News — 15 November, 2022
HOT unSummit - Mid-Program Report
In our mission to bring together communities, partners, collaborators, and supporters of humanitarian open mapping, HOT is trialling a fresh approach to conferences in 2022.
Instead of hosting our usual HOT Summit conference, we are investing time and resources in supporting global, regional, and local conferences and community events around the world to bring humanitarian open mapping to thousands of new people. We have called this the “HOT unSummit,” and we wanted to share our experience and learnings at the halfway point of the ‘world tour’!
Before we start, everyone at HOT and the regional Open Mapping Hubs would like to say a huge thank you to all the organizers, scholars, attendees, volunteers and staff that have contributed to any of the events discussed below. Any success we have seen through the unSummit program is shared with this diverse group of brilliant people!
State of the Map 2022, Florence, Italy
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- 11 community members funded to attend
- 10 community members + 3 HOT staff members volunteered for a combined 64 hours
- Hosted a half day, community-led session focusing on OSM for humanitarian purposes
- Hosted a social event for 100 SotM attendees on World Humanitarian Day
- Provided bronze level sponsorship ($2,000)
“I had a unique opportunity to learn even more about OpenStreetMap and show a little more of my work, know what is being discussed for the future of OSM and mapping see how the community is really great and welcoming made me feel I was in family and that despite having some differences in the end we are all mappers.” - Gustavo Soares, mapper / HOT unSummit scholar, Brazil, from his OSM Diary
OSM Latin America selfie time at State of the Map! Photo courtesy of Mapanauta.
FOSS4G 2022, Florence, Italy
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- 11 community members funded to attend
- 9 community members + 3 HOT staff members volunteered a combined 240 hours
- Hosted a hot_tech workshop, a mapathon and a data privacy in humanitarian sessions workshop
- Sponsored the Geochicas networking event at FOSS4G ($300)
“On having HOT as part of the event… HOT shares the same ideals as the OSM and OSGeo communities, and many members share at least one other community. It seems to me that having all the conferences together helped more people to attend them (especially people coming from low-middle income countries where flights are usually more expensive)” - Luca Delucchi, FOSS4G organizing committee lead, Italy
FOSS4G Community Code Sprint. Photo from HOT Flickr.
Ensemble pour la cartographie participative, Butembo, Democratic Republic of Congo
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- Provided event sponsorship ($5,000)
- Supporting OSM RDC with post event communications
“Cartographic data is not widely used by researchers at ESU Butembo and Environs. This is not because they do not need it, but because they are unaware of its importance in their work, and especially because they do not know where they can access the data and free mapping tools. Thus, training is needed for them to be contributors as well as consumers of cartographic data for participatory mapping.” - Mr Sivalikwiha, Director General of ISDR Kitsombiro
Participants from the Ensemble pour la cartographie participative event. Photo courtesy of Kazi Précieux - OSM RDC
National Meeting of Mexican Geography Students, Guanajuato, Mexico
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- Provided swag for the event
- Funded two community members to attend, present and provide OSM / open mapping training
“This experience allowed me to understand the importance of humanitarian cartography, and its impact on society. Similarly, the relevance of collaboration between community members and volunteers to face challenges by making appropriate decisions. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Co.Mapper initiative represents an exceptional opportunity to use free technologies for data processing that allows the development of projects through training and the acquisition of new knowledge.” - Verónica Oviedo, Graduate Student, Faculty of Geography, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, Mexico
Preparing for the humanitarian open mapping workshops at the National Meeting of Mexican Geography Students. Photo courtesy of Cuauthémoc Gutierrez
Teto Brasil annual gathering, São Paulo, Brazil
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- Provided funding for three members of the Niteroi favela mapping community to present their experiences
- Provided event sponsorship ($5,000)
“There was a lady from a community in Rio de Janeiro and her talk about how she wanted to do mapping in her community to find out about the people who live there made me very emotional! I hope we can find a way to work together on something in the future.” - Alessandra Figueiredo, UrbeLatam, Brazil
Break time networking at the Teto Brazil Annual Gathering. Photo courtesy of Carla Habif, HOT
Zimbabwe Institute of Geomatics (ZIG) Conference, Harare, Zimbabwe
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- Presented on the use of OSM / open mapping for disaster resilience and response
- Provided event sponsorship ($2,000)
“Whenever Geomaticians and Surveyors gather, they’re trying to address a particular theme or situation and in such instances they start from zero. There is always one savior for all start-zero scenarios, in fact you can never start from scratch with the inclusion of our Open Mapping Communities and OS); the open source for open minds 🤗” - Letwin Pondo, ZIG organizing committee, Zimbabwe
Clifford Tarerwa presents the experience of OSM Zimbabwe at the ZIG conference. Picture courtesy of Dereck Dube (Lumiself)
GeONG 2022, Chambery, France
How did we contribute / collaborate?
- Six community members funded to attend (the conference and subsequent satellite event)
- Sponsored and co-designed a community sustainability exchange satellite event with CartONG
“Coming to GeONG was valuable because I learned a lot, I met new people, and I now know new things. I feel more passionate, responsible and energized. The Satellite Sustainability Exchange was valuable as it provided me with insight into how the OSM ecosystem works in other parts of the world and what can be adapted.” - Arjun Ark, OSM India / GeONG invitee, India
Participants building a digital collage at GeONG. Photo courtesy of Carla Habif, HOT
What do the numbers say?
To try and understand the wider impact of the HOT unSummit program, we have also been tracking some metrics…
Please feel free to click through and explore the HOT unSummit metrics dashboard.
To provide some context, the potential reach metric, which tracks the estimated total number of participants at all events where HOT has collaborated (ie. the potential reach of humanitarian open mapping content), compared to between 1-200 in-person participants we would normally expect at a stand-alone HOT Summit event.
The number of community members supported to attend events only accounts for those that HOT has directly supported financially. For example, it includes the eleven community members funded to attend both State of the Map and FOSS4G, but not the 181 attendees of OSM DRC’s Ensemble pour la cartographie participative, as no travel was funded through the collaboration.
What kind of topics have been shared and discussed?
We think more than 100 humanitarian or development / open mapping focused sessions have taken place across all seven of these events and 31 of those have been directly enabled by the HOT unSummit program.
We have categorized these by HOT’s impact areas, but also included categories for Community Building and Tech, Tools and Data for those sessions without a specific impact area focus.
What have we learnt from these collaborations?
Many of the community members HOT has supported to attend events have shared their experiences through blog posts and social media (see a great list of community write ups for State of the Map here, for example).
The experiences of these community members was overwhelmingly positive, with the most cited highlights being: learning, skills, tools and encountering new ideas; sharing experiences; networking and relationship building; contribution through event volunteering; and enjoying the social and cultural experiences.
We asked for feedback from all organizing committees and four have so far responded. When asked whether they would be likely to collaborate with HOT again in this way, they scored 4.75 / 5 on average.
The most valued aspects of the unSummit collaboration were the community members HOT enabled to attend (and from highly diverse communities), financial support through sponsorship, supporting good quality sessions related to humanitarian open mapping, and the collaboration and teamwork in event organisation.
Suggested areas of improvement for HOT in these collaborations included better coordination with organizing committees and clearer communication on the objectives of the HOT unSummit.
Aside from these very positive outcomes, we also acknowledge that, for people who experience complex visa applications, we need to be more organized in the future. Five community members who we committed to supporting to travel didn’t get visas and an earlier application process might have made a difference in some of their applications. All five of these community members are being supported to attend a different event instead.
What’s next for the HOT unSummit?
The HOT unSummit program continues with exciting collaborations confirmed in the Philippines, Peru, Fiji, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mali, Haiti and Tunisia (as well as a few more in the pipeline).
Many of these event collaborations have also proven to be fertile ground for new collaborations, projects and mapping activities. HOT and the regional Open Mapping Hubs will be following up with organizers and participants alike to see how we can support the legacy of the unSummit program to go beyond supporting events.