News — 09 September, 2022

hot_tech attending SoTM& FOSS4G highlights

It will be hard to capture the connections, learning, excitement and the feeling of community during State of the Map and FOSS4G in a blog, but here are a few highlights and photos on what happened during the various days! Hope you enjoy it!

Happy September everyone! Following the hot_tech team in Florence, August 2022 blog, I wanted to share some updates and reflections after the conferences. It has been an AMAZING experience - for some of us this was the first time attending, for others not, but I’d say the excitement was the same. We were all eager to reconnect with like minded OSM enthusiasts!

It will be hard to capture the connections, learning, excitement and the feeling of community in a blog post, but here are some highlights and photos on what happened during the various days. Hopefully you find it interesting! If you couldn’t attend the conferences in person or didn’t get a chance to connect with us, then please feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions (petya.kangalova@hotosm.org)

What happened: sessions and reflections

The simple answer to the question on what happened is A LOT! Let’s take you on a chronological journey with some key hot_tech highlights!

19-Aug-2022 Entry-level mobile mapping [slides] - Kristen Tonga

That session created some excitement and was lovely to get the feedback in the State of the Map Telegram group and some other blog posts about this being one of their favourite sessions. If you want to know more about hot_tech’s work on mobile, you can also join #mobile Slack channel.

21-Aug-2022 Investigating the capability of UAV imagery in AI-assisted mapping of Refugee Camps in East Africa (Academic Lightning Talks) [slides] - Christopher Chan (HOT volunteer), Omran Najjar

Interested in AI assisted mapping and not had a chance to speak to Omran or Christoper? Please feel free reach out to us!

22-Aug-2022 UnSummit hot_tech workshop [slides]

We had our first hot_tech session as part of the unSummit. A small group of around 20 people joined us, met the hot_tech team, had discussions in small groups on products they were interested in and we also heard from the group on what they liked or want to improve in some of the hot_tech tools. If you missed the session, please continue engaging on the OSM Discourse platform. tech_workshop.PNG

24-Aug-2022 Introduction to Spatial Data Outputs Platform - OpenStreetMap Galaxy [slides] - Ramya Ragupathy

We loved the interest we had from participants at both State of the Map and FOSS4G asking about OSM Galaxy and ways to contribute! This was an engaging session with questions related to specific components of OSM Galaxy! Sign up for the OSM Galaxy Working Group if you want to keep in touch.

25-Aug-2022 OpenAerialMap V2 Design and Development [slides] - Crisitano Giovando & DK Benjamin

In collaboration with Kontur, DK and Cristiano presented the OAM V2 redesign! Lots of appreciation from the community on the use of Open Aerial Map and excitement about what is to come next! We hope that the community will continue to be involved as we continue with the implementation of the OAM V2 redesign. IMG_0422 (1)-32e530.jpg

First time for both Ichchha and myself attending, we really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with people and enjoyed the questions & appreciation from the community on the Tasking Manager tech collective approach! Make sure you register and join our regular monthly Tasking Manager meet ups! IMG_0482 (1).jpg

26-Aug-2022 Using Terraform to manage HOTOSM’s infrastructure as code [slides] - DK Benjamin

Last, but not least, DK did a lighting talk on using terraform!

27-Aug-2022 Community Code Sprint time!

The end of the of the formal conference brings us to the community code sprint. I would say the passionate tech community never gets tired! Rob, Ramya and Kshitij were there to talk to, and work together with, participants on the hot_tech tools and products. FbKMlq7VsAIntbm.jfif

What next:

While we didn’t have the full hot_tech team join, I hope you connected with some of us and I am sure you will have the chance to meet others from the hot_team very soon! Now we are all back at our desks.. I know! I personally still feel energized from the motivated, passionate and welcoming people that I connected with at the conference!

Keep in touch: we would love to hear back from you! Do reach out to our hot_tech engage team: Myself (petya.kangalova@hotosm.org), and Open Innovation Facilitator, Synne (synne.olsen@hotosm.org), will be happy to respond to you!

Share your experience of attending the conferences: I loved reading OSM diaries from [[SoTM](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2022#Write-ups].

Until next time!