News — 28 September, 2011

7 Indonesian Students goes to Denver for SotM and FOSS4G!

We hope you guys still remember about our project in Indonesia. There was a mapping competition happen during the project and the winner was announced on the second week of August. There are five winners, they are:

1. Irwan Maryon (University of Andalas, Padang)
2. Dimas Raharjo (University of Indonesia, Jakarta)
3. Irwan Abdul Rohman (Institute of Technology, Bandung)
4. Bakhtiar Arif Mujianto (Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta)
5. Andriya Gunartono (Institute of Technology Sepuluh November, Surabaya)

And these people deserved to go to State of the Map (SotM) and Free Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) in Denver on September. But, unfortunately four of them didn't manage to attend SotM because there was a visa issue. Somehow the consular officer refused their visa application, but we are very glad because they made it for FOSS4G!

It's been a while since SotM and FOSS4G happened. But we still have a lot of story to share. Anyway, we think that SotM this year was beyond success!  Based on Steve Coast keynote, there were 250 attendees, 159 are from the United States, and the rest were coming from 34 different countries, and more than 50 talks. And most people in the conference are very friendly. We also met with other scholars such as Guensmork Alcin from Haiti, Parveen Arora from India, Maning Sambale from Philippines, and Humberto Yances from Colombia. We also met with many people from around the world; each of them has different interest about using OpenStreetMap. There are mappers, some of them are developer; they are using OpenStreetMap for their products, and we were surprised that some of them also came because they just want to have fun. Anyway, it seems that all of us had fun especially on the last day where Gregory Marler with Iván Sánchez singing on the stage. The auction session was fun too, thanks for Steve Coast who bought $20 mystery box contain OpenStreetMap's clappers and gave all the clappers to attendees.

 

OpenStreetMap Clappers!

When we were in FOSS4G, the atmosphere of the conference was slightly different from SotM. First, there was not too much twitter fan in FOSS4G. Second, every end of session, there was a lot of people moving to other room and it was funny because there was confusion between people who walk either on the left or right side. And the last one is, there was a musical performance brought by GeoGlobalDomination (Kate Chapman as herself, Iván Sánchez as Dr. Northingham, and Schuyler Erle as our hero: Captain Geo!). We didn't think that there will be a musical in a conference, who knows! They should perform in general session! Anyway, same with SotM, there was a lot of people coming to FOSS4G with different interest. Just like quote from the musical "everyone is a mapper in their own way" :)

 

People who involve with Community Mapping Pilot in Indonesia at FOSS4G. L-R (top): Vasanthi Hargyono, Dimas Rahardjo, Kristy Van Putten (Australian Government), Bakhtiar Arif Mujianto, and Irwan Abdul Rohman. L-R (bottom): Kate Chapman, Irwan Maryon, and Andriya Gunartono.