It just feels like yesterday that I started OpenStreetMap Calendar, but that’s maybe because the journey has been mostly smooth sailing. I started it sometime in early summer of 2019, made it more useful by the end of that year by adding calendar subscriptions and an API. In 2020, thanks to the Microgrant, I was able to focus a little bit more on it, so it got time zone support and a wiki integration, which then replaced the old wiki-based calendar in December 2020.

Since then I have teased a few features, but not that much has actually happened: There has been the odd improvement here and there, at some point I had to add minimal moderation tools so that spam can be removed without me having to shell into the database, but other than that OSMCAL lives its own life thanks to the users who use it.

Until today, more than 2800 events have been created:

There is an OSM event happening somewhere, almost every day:

We also have a healthy user base growth, with almost 2000 registered users now:

People always ask “what’s next?” to which I say “probably not much”. I’m quite happy with the current state, people keep using it and I don’t want to change things just for the sake of change. Every website wants you to download megabytes of JavaScript, grab your attention, show you as many ads as possible, and have you can look at the content through a slot. I want OSMCAL to be none of that: “Less, but better” is the guiding principle.

There is only one goal I haven’t reached yet: Global reach. There are only 24 countries that have more than 10 events, with the majority coming from Germany, the USA, France and Great Britain. Congratulations to Taiwan for making it to 5th place. If you’re from an under-represented country, I want to hear from you! Please let me know what we can do better!

Thanks to all people for creating events, filing issues on Github, asking questions and helping out!