2026-09-03 –, Himawari
This session shares the 16-year evolution of FOSS4G Hokkaido, Japan’s first local community. Moving beyond a simple success story, we offer a practical "Survival Toolkit" to overcome organizer burnout and organizational challenges, providing actionable insights to help communities foster Geospatial Sovereignty through long-term resilience.
The term "FOSS4G" was born in 2006. In Japan, after initial events in major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, FOSS4G Hokkaido was established in 2010 as the first local community. Our adventure began with the curiosity of just six people experimenting with "QGIS 1.4 Enceladus" in a classroom at Hokkaido University. What started as a tiny gathering has flourished into one of Japan’s most active regional conferences, attracting up to 100 participants and maintaining a continuous presence for over 16 years.
Our grassroots efforts went beyond meetups. We became a blueprint for other regional FOSS4G communities across Japan and helped catalyze a broader open innovation ecosystem. Along the way, we promoted OSS and Open Data and even helped inspire commercial entities like MIERUNE. These relationships have become "resilient soil" for Geospatial Sovereignty, helping regional societies keep freedom of choice in their digital infrastructure.
However, this journey has faced significant structural challenges. Reflecting the sustainability crises in the global OSS ecosystem, we have navigated issues of organizer burnout, the concentration of responsibility, and the dramatic shift in engagement caused by the pandemic.
In this session, we will share a "Survival Toolkit" for community sustainability, shaped by these real-world struggles. We will cover practical strategies to keep a healthy balance, including: welcoming new generations through inclusive mechanisms; adopting a Code of Conduct (CoC) early (when it was still rare in Japan) to ensure a safe environment; and clarifying the value of local, offline interaction in a digital-first world.
The History of FOSS4G Hokkaido
To understand the context of our 16-year journey, please take a look at our community's history page. Although the text is in Japanese, the photos and timeline provide a great visual sense of our grassroots evolution from a small classroom meetup to a major regional conference.
QGIS, GDAL, OpenStreetMap
I make my conference contribution available under the CC BY 4.0 license. The conference contribution comprises the abstract, the text contribution for the conference proceedings, the presentation materials as well as the video recording and live transmission of the presentation:
Furukawa is Co-founder and Evangelist at MIERUNE Inc., a geospatial company born from the FOSS4G Hokkaido community. He works at the intersection of community, ecosystem, and real-world implementation, fostering collaboration around open-source geospatial technologies. At MIERUNE, he supports clients through hands-on, co-creative project delivery.
He is also active in promoting open data and OSS adoption through civic tech initiatives. He serves as a Fellow at Code for Japan, a Regional Informatization Advisor (MIC, Japan), a Special Supporter of the MLIT Geospatial Information Lab, and a Visiting Lecturer at Rakuno Gakuen University (RGU).