Open Location Code at OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference

Doug Rinckes

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Jun 6, 2016, 10:29:28 AM6/6/16

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I've applied to talk at the OSM conference in September about Open Location Code. My aim is to see if the OSM community will support Open Location Codes in their mapping applications. I strongly believe that a good synthetic addressing solution needs to be freely available on as many platforms as possible, and I'd love to see it supported on OSM.

The good news is that you can vote on what sessions you would like to see. Follow this link, search for "Open Location Code" and click Want to see!

Thanks!

Doug Rinckes

Technical Program Manager

Google Switzerland

Waldir Pimenta

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Jun 8, 2016, 6:23:15 PM6/8/16

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Just voted! I wasn't gonna announce it, but I couldn't resist after seeing that you used WF8Q+WF, Praia for the example OLC in the talk description, since that's the capital of my country of origin, Cape Verde :)

Good luck!

Timur Tatarshaov

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Jun 9, 2016, 8:03:49 AM6/9/16

to Waldir Pimenta, open-location-code

Voted,

please keep informed.

Timur

--
Public site: http://www.openlocationcode.com/
Github project: https://github.com/google/open-location-code
Demo site: http://plus.codes/
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Doug Rinckes

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Jun 9, 2016, 10:10:56 AM6/9/16

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I went there in February to talk to businesses and organisations so I'm using the country as my demo location. I was just on Santiago though, I didn't get to go to any of the other islands.

It was really eye-opening, talking to people about how they operate. If you want to feel like crying, talk to a business that does food delivery in a city without street names. It's unbelievable.

scr...@gmail.com

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Jun 17, 2016, 8:02:19 PM6/17/16

to open-location-code

Hi Doug - I don't think you need to ask about the implementation. OSM is a do-ocracy: write it, get the code and rationale in front of the right folks, and if there's no reason not to, it will usually be implemented in due course.

Initially, there are a couple of places that this could go:

In the Share link. This currently has GeoURI, but I'm sure it plus codes could be wedged in.
In Nominatim. This already does a lot of heuristics to pick out postcodes of the world, so if you could propose an efficient routine for identifying and normalising your codes, great!

It might also be worth looking at Geohack, https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/, that is widely used to return geo links on Wikipedia.

OLC seems like a good idea, if they're truly open. The system reminds me a bit of the Maidenhead grids used by amateur radio folks, and also a liitle of the Modified British map coordinate system used during WW2, except without having lots of local projections. More on Modified British: http://www.echodelta.net/mbs/eng-welcome.php and http://glaikit.org/2015/01/09/some-notes-on-the-wartime-modified-british-map-coordinate-systems/