Original post in Portuguese here

After some time from the return of State of the Map 2022 in Florence, and after a brief reflection on my experience at the event, I would like to share my views on SotM 2022.

Initially, I would like to thank the State of the Map Working Group for providing grants to participate in the event, which I was awarded (more on this later).

About the event, it was 3 very intense days (and sometimes overwhelming)! During SotM, I thought I could enjoy it more, but looking back, I see that it would be practically impossible. Several very interesting presentations at the same time, amazing people to meet and talk to, very well constructed and presented posters, in short, a lot happening at the same time.

Exhausted after many presentations and a fun night at Mercato Centrale

There have been some excellent presentations, in my opinion, such as Entry-level Mobile Mapping, by Kristen Tonga, and How to kill OSM? Above all, change nothing, by Florian Lainez. It was also nice to see presentations by many people I knew only virtually, like Sarah Hoffmann, Ilya Zverev, Amanda McCann and Martijn van Exel.

Another highlight of the conference was meeting and talking to amazing people. It was a pleasure to personally meet several Brazilians: the world famous Gustavo Soares, the very nice Vitor George, the annoying Kauê Vestena, Thierry Jean, the girls from Uai Geo Ana Teixeira, Prof. Silvia Ventorini and Natalia Arruda; the folks from Latin America: Emiliano, Jonathan Rupire, and the amazing Miriam Gonzalez; as well as other people from various countries such as Petya Kangalova and Pete Masters (both so friendly!), and the infinite people of HOT whose names unfortunately I didn’t memorize (there were so many!). This shows how diverse the event was, and I am very happy to see so many different people, and that both SoTM WG and HOT made an effort to bring to the event, taking away the concentration of always having the same people attending or presenting at SotM.

Latin America mappers (photo by Vitor George)

However, even with this diversity that enchanted me so much, there were some things I saw in loco that make me worry about the future of OSM: the growing dominance of companies in OSM. Whenever I was talking to someone, every time the very first question I was asked was: which organization do you work for? HOT? YouthMappers? Mapbox? Meta? It seems to me that we, “simple mappers”, are losing relevance in the community. And it’s sad that, due to the nature of the event, mappers are almost never able to attend in person, and the people who are there were mostly sponsored by some organization (I was too!).

It also worries me how much we should move to not let the movement die (or in the hands of some organization). Every day HOT has more relevance on OSM (I think the project is beautiful, I myself contribute when I can to the HOT projects, and I often use the Tasking Manager), and I worry that in the future HOT becomes the OpenStreetMap. We (mappers, local chapters, foundation…) are so inert that HOT, along with YouthMappers, are the organizations that are constantly recruiting mappers (this is good!), and those mappers in the end don’t even know what OpenStreetMap is (this is bad!). Being at the event, sometimes it seemed to me that SotM was a HOT event, not an OSM event.

Some mappers from Brazil

I understand the foundation’s position, and what OSM is, but I think it’s dangerous to leave OSM in the hands of some organization (either HOT, or more perverse ones like Meta or Mapbox). Florian’s presentation presented several points, some that I disagree with, but I agree with most of the points (and with the general idea), and which fortunately caused some noise in the community.

It’s also sad to see the technical part that of the OSM being managed by the same people as always. They are extremely capable people, but we cannot leave OSM in the hands of a few people either. It’s time we take OSM more professionally (maybe the Wikimedia Foundation is a good example, even with all its flaws?).

An interesting point was seeing people who virtually seemed extremely annoying, and personally this was confirmed 😂 Too bad I couldn’t see all the presentations I wanted, but I will see them as soon as they are available in video on the SotM website.

In any case, it was an extremely fruitful event, and again I would like to thank the Working Group for providing me with a grant that covered some of my travel costs, and I would like to thank Vitor immensely for encouraging me to apply for the scholarship. I recommend everyone to look for a grant in the next event, I feel that my energies towards OSM have been renewed! It was cool to see HOT taking so many people from all over the world to SoTM; the conference became more beautiful and interesting!

Finally, I would also like to thank the organization (Wikimedia Italia) for the very well-constructed and planned event, and everyone who attended, the volunteers, the workers on the venue, the speakers and those who attended, that made this event a special memory for me!

This post was written without any intention of making much sense, so my points may be in contradiction and not very well explained. All uncredited photos were taken with my cell phone, and are licensed under terms of CC BY 4.0.