After some quite busy months with lots of work and engagements, I am happy to be able to finally share with you my experience at State of the Map 2019.

I was happy to attend SOTM2019 conference, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany. This was my first international conference. Before I start sharing with you my experience there, I would like to thank everyone involved with the organization of the event, the volunteers, the “OpenStreetMap Foundation” and everyone who helped on making State of the Map 2019 possible. I really appreciate being accepted as a scholar not only for SOTM’19 but for HOT Summit 2019 as well, since I had the chance to attend both events.

I’m a contributor of OpenStreetMap for almost one year now. I have a background in geoinformation and have always enjoyed working with maps. When I first learned on OpenStreetMap I was quite intrigued by the idea that I could contribute to improving local maps and all of my contributions would become visible and available for other people to use. So, first I was involved mostly by editing local maps, and also by co-hosting events in the city I live in. I had my first workshop on a openstreetmap related topic in May’19 at Open Source Conference Albania where I was happy to share with beginners what I had learned so far and help them get started as well. This was quite challenging for me since I didn’t have much experience with speaking in public, but everything went quite well and as a result I had enough confidence to fill my CFP application at the biggest gathering of the year of the OpenStreetMap contributors. And as you can guess, It got approved. :D

My topic at State of the Map 2019 was: “First steps with OpenStreetMap editors”, the reason why I decided to host this workshop was because I was new to the community so I thought that this would be a nice way to share my experience with beginners and try to engage them as well with OSM.

State of the Map was one of the most special experiences of my life. During the conference I met new people from different countries and for me that was one of the most beautiful parts of the event. Being In touch with different people around the world and sharing knowledge with each other isn’t an easy to find opportunity.

At this conference I gained new knowledge, attended different talks and workshops and learned on different projects in Africa, Filipins, Asia which showed the power of data and how Important it is to get engaged with the community and the project and start mapping, at first places that we know better and later on, why not also by contributing to other countries that are not well mapped.

This was also my first visit in Heidelberg, which is a university town in Germany, located on the south of Frankfurt. I was impressed with this city, with the architecture of the buildings and the beautiful river. The most beautiful part for me was “Heidelberg Schloss (castle)” that offers a magical view of the city.

To sum up, I’m really thankful for this opportunity and I’m looking forward to my next projects and contributions to OpenStreetMap.