As you might have noticed, we often feature guest authors through our guest blog series. We love guest posts! We use the OpenStreetMap US blog to not only the current work of the organization, but also interesting content from the community. We have had some wonderful contributions, and believe they can help build our community, start conversations, and teach us new things. Have you thought about sharing your story? We invite all contributions, and are happy to work with you on crafting a great post. Hopefully this post will provide some guidance to help you decide if our site is the right fit, and encourage all of you to share your story!
What makes a great post? Well, first, posts must be original. We want to sound the trumpets when we share your unique content, so please make sure it is not published elsewhere. Your post should be relevant to the OpenStreetMap community in some way. Have you been mapping in your community? Organizing events? Building new things with OSM? Using OpenStreetMap in new ways? We want to hear about your experiences and why OpenStreetMap is important in your life.
We highly suggest you accentuate your post with a header photo and even a few images within the post. Your post should not be an advertisement or endorsement for your business. Any links to other sites must benefit readers with absolutely zero links to spammy websites. All posts should be edited for grammar and spelling, and authors are also asked to contribute to the community by replying to any comments or questions on the post.
Some past contributions include Daniela Waltersdorfer’s recap of the 2018 State of the Map US, a report from Allison Fisher of a mapathon in Portland, Maine, and Daniel Brownstein’s post about MaptimeSF making OSM edits for a Resiliency Map of a low-lying San Francisco neighborhood. Our latest post is a conversation with Valerie Anderson, Director of Communications & Programming at the Florida Native Plant Society, about her use of OSM in her conservation work.
If you have any questions on these guidelines or if you aren’t sure your content is the right fit, please feel free to reach out to team@openstreetmap.us. Guest posts are generally published monthly or bi-monthly basis. We thank you for your contributions!
