Leaving my country, Nigeria, to attend the 2024 SOTM conference at the University of Nairobi, Kenya was a thrilling and enlightening experience for me. The whole event immersed me in the dynamic world of open mapping. The conference brought together various groups of professionals in the field of open mapping and it was great to finally see them in person. Most importantly, I was able to reconnect with YouthMappers Regional Ambassadors, fellow YouthMappers from Africa, Asia, America and wonderful OSM contributors from the globe.

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In preparation for Online conferences, I have always preferred to reserve a particular space equipped enough to participate during the conference. I must say due to lectures and other academic calls, I didn’t prepare such an environment to attend this conference. In spite of all, I had quality time to join in at some scheduled talk sessions and networking sessions with participants from other parts of the world.

One of the talk sessions I learned most was a talk on “Community mapping to improve flood preparation in Nigeria” which was facilitated by Shamilah. The talk exposed the different most flooded areas affecting communities and it also presented a solution by using mapped buildings, roads, and water areas edits on Open Street Map. The facilitator also recommended other solutions that could solve the flooding problems.

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