In today’s digital landscape, maps have become essential components of countless applications and services, from navigation and logistics to social platforms and data visualization. But for too long, the field has been dominated by a few companies whose services, while powerful, come with significant drawbacks: Usage quotas, tracking requirements, styling limitations, and recurring costs that can quickly skyrocket as applications grow.

This talk will introduce Protomaps, an innovative open source mapping technology that is fundamentally reshaping the way digital maps are created, distributed and used. At its core, Protomaps utilizes the groundbreaking PMTiles format – a single-file approach to vector tiles that eliminates the need for complex tile server infrastructure while increasing performance and reducing bandwidth consumption.

Technical innovation

We start with the technical basics of protomaps and explain how the PMTiles format works and why it represents such a significant advance over conventional tile map approaches. Unlike conventional solutions that rely on thousands of individual tile files provided by a complex infrastructure, PMTiles bundles vector map data into a single, efficiently indexed file that can be hosted anywhere.
The presentation will demonstrate how this approach enables progressive loading, allowing maps to render quickly at variable zoom levels while preserving the rich detail and interactive capabilities users expect from modern mapping solutions. We’ll examine the efficiency gains in terms of bandwidth usage, server requirements, and client-side rendering performance.

Democratization in Practice

This talk will focus on how Protomaps democratizes digital mapping in a tangible way:

Economic Accessibility

By eliminating recurring API costs and usage-based pricing models, Protomaps opens up mapping opportunities for projects of all sizes, from hobby developers to non-profit organizations and educational institutions with limited budgets.

Technical Accessibility

We demonstrate practical implementations with Leaflet and MapLibre GL and show how developers can integrate Protomaps with just a few lines of code and minimal configuration.

Customization Freedom

Without the styling restrictions imposed by commercial vendors, Protomaps allows complete creative control over the appearance of the map. We show examples of customized maps that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional services.

Privacy by Design

As Protomaps enables fully self-hosted mapping solutions, there is no need to share user location data or mapping activity with third parties – a crucial aspect for privacy-conscious applications and those operating under strict regulatory frameworks.

Takeaways for Attendees

Participants will leave this session with the following knowledge:

• Understand how PMTiles and Protomaps work
• Know how to use Protomaps in their own projects
• Customize maps to meet specific design and data needs
• A new perspective on the possibilities of democratized digital mapping

Whether you are a developer seeking cost-effective mapping solutions, an organization concerned about data privacy, or simply interested in the evolution of open source geospatial technology, this talk will give you valuable insight into how Protomaps is reshaping the landscape of digital cartography by putting powerful mapping capabilities back into the hands of developers and communities.