The State of the Map 2022 (SotM) international conference will start in a few days. It will be the first in-person conference after the Covid19 pandemic started and thanks to the SotM volunteers, it will be a hybrid event.

While participating in SotM can be exciting for community members, it can also be stressful for introverts or people who plan to attend but want to minimise their social interactions due to Covid. Additionally, there are people who would like to approach others to talk to them, but may feel apprehensive doing so.

Trying to help with the above, this year I will bring some coloured communication pin-back buttons that community members can get and wear during the conference. The aim is to facilitate participants’ communication by making it easier to show if you want other people to talk to you at a given time or not.

What coloured communication pin-back buttons you can get at State of the Map 2022

The idea is that participants can wear a different button based on their communication preferences at the time. Showing a

• green pin-back button: the person is actively seeking communication and wants to be approached by people interested in talking.
• yellow pin-back button: the person wants to be approached by people they had discussions before. The person may approach other people to talk (if they wear an appropriate button or none at all), and that is ok.
• red pin-back button: the person probably does not want to talk to anyone or just to selected people. The person may approach other people to talk (if they wear an appropriate button or none at all), and that is ok.

If someone talks to you even if your button indicates that they shouldn’t, please keep in mind that they might not know about these buttons.

About the white “any value you like” pin-back button

There is a fourth, white design, in limited numbers.
These will be used if I run out of any of the coloured buttons or you can use one to add any tag you like :) (e.g. if you want to talk about mapping benches only :) )

Some history

This is the second year I design and bring communication buttons to State of the Map. The first time was in distant pre-Covid 2019, with different designs.

The idea comes from meetings in non-OSM spaces, where they had coloured paper badges instead of pin-back buttons.

Notes

• Wearing a pin-back button is not compulsory. This is a private initiative.
• There was a single batch order, without a test batch, so next time there will be some modifications :)
• The buttons have in very small letters that they are a memento from SotM2022 and that were made by me.
• Feel free to provide feedback below.
• Diameter: 32 mm

Intent

The intent of the diary entry is two-fold.

• To inform community members who will attend SotM2022 in Florence about the coloured communication pin-back buttons that they can get and wear during the conference and
  
• to present the idea of coloured communication pin-back buttons to other people who organise local conferences/meetings.

Other OSM pin-back buttons and stickers

I will also bring additional pin-bank buttons and stickers. You can see some of them below.

Logos
In 1 and 3 to 6 - OpenStreetMap logo by Ken Vermette CC-BY-SA
In 2 weeklyOSM logo by Ziltoidium, based on the logo of the OSMDE Blog by MaZderMind, CC-BY-SA 2.0

Designs
1-4 Stickers by me (Dorothea Kazazi)
5. Square pin-back button: background from publicdomainvectors.org CC0, modified by me
6. Circular pin-back button: OpenStreetMap logo, modified by Berelly (thanks :) )

2 and 3: Stickers that shimmer. The colours are different from what they appear on the photograph.

Where you can get the pin-back buttons, stickers and designs

State of the Map 2022 in Florence
At SotM 2022 you will find the buttons and stickers probably near the OSM Foundation table, or wherever I am :)

Please take just the pin-back buttons you are going to use. At the end of the conference you can take unused buttons of a different colour than the ones you already have :)

Designs
I will upload the designs to the OSM wiki after State of the Map and will update this diary entry once I do so.