News — 17 September, 2018

HOT Summit at FOSS4G 2018- Combining Communities in Dar es Salaam

This year’s HOT Summit was unique for many reasons, it was the first held in Africa and the first to be integrated into and part of the international FOSS4G conference. HOT’s Summit Working Group and the Dar Local Organizing Committee (DLOC) of OSGeo worked together to combine the OpenStreetMap and OSGeo communities and create unique opportunities for discussion and collaboration. Combining their efforts, the groups were excited to host dozens of new voices and include more supported participants than ever before.

With 13% of the 1000+ conference-goers attending with a Travel Grant, FOSS4G 2018 was a turning point in dialogue on inclusion and diversity in the open source geospatial community. 137 Travel Grants, the majority awarded to women from East Africa, positively impacted the range of diversity amongst the conference attendees.

Additionally, project partners, voting members and others were able to see HOT’s field mapping in action. The team first visited Amana Hospital collaborating with HOT Tanzania to see a newly established component under the Data Zetu Project in which HOT is focusing on direct one on one engagement with a custodian organization to support them in using data more effectively and frequently in their day to day work.

OSGeo, American Red Cross, HOT staff and other HOT partners visit Amana Hospital.

The field visit continued to Buguruni Ward where a community mapping session was being conducted with a team of 6 students and 12 community members, mapping 260 subwards in the region, as a part of the Ramani Huria project.

The team also paid a visit to one of the municipality buildings where a Data Zetu training was taking place, as they had the chance to participate in a short discussion with the trainees while they concluded the field visit at Ardhi University where students were engaged in a session of digital mapping.

HOT was also able to dedicate the Friday of the week to community and voting member discussions, in addition to collaborative workshops. Read more about those discussions and workshops here.

If you were able to attend, we’d love your feedback and if you weren’t, we hope to see you at the HOT Summit next year. Keep an eye out for discussions and opportunities to get involved with HOT Summit 2019!