State of the Map 2023/Call for venues/Paris
The french team from OpenStreetMap France apply to organize SotM 2023 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.
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 2022, was hold in June 2022 in the city of Nantes. See the event website for more detailsː https://sotm2022.openstreetmap.fr
The event is traditionally held in Universities or high schools and lasts 3 days ː 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 Parisː
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 Sotm in France is sotm@listes.openstreetmap.fr with more than 40 subscribers. This email address will remain the main communication link for local coordination.
Venue
- 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.
- What are the options for catering?
Some venues require you to use their dedicated catering service, whilst others allow catering to be provided by a different company. Beware, some venues even charge a fee if you use catering providers outside of their approved list! This is often known as a "corkage fee" and is something you should ask the venue about. At this stage we are only interested in restrictions on catering and rough cost estimates. Unless the venue requires you to use their catering provided, you do not need to have decided on the catering provider at this stage. You may wish to obtain a few quotes to ensure you are getting value for money.
City
- The city is well known as one of the most LGBT friendly in the world. City center Le Marais neighborhood is the epicenter 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 30.2 (source). As a consequence, the risk of canceling the event because of a national issue is very low.
Travel/Transportation
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 1144 hotels in Paris city (sourceː OpenStreetMap, 27 July 2022) and 1668 in Paris region (sourceː OpenStreetMap, 27 July 2022).
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 feedsː 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 (see https://film.k-prod.fr/w/ctheaVxoNeVvnx6C6usXUo for several examples).
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, 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.