This Saturday, I attended the (first ever?) State of the Map India conference in Nashik, Maharashtra, which was held as a sub-event in the larger FOSS4G India event.

I was curious about what the turnout would be like, what kind of talks would be presented, what kind of people would attend, etc.

It felt like a typical “FOSS” event held by FOSS United (except FOSSU wasn’t involved in this one, AFAIK)…very corporate-slanted, very “open source”-leaning, very big/normalized on using “AI” (cringe), participants asking for your LinkedIn (cringe), et cetera… 🙂

I also became keenly aware of the divide between myself and the rest of the community…I don’t have a GIS background, and I don’t use OSM professionally. I use free software like CoMaps, OsmAnd, OsmAPP, Cartes.app, GNOME Maps, KDE Marble, etc, and contribute to OSM because I want to improve them.

Conversely, (I suspect that) most of the participants had a GIS background, used OSM professionally, probably relied on Google Maps and other proprietary apps for personal use, and probably didn’t even know about the apps I mentioned. Chances are they don’t contribute to OSM either, unless required to for their jobs.

(That is, with the exception of some of the most active OSM contributors of India, who were also present. Also, it’s possible that I just didn’t mingle with “unknown” folks enough…I need to work on that. 🙁)

This isn’t a criticism of the organizers, of course. Hell, that’s just the kind of crowd I need to meet (and don’t normally get to) for the purpose of promoting software freedom. 🙂

I made notes about a potential future talk I could give here. (Hell, I was about to pitch an impromptu lightning talk, but then I saw that the room was all but empty after lunch… 🥲) I look forward to attending the next iteration.

#Nasik #Nashik #Maharashtra #India #SotMIndia #OsmIndia #FOSS4GIndia #OpenStreetMap #OSM #OpenData #OpenSource #FOSS #FreeSoftware