This was my first SOTM conference. Thanks, OSMF which selected me for a full scholarship.

Visa was process was simple. Since it was well documented by Dorothea(Thank you so much for all the support). I had my flight from Bangalore in 19th early morning. I have reached on 19th noon in the guest house.

HOT Summit

That afternoon and the next day I could attend HOT Summit. On Thursday, I could attend Youthmapper talk, HOT Voting member’s forum. On Friday morning, I attended a talk from Mikel, talk on HDX, healthsites and Inaware. On Friday afternoon, I could attend Impact initiatives,letsgirlsmap talk, Mapping Indigenous Communities talk etc.

I had met many staffs from HOT to tell thank you for the help they have done for India disaster response mapping. Russel, Geoffery Jeesica, Rebecca, Ramya and Tyler. From HOT Board, I could meet and had a small chat with Trudy Hope. I am happy that people like Hope is there in the board. Ramya helped me to get stats required for my presentation. Thank you Ramya.
I had also chance to meet Youthmappers team. I met Patricia and Marcela to understand how youthmappers works.

Key takeaway from HOT Summit is that

1. In India, we need to start a few youthmappers chapters.
2. From India community, we need few people HOT working groups.

State of the Map 2019

SOTM started with a thought-provoking statement. All the three days I could attend many presentations. It was good to listen to various activities going across the world. In the session, ‘Diversity and Inclusion in OSM’ – I had empathized the need of implementation of Code of conduct. I had a presentation on State of the map India on Sunday morning ( Slides ,Video ). Thanked all the volunteer who has helped in India disaster response mapping. In the talk, I have raised the important issue of maps in the local language. On the same, I have talked to Andy, Paul Norman, Heather. Martin and David in their session echoed the issue of ‘maps in local language’. (Vector tile discussions)

On Monday morning, there was a workshop about OSM and Wikidata by Eugene and Edward. Audience involvement was superb in that workshop. The need of quickstatement kind of tool was also discussed.

We OSM India community had a photo session too.