One has an idea and finds others to step in. Together they make the world a better place. That’s Community Spirit!

What I notice when interacting with our OSM Community that we all work together on one mission: To create a sustainable highly detailed world wide map free for everyone to use and to work with, to merge with other data and to do something disruptive. Our community is very large and active around the globe. Despite our ethical, cultural and social differences we share one mission.

What I understand under the term “Community Spirit”: Working together on one mission to make the earth a better place for (almost) everyone, to change environment on a large, middle or lower scale. Community Spirit is the positive site of acting together to do something great and sustainable.

But why do we live the Community Spirit inside from the OSM Community? Because we can, because we believe in a future. Because we know our effort is important to mankind and soon awareness about our great mission will rise.

We all do great things. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap helps organisations like doctors without borders to offer medical help to people in low developed regions around the world where maps are highly outdated and not accurate enough. Mappers who don’t know each other meet in mapathons (mapping parties). Mappers in cities begin to connect to each other through chat groups, mailing list and of course local groups and they begin to fight, to fight for their interests and values. JOSM- and iD developers both are doing a great job in programming mapping tools which make mapping easier, less complicated and less frustrating, allowing not-so-computer-skilled folks to join in and participate. They all play a role in burning down barriers. The weeklyOSM Team, a bunch of great people, are bringing together information from almost all OSM societies.

People begin to do something great by themselves instead of waiting for a company to do it. Strangers are coming together and work hand in hand on a project. You can do it too! Come and choose from the many community projects all around the globe e.g. Wikidata, Wikipedia, Code for International, OpenStreetMap, Debian Community, Fedora Community, Translation Community, Open Knowleadge Foundation and many more. They’re reaching to you, just grab your chance and get in and make our world a better place to be. Work together in communities to make our world a better place.

I believe in you, I believe you can be sooo empowering and great in improving our earth.