Abbey is a Location Data Analyst at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, where she works primarily in the elevation team with LiDAR data.

Alex is an open geospatial technologist with a proven track record in delivering operational data infrastructure. With a global perspective and extensive expertise in software development, cloud infrastructure, and program governance, Alex is a recognized leader in the field of Earth observation. Alex is a founding director of OSGeo Oceania and is the current Chair of the organisation. On the weekends, Alex loves exploring the wilderness with his children and enjoying a great craft beer.

Alex heads the Data Science Team at MRCagney, who create beautiful tools for data-driven decision making.
Besides using open source geospatial software, Alex enjoys writing songs, practising permaculure, and using his skills to benefit society.
For more detail about his professional and personal work, see
https://mrcagney.works and https://raichev.net , respectively.

Alice Fage is a Geospatial Developer working in the Topographic Data Engineering team at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. Her background is in systems administration.

Andrej Mocicka is the Country Manager for 1Spatial Australia, with over 40 years experience in the Geospatial industry he brings a broad range of knowledge and skills to the profession. Andrejs career has crossed many disciplines of the Spatial industry from field surveying through to managing IT departments, sales and marketing to his current position of managing a team of highly professional consultants from a sales and technical level.

Andrew is a geospatial developer in the Basemaps team at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, previously working in the Topographic Data Publishing team as a Location Data Analyst focusing on aerial imagery QC and publication. Andrew is relatively new to the geospatial world, having previously worked as a graphic designer for many years before starting with LINZ, and identifies as a "very nerdy designer".

Community member, OSM Philippines
Advocate, Geoladies PH
Online Community Engagement Lead, HOT
Board member, OSM Foundation

Arnalie from the Philippines, username: arnalielsewhere, advocates for open data and is passionate about building inclusive spaces in the open mapping and open geo community. She was a GIS Specialist for seven years until she shifted to (online) community engagement in 2020. She works as Online Community Engagement Lead at Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team - Philippines, and as a full time mother.

She has been an Openstreetmap contributor since 2016, the same year she joined and became part of the OSM community in the Philippines. In 2018, she met her partner at the State of the Map - Milan conference, and reconvened GeoLadies Philippines, an advocacy group for community diversity, collaborative participation, and affirmative spaces especially for women, and under-represented communities in OpenStreetMap. She is a supporter and ally of various communities and networks such as Geochicas, Women+ in Geo, Open Heroines, and more.

You can learn more about her views about community in OpenStreeMap and humanitarian open mapping in the [1] Geomob Podcast Interview - Arnalie Vicario: Building inclusive spaces in OSM as well as through her [2] OSM Diaries.

1. https://thegeomob.com/podcast/episode-77
2. https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/arnalielsewhere/diary

Byron has over 30 years experience as a leader in providing interoperability and data linking solutions in a large number of contexts across the globe. His greatest expertise is in Open Data Standards implementation and development - particularly in the geospatial realm.

Byron has served at various levels of government, the military and private industry, both in New Zealand, Australia and the US. He has often been turned to by organisations wishing to develop, organise and manage their disparate data using standards based interoperability solutions.

In recent years Byron has contributed to multiple international interoperability efforts including the W3C Spatial Data on the Web, numerous test bed and interoperability experiments for the Open Geographic Consortium and standards development for ISO Technical Committee 211.
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In his spare time Byron enjoys exploring the Nelson region, getting to know the local craft beers, keeping abreast of current affairs, and picking on his mandolin when its all becomes a bit too much.

I am a software developer with a passion for geospatial engineering and data science. I love applying open source geospatial technologies to help solve interesting problems for Australian government organisations and other clients.

I am currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Newcastle, Australia and have been leading and organising OSM community events in Fiji under OSM Fiji for the last three years. My research investigates the feasibility of remote sensing as a tool to monitor invasive alien plant species in the Pacific and is supported by the Pacific Regional Invasive Speices Management Support Services (PRISMSS) faciliated by SPREP. Prior to my PhD I worked in the geospatial industry across the Pacific region, based in Fiji, my home.

Cholena is a web / geospatial developer / GIS dabbler / business owner with Mammoth Geospatial.

Chris has been coding and obsessing over space technology since he was 11 years old. He is the CTO of Soar and has 10 years of experience building innovative mapping software.

I spent years working as a consultant in the geospatial industry but found myself doing highly specialized but very repetitive work. Podcasting is another way of being involved in an industry that I am fascinated with.

Daniel Silk is the Product Owner for the Basemaps team at Toitū Te Whenua. The Basemaps team builds with and contributes to free and open source geospatial software.

Danielle works at the intersection of data and transport strategy, helping people to understand and explain the stories we can uncover behind data to support good decision making and make our urban places better to live in and move around. Danielle is passionate about helping other people understand the data, and is motivated by working towards creating better places for people.

Jon is an expert in interdisciplinary knowledge application. Beginning his career in academic research he synthesized knowledge from electrohydrodynamics, high precision instrumentation, materials science and data science to unravel fundamental properties of the electrospinning nanofabrication process. He followed this by giving back to the community by leading the STEM promotion initiative for Engineering in Victoria for two years before returning to academia to lecture on Mobile Communications Networking. His next leap was to work with partners of NBN to help solve the challenging problem of designing a cost effective network by reusing existing infrastructure. Finally he has recently landed in the data science space, delivering solutions relating to predictive asset maintenance and unsupervised data segmentation. Each step in his career he has been able to draw knowledge and expertise from prior disciplines and apply them in relevant ways. This has allowed him to find creative and novel solutions to existing and sometimes intractable problems.

Edoardo is a Program Manager at Meta where he leads the Open Community Mapping Team. This team supports the use and adoption of mapping tools such as Mapillary for street-level imagery collection, RapiD for AI-assisted map editing, and Daylight for reliable OpenStreetMap use and analysis.

In a volunteer capacity, he serves on the board of OSGeo Oceania and enjoys contributing to OpenStreetMap.

Elisa a senior GIS analyst and DBA with over 18 years of experience in GIS and database administration. She has been working with most of the proprietors and open-source GIS packages and recently moved all her company's spatial databases from MSSQL to PostgreSQL server, a feat that she's not looking to repeat soon!

Elisa was born in Italy and moved to New Zealand in 2008, where she currently resides.
She is a great supporter of GIS open-source software as she strongly believes that everybody should be able to know and use GIS, especially people belonging to minority groups or living in remote areas. For this reason, she's got involved with the OsGeo Oceania community, serving as board member for two years, and currently happily distributing its money to the community by running the Grant and TGP programs.

Em works at North Road and is active in the FOSS4G community in QGIS AU group and FOSS4G Conference committee. She loves supporting users in QGIS!

Location Data Analyst at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand working with LiDAR data

Greg is an open-data advocate based in Brisbane. When not wrangling point clouds he is assisting groups in the Pacific in building their data collection skills.

Hamish is a programmer, software product manager at Koordinates.com, and a FOSS4G organiser. Hamish has a background in civil engineering consultancy, cares about open data and building great software that is good for society and the planet.

I am Disaster Service Manager for Open Mapping Hub Asia-Pacific, a regional representative of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team in the region. I have been involving in OpenStreetMap since 2012 and since then develop interest to use it along with other FOSS such as QGIS in the Disaster Context.

Honey is the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Associate for Asia at HOT. She graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geodetic Engineering. After a year of being involved in OSM Mapping through her affiliation with the UPRI Youth Mappers, she was able to join HOT Philippines as a Junior Spatial Data Entry Staff (and later on a Data Validation Lead) to the PhilAWARE Project. Honey worked for the Manila Observatory before coming back to HOT in its Asia Pacific Hub. She is passionate about utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) methods and technologies to create geospatial products that will be beneficial to the community – especially to the underrepresented and marginalized.

Geospatial Developer and Engineer. Founder at XYCarto. Specializing in remote sensing data, scaled processing, and web development.

James is a key member of the Climate Applications research team at NIWA with a focus on data transformation, integration, analysis, and interpretation. A key function of his role is to support climate research and commercial services by creating climate-based data products, and to develop ways of combining these with other relevant environmental and infrastructure information to build powerful applications that meet the needs of local and international clients and stakeholders. As a qualified geospatial specialist with over 16 years’ experience in spatial science and solution development James has made significant contributions to many multi-disciplinary scientific, environmental, and engineering projects throughout New Zealand, Australia and in the Pacific Islands.

Jeremy is the Director Data at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand and has been using FOSS4G since 2003! His journey into using open source geospatial began in 2003 when I was working on a data management project for his agency. He was struggling with finding a suitable solution for managing large geospatial dataset until he discovered PostGIS, an open source geospatial database. He was so surprised by the dedication of the developers who worked tirelessly to help him solve his problems, even if the software didn't originally support his need. This discovery opened up a whole new world of possibilities for him, as he realised the potential of open source and open data to transform geospatial analysis and make it more accessible to everyone. As he continued to explore the open source geospatial community, he found himself drawn to the collaborative and innovative spirit of the community. The open source geospatial community was passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems, and he knew that he wanted to be a part of that movement. He is the recipient of various personal and team awards including: Personal Achievement - Winner of the ‘New Professional of the Year’ award at the 2013 Institute of Public Administration New Zealand (IPANZ) Public Sector Excellence Awards; LINZ Data Service - Winner of the ‘Spatial Enablement’ category and the JK Barrie Award for Overall Excellence at the Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards (APSEA) 2012 (Manager of the LINZ Data Service); and LINZ Data Service - Winner of the Geospatial Application Excellence Award in Infrastructure, Geospatial World Awards in Geneva 2014 (Manager of the LINZ Data Service)

I'm a huge fan of open source GIS. In 2018, I dropped everything for the chance to organise the first FOSS4G SotM Oceania in Melbourne, which was a terrifying and exhilarating experience. Now, I live in Perth, Australia, and work full time as an open geospatial consultant for my company Mammoth Geospatial. I help organisations make the most of open source GIS, and provide professional training in QGIS.

John is a Principal Solutions Architect with the National Security team at Amazon Web Services (AWS). John assists Public Sector customers and partners architect Cloud solutions using the AWS platform. John was previously the Head of Security Assurance for Australia and New Zealand at AWS in Canberra Australia. He is passionate about removing regulatory and other barriers of cloud adoption for customers. John has been working with Government customers at AWS for over 9 years, as the first employee for the ANZ Public Sector team.
John has over 40 years’ experience in Information Technology and Research areas across a broad range of areas. John has extensive Public Sector, Defence and Intelligence experience including postings into Australian and US Intelligence agencies in integrated Military and Civilian teams.
John worked in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) as a Senior Research Scientist leading teams undertaking Image Analysis and Distributed Systems research.
Before joining AWS he had senior roles at Microsoft and IBM providing Architectural advice to Federal Government customers.

Jonathan has a background in the use and management of national-scale geospatial data. He has led the development of award-winning open-source geospatial products and managed significant SaaS geospatial platforms, delivering high-value open data at scale to the public.

Shy Masters Student at University of Auckland.

Lanieta Rokotuiwakaya is a Disaster Risk Reduction Consultant with the United Nations with expertise in Geospatial and Climate Change in the Pacific region. Previously, she worked at a prominent regional organization where she focused on forest mapping with remote sensing and managing spatial data.

Lanieta earned her bachelor's degree in Geography and Marine Affairs from the University of the South Pacific and is currently pursuing her Postgraduate Diploma in Islands and Ocean Stewardship from the same institution. She is also a board member of the Pacific GIS & Remote Sensing Council and Geospatial Insights Support Team Advisory Panel at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). She is a Réseau Associate, Réseau aims to amplify the voices of professional women working in the global geospatial arena.

Computer scientist, did a PhD in machine learning, I've now put that aside for a while to dabble in the field of geospatial data. New to most concepts here but enthusiastic to learn and to contribute!

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Alex McKeown is the solutions architect for the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) at the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and co-author of the 2022 AODN Architecture Review. He has more than 10 years of experience working as a software engineer and DevOps engineer.

Been working for TomTom for 18 years.
Hold the role of Associate Manager Maps of the East Asia Pacific Region
Based in Sydney, Australia

Neil is the Chief Operating Officer of Soar and has been with the company for 5 years. Prior to embarking on the mission to build the world’s new atlas, Neil had an eclectic career including industrial chemistry, working for half of the Big 4 accounting firms in R&D advisory, commercialising university innovations and senior roles in renewable energy industry development.

In his spare time, he is an amateur history buff, news junkie and avid student of works across politics, economics and human behaviour. Since joining Soar, he is also on his way to becoming a bit of a map nerd too….

Nyall has been a developer with the QGIS project since 2013. During this time he has contributed over 5000 additions to the project, and today is one of the most active developers on the project. Nyall’s contributions cover a wide range of areas – from improvements to the map rendering and symbology engines, enhancements to labeling and print layout functionality, right through to optimisations of the underlying spatial processing algorithms utilised by QGIS. Nyall is the proprietor of North Road Consulting, an Australian based spatial development consultancy which predominantly utilises international co-funding and crowd-funding campaigns to finance development into open source GIS applications.

Social media handles
https://twitter.com/nyalldawson
https://twitter.com/northroadgeo
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nyall-dawson-18b6016a/

Ofalia is a geospatial consultant at NGIS based in Brisbane, Australia. She loves using FOSS and Python to solve geospatial problems, with a particular interest in building tools to support environmental decision making.

Orisi Naivalurua is currently a Technical and Research Officer at the Pacific Community (SPC); under the Disaster Community Resilience Program (DCRP), which sits under the Geoscience, Energy & Maritime (GEM) Division. His experience in Pacific Island countries (PICs) has revolved around assisting country stakeholders in updating national risk information in an effort to assist PICs in making accurate risk-informed decisions. Under the Capacity Building on the Hazard and Exposure Database for the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment & Financing Initiative (PCRAFI) Project, he and his team have worked with PICs to help update risk data in the Pacific Risk Information System (PacRIS) through in-country exposure and impact surveys, whilst introducing and utilizing open-sourced tools.

With a continued focus on hard-work, perseverance and the right attitude, Orisi has been able to put his background knowledge in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), disaster risk knowledge, and climate change to good use. When he’s not in the office, Orisi enjoys his time outdoors; whether on a field playing a game of rugby, or in the farm investing/tilling the land. His passion is in building the next generation and setting the right foundational principles (in whatever aspect it may be) with education, proper guidance, continuous support and sensitive encouragement over the young leaders of tomorrow.

A Research Fellow at the GIScience Team, Department of Environment at the University of Auckland, New Zealand working on a project which focuses on providing Data sovereignty for Indigenous people.

Senior GIS analyst at Toitu Te Whenua LINZ with a passion for clear visual communication and open source and open data.

Pierre Kurth brings over 15 years of experience in the geospatial mapping industry. He has primarily worked at a publishing company, starting as a cartographer and spatial analyst and eventually managing a small team of cartographers and GIS specialists. Recently, Pierre joined NGIS in a consultant role. His projects have included conducting training courses in GIS tools and applications, as well as assisting in the development and transition to a GIS environment. With his extensive background and expertise, Pierre contributes valuable insights and support to NGIS and their clients.

Rebecca Clarke is a Location Data Analyst within the Topographic Data Publishing team at Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, working remotely from New Plymouth. She has 13 years experience working with geographical data, and for the last 7 years has worked with imagery at LINZ. She is currently the Product Owner for Topography's Aerial Imagery Publication.

Rhys is a cofounder and spatial data architect of Auchindown, a small company in Jamaica that deals in all things spatial.

Rhys has over 15 years of experience analyzing, identifying and transforming spatial data into useful information and business insights helping companies to leverage data to make informed decisions. He has been using Postgresql/PostGIS since versions 8.0/pre 1.

He has a keen interest in using PostGIS in the electric utility space and is the developer behind Livewire (https://lvwr.io) which is a power delivery modeling and management cloud solution.

I'm Richard, a GIS Analyst/Developer at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research based in Palmerston North. I'm currently thinking a lot about about the use of Discrete Global Grid Systems and how they embody a truly digital geographic information system.

I've worked in GIS across a range of domains including public transport modelling (subject of my Master's thesis), and in web development for third-party logistics and oceanography/meteorology, including some time spent freelancing.

Rua Puka is a GIS Specialist with International Labour Organization (ILO) Under the EU funded STREIT Programme. He has a Bachelor of Science in GIS from The Papua New Guinea University of Technology. He is one of the administrators of a System called PNG RoTIMS. He enjoys experiencing new technologies. He monitors road projects using drone technology and provides map and statistics support to four other UN agencies (FAO, UNDP, ITU and UNCDF) under the EU-STREIT Programme. Come along and hear about what PNGRoTIMS is.

Sagar is an accomplished Data Scientist with 8+ years of professional experience in the field, currently serving as the Head of AI at Orbica, where he leads the AI initiatives and strategies, driving innovation and delivering impactful results through the integration of AI with geospatial technology.

Samantha is an Environmental Data Officer at the Pacific Community (SPC) building on a background in sustainability, GIS application development, data ETL, and a passion for the environment.

Shrividya (Shriv) is a data scientist working to push the analytics capabilities of public sector work in transport. Her passion is urban analytics - using open tools and data to understand cities, especially those in the developing world.

Simon McDonald has over 10 years of experience in data science projects within the aviation industry, ranging from targeted risk analyses to introducing new safety reporting systems. He has represented Australia through several international forums where he used his expertise enhance the global understanding of collision risk in airspace.

Simon has held positions at Airservices Australia and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority; and holds a
Bachelor of Applied Science in Aviation and a Masters of Statistics. For the past three years he has been leading the development of a framework to quantify airspace collision risk. This will deliver the capability to consistently model collision risk in Australian airspace using world leading methods.

Simon is highly regarded throughout New Zealand as a leader in his field and has also undertaken numerous work in Australia. He has provided over 30+ years of GIS consulting and training services to organizations, focusing on both desktop and web mapping systems. His core strengths are as a GIS Full Stack Developer and Implementer, GIS Database Administrator, and GIS Project Manager. An acknowledged web mapping technology expert amongst his peers, Simon brings a vast knowledge of not only web mapping technology but also web platforms, desktop GIS Systems and GIS services in general.

Stacy is a researcher and developer who specialises in solving wickedly complex problems. He has developed innovative solutions across a wide variety of domains and is experienced in full stack web and spatial development, GIS systems and tools, data manipulation, numerical analysis and software architecture. Stacy often takes a solution all the way from gathering requirements and initial solution ideation, through to architecting appropriate software systems and developing user-friendly interfaces that encapsulate the underlying complexity.

I am a software engineer specialising in geospatial mapping applications and data collection/visualisation tools, with passions for heritage, land management, conservation, and people. My first degree is in Archaeology and GIS, where I worked on high profile international projects as a GIS specialist. These days I an fully committed to my love of building things, solving every day problems by creating fully custom solutions in the web mapping space. And hopefully showing people how to use them in the field in person!

Tim Barnes is the GIS Manager/Developer at New Zealand Carbon Farming. With 20 years working in GIS in a variety of public and private organizations, though mostly with licensed/paid GIS software, he is continually learning how best to use and share geospatial technology and principles to tackle real world problems.

GIS developer in Auckland, New Zealand

I am passionate about OSM, OpenData, sharing, collaboration and sustainable projects. My (enthusiastic) experience until now : initiated OSM community in Madagascar, coordinating Missing Maps project @CartONG at its start, developping my own professionnal activity on OSM in french Polynesia, mummy of CartoMobil’ite project, and now data management in Opua agency, urbanism agency of french Polynesia

Geospatial Data Scientist/Machine Learning Engineer at Development Seed, developing tools for cloud-native geospatial machine learning! Open source maintainer for Python libraries like zen3geo, xbatcher and PyGMT. Check out my profile on GitHub and LinkedIn.