Evening: the Friday evening diner is not yet planned and remain to discuss. We are currently investigating for 2 options: find a nice place near the venue or plan an event in Paris.

Saturday night event

Saturday night event will be hold in Paris.

We are currently in negotiation with some venues:

• Ground Control (see privatizing options), located 40 minutes from ENSG via local train (7 min walking + 20 min of train + 10 min walking)
• Café Oz rooftop, near the Seine river

Other places around Paris Gare de Lyon train station or Châtelet train station are under consideration.

Night in Le Marais

Accommodation

The venue is located near the local train line, between Paris center and Disneyland. Hotels in the area are more affordable than Central Paris.

Hotels rooms around 100€/night can be found nearby along the "RER A" local train line, including 1 hotel within a 5 min walking radius ; 15 hotels within 15 min by train ; a lot of hotels near Disneyland Paris resort at 20 min by train (septembre being a "very low touristic season" according to Disney website) ; a lot of hotels near gare de Lyon train station in the city center of Paris.

It is possible to arrange one or more deals with some selected hotels to book a lot of rooms with a great discount.

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 anti-terrorist 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 is a very central place in France with a network of major roads, train lines and major infrastructures.

• great connections to Europe and the World with 2 major international airports (Roissy CDG, Orly ORY) and low-cost options
• major train stations with high speed lines to France and Europe (6 stations in Paris, 1 in Marne-la-Vallée Chessy TGV (20 minutes away from the venue), 1 in airport Charles de Gaulle 2 TGV)
• very dense public transit network (about 20 lines of rapid transit, metro/RER and trams, dozens lines of buses)
• open to all Europeans without any visa, as part of the Schengen area, also widely open to non-Europeans foreigners (see https://france-visas.gouv.fr for details).
• large accommodation offer, including Booking, AirBnB and Abritel, more than 1132 hotels in Paris city (source: OpenStreetMap, 16 july 2024) and 1688 in Paris region (source: OpenStreetMap, 16 july 2024)
• infrastructures have been particularly renewed recently as the city and country prepare for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

Transportation

The venue is 7 minutes walking from Noisy-Champs RER A train station 195306266 195306266.

This station is very well deserved. It is connected to

1. 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)
2. 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) with TGV station (and cheaper "Oui Go" fares compared to Paris center)
3. Charles-de-Gaulle international airport and TGV station within 1 hour and 5 minutes (same frequency and time range, 1 connection in Paris with RER B), Orly international airport (1 hour with 1 connection in Paris with Metro 14)

Other special features

Videos

For several years, OSM-FR has been working with K-prod to film its conferences.

For this event, each conference room will 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.

The technician in the room would therefore 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 remote participants to watch and replay the conferences.

Live studio

A proper live studio would be set up to cover the entire event. 1 journalist and 1 technician would be entirely dedicated to provide a primary live feed including live commentary, interviews and more. K-prod company is used to setting up such temporary studios. This project is currently under construction.

PeerTube videos

After the event, the videos would be assembled by K-prod (mixing videos and screen feeds) and published on OSM-Fr already existing PeerTube instanceː https://peertube.openstreetmap.fr

As for 2022, 2023 and 2024, all videos would be collaboratively subtitled in French and English (and potentially more languages).

Live translation

We suggest to leave the choice of every speaker to give a talk either in French or English.

We will organise live French-English / English-French translation.

Depending on the budget, a single room or all of them will be equipped with headsets, with 2 translators working live.

We have made an initial estimate with Blue Whale Global Media. Depending on the options, the budget would be between 10k€ and 20k€.

This has already been successfully organised during State of the Map Africa 2019 in Abidjan.

Nursery

We will arrange a baby-sitter during the conferences, with a dedicated room. At least 3 french parents have already confirmed this need. This service will be open to anyone during the registration process.