The celebrations have been over for more than a week, yet the Pista ng Mapa X State of the Map Asia 2022 spirit still abound!

The first international conference I attended just happened so fast. I still remember the time that I was accepted as one of the local travel grantee of this international conference in Albay, Legazpi. One thing that came into my mind for attending the conference is that I will be seeing the beauty of great Mt. Mayon but I was wrong, It was the experiences and learnings that will be my souvenir once I got home.

I had been part of the Viscan YouthMappers Organization in Visayas State University in Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines. Since I joined the organization months ago, I started contributing in Open Street Map to map places that needed help on disaster response and planning on a certain area. Through this conference, I was able to share my hardwork and perseverance to other people I just met.

There are a lot of things that make SOTM Asia 2022 memorable to me looking back. One of the many reasons is that I had the opportunity to personally meet a number of folks who have been making significant contributions to OSM. I had the opportunity to speak with them and hear about their recent activities and their future intentions to contribute to OSM.

On day two of SOTMA 2022, there were a lot of youthmappers there. We spoke about how we, as youthmappers, have helped them create a sustainable mapping environment in their institution, the challenges we are presently facing, and possible priority areas for youthmappers to work on.

I enjoy listening to those presentations and talks made by the presentors. The learning and motivational words made by them really inspires me to do better on using AI mapping. It enables me to achieve my objectives and use the lessons I acquired from this experience to change this quickly evolving and increasingly globalized world. The following workshop sessions and lectures at the events that picked my interest are as follows:

• Using QGIS Temporal Controller for Communicationg Hazard Data (John Louie Fabila)
• Lightning Talks: UP Tacloban YouthMappers: Ang Unang Paglipad (Michael Joshua Orais)
• How to Build the New Atlas of the World using Crowdsourced Maps (Nadine Amanda Ortega and Manuel Santos)
• Aerial Works: Flight Planning Using Drones (Leigh Lunas)
• Mapping of Speech, Occupational and Physical Theraphy Centers and Updating of Tags for Educational Instutions with SPED classes (Charmyne Buenviaje Mamador)
• Academic Tracks: UNVTPortable-Offline Web Map Server (Shogo Hirasawa)
• Using Drones: DRONEBIRDs ARE GO!!! (Taichi Furuhashi)

On the last day of the conference, we received the 2022 PH YOUTHMAPPERS AWARD for our distinguished and invaluable contribution to OSM and open mapping for this year just makes me felt so proud for being one of the Viscan YouthMappers. This just makes me fall inlove more with open data, open mapping, and open geospatial. It might be a frustrating journey ahead of me, the event will be my serendipitous moment on meeting the wonderful people of the open mapping/geospatial communities.

Finally, it is an honor for me to participate in PNMxSOTM Asia 2022. I want to express my gratitude to the planning committee for giving me the chance to meet mapping enthusiasts, students, members of various youthmappers chapters, volunteers, and presenters. I was able to witness their efforts to uphold an open mapping environment and emphasize the use of open data in today’s society.