The pandemic changed the OSM-PH community plans for the year in 2020. In person meetups became online and we had to adjust our big plans for this new approach. I collected the publication materials we posted in our social media account to get a broad sense of what we did last year.

The montage above is a small collection of them. Some highlights.

• Online events - we had more events than any other previous year. Online platforms allowed us to organize and reach more people. Most of these events were organized not entirely by the community but invitations from various groups (local and international). Pista ng Mapa, our major community event also adopted an online format and a surprising success!
• Mapping - we had the highest number of unique contributors (10k) than previous years. The mapping activities completed baseline information in many areas notably HOT Philippines’ initiatives in Pampanga and Quezon City. Mikko and several mappers lead the effort to improve coverage to the top unmapped towns and completed several towns in Mindanao.
• Recognitions - groups and individuals within our community were recognized for their mapping and community building efforts. UPRI Youthmappers were recognized for inspiring women in mapping and building mapping metrics. 3 Filipino mappers (feye, Mikko and Arnalie) become part of the growing HOT voting memberships. 2 long time community members (Maning for HOT and Eugene for OSMF) were elected as board members in two organizations crucial to the project growth.
• Reclaiming our stories - Despite all our efforts within our local community, stories about how we got here are not amplified to the wider open mapping community. Biases and traditional perspectives on map making continues to undermine what we are trying to build: a more open and inclusive community. As a local community, we continue to question our own motivations and assumptions. David Garcia puts this nicely in 2 questions: “who are you making maps for?” and “who are you making maps with?”.

Thank you to all who made this possible. We’ve done so much last year and we are excited for this year.

The last point will continue to be our focus for the days and months ahead.