News — 09 May, 2022

HOT looking for exciting conference collaborations for 2022!

HOT is actively looking to collaborate on and support conferences that bring together communities, partners, collaborators and supporters, committed to and active in humanitarian open mapping to learn, share and connect. Can you help us?

As shared previously, HOT will not host our regular annual HOT Summit conference in 2022. Instead we want to experiment with using the Summit resources to invest in collaborations with existing and planned conferences to bring the spirit and humanitarian open mapping focus of the HOT Summit to new places and new people across the world.

Through our networks and existing relationships and collaborations, we are already in touch with event organizing teams we would love to collaborate with, but there are likely many events that we aren’t aware of that could be great opportunities for collaboration and support!

Today we are launching an open call to try and connect with people who are interested in a collaboration with HOT and who are organizing events that meet some basic criteria (see below). If this is you, please get in touch by 31 May so we can start a conversation!

What type of collaboration are we looking for?

Depending on the event (and acknowledging that our resources are finite), we could work together on a range of different aspects of event organizing and implementation, including (but not limited to):

• Co-designing content and knowledge sharing for sessions and tracks around shared key themes

• Co-hosting networking events

• Supporting on specific event aspects, such as editorial processes, scholarship programmes, communications and promotion and logistics management

• Supporting on sponsorship and funding

• Helping to recruit event volunteers

What types of events do we want to collaborate on and support?

Firstly, events we can support and collaborate on need to be conference-style events. This means:

• That it is clear when and where the event will take place

• That there is an agenda / call for proposals published that clearly shows what content / type of content will be included

• That there is a team of people that are organising and implementing the event who can be points of contact / collaborators for the HOT Summit Working Group

• That a member of the public should be able to buy / register for a ticket and participate in the event

Secondly, events should provide value for the communities that HOT supports

Thirdly, events should have a code of conduct in place (or plans for developing one)

Lastly, the events should have thematic or content focuses that are relevant to HOT’s mission, covering one or more of the following:

• OpenStreetMap data or communities

• Open data, community or software

• Data for humanitarian, development or social impact

• Data for disaster response, resilience or risk reduction

In addition, we’d like to support regional events located in a region where an Open Mapping Hub is active (and ideally in a HOT priority country, but necessarily serving community members from priority countries). We also are open to supporting events with a national audience and focus as long as they are located in a HOT priority country. For international events, we would prefer to support those with a virtual component (meaning increased accessibility for those who cannot travel) or those that commit to openly publishing content after the event is held.

What will happen next?

This open call ends on the 31 May, so please get in touch before then! After we receive your contact information, we will get in touch with you to discuss potential collaboration. If, through these discussions, we agree there is good potential overlap, we will check on whether we have the necessary resources in place to follow through. The final decisions on which collaborations we can support will be taken in the HOT Summit Working Group in collaboration with the Community Managers in the Open Mapping Hubs by the end of June.

Important note!

Please do remember that we have limited resources for this, which means we also have a limit to the number of events we can collaborate with and what we can offer. Whilst we would love to say yes to any collaboration that provides value across the humanitarian open mapping ecosystem, we might not be able to!

Although we are hugely supportive of any event that enriches the open mapping / OpenStreetMap ecosystem, and especially events in our priority countries, we cannot support mapathons, training sessions or community meetups through this initiative. Firstly, because the point of the 2022 distributed HOT Summit experiment is to test a different way of achieving the HOT Summit’s goals, the events we can support through this need to be conference-style events. Secondly, supporting community meetups, mapathons and trainings is part of our day-to-day work and is the responsibility of our Open Mapping Hubs and HOT’s community team (rather than the HOT Summit Working Group), so please feel free to get in touch any time to discuss your event!