Inspired by Gustavo’s diary on his SotM experience, I am putting some of my thoughts down on paper…

This was only my second in-person State of the Map (first in Belgium) but it felt like I’d been many times - people were so welcoming and open, the organisation and volunteers were great and there were a lot of familiar faces (and usernames).

On Friday my main track highlights were Martijn on 10 years of MapRoulette and Kristen on Entry Level Mobile Mapping.

On the Friday afternoon (also World Humanitarian Day), I hosted the HOT unSummit Humanitarian sessions (which you can watch again here) and we heard fantastic stories and insights and saw some great maps, data and tools from 12 different speakers, all relevant to humanitarian open mapping and from all corners of the world. Kudos to the speakers for being so well prepared and to the audience for being so engaged and curious. It was a really great afternoon.

In the evening, HOT hosted a social event to mark World Humanitarian Day and the role that OSM plays in humanitarian response and development work. By chance it happened before a live gig, so our speakers did look like rock stars on the stage with a booming PA and a bank of lighting above them! It was really interesting to hear them all reflect on OSM and humanitarian open mapping from such interesting angles (Nama and Tyler from a HOT perspective, Sarah as a GIS professional at MSF), Guillaume from an OSMF perspective and Zola from MapMalawi who brilliantly crowdsourced her remarks.

On Saturday my main track highlights were Florian on How to kill OSM? Above all, change nothing and Ana, Silvia and Natalia on Women Leadership in Mapping Riverside Communities in the Amazon Forest Using OSM

Also, a shout out to my colleague Arnalie for her online presentation on Localization as an inclusion and participatory enabler research. This is a topic she has been keeping front and centre in HOT and it was great to see her present it to the wider OSM community and sparking interesting discussion and insights in other platforms subsequently.

Saturday’s SotM social was, of course, fantastic :D

On Sunday, I didn’t get to see many presentations but one that really stood out for me was Anne Lee’s Mapping crises, communities and capitalism on OpenStreetMap: situating humanitarian mapping in the (open source) mapping supply chain in the Academic Track. This was fascinating and impressive. Someone commented afterwards that they had long thought that OSM deserved an anthropologist in residence. I second that sentiment!

Aside from the conference itself, it was great to meet such a dynamic group of HOT scholars (and some HOT colleagues for the first time) as well as hang out with the YouthMappers ambassadors (special mention to those from Latin America who taught me so much in 90 minutes about the huge challenges of building community whilst speaking with such passion for the topic).

Lastly, huge thanks to… the organising committees for the event itself but also for collaborating with HOT on the humanitarian sessions in such a great way…. whoever was behind the SotM Telegram group - that was really fun and engaging… and to the event volunteers - legends!