Hello, there!
Hello, everyone! Welcome to my first OSM diary entry! I’m Charmyne Mamador, project lead at Ausome Maps, a She Leads and She Inspires grant-funded project and co-founder of GeoLadies PH.
She leads and She inspires
Together with a number of awesome women all over Asia and the Pacific I went through the 6-month She Leads and She Inspires program. The program covered topics from how to build teams, leadership, solution formulation, and project management .
This program culminated with a project proposal and a chance for 10 projects to be funded. Ausome Maps was one of the proposals selected to be funded. For me, it was a dream come true. I first presented the idea for the Ausome Maps initiative almost 4 years ago at a Geoladies PH meetup. I even created some preliminary screens on how I envisioned the data viewer will look like. Since then, I was waiting for an opportunity to make it happen.
Now, through the She Leads and She Inspires program I finally was able to take this initiative closer to reality.
Pista ng Mapa for me
I was always an admirer of the open data and mapping community. Everyone is genuine and passionate towards the cause that they are working on. These passion-driven (as well as purpose-driven) individuals makes Pista ng Mapa a go-to annual conference for students, professionals, and enthusiasts to learn about new mapping technology, techniques, and relevant projects.
Pista ng Mapa is a conference that is truly close to my heart. It was where the first GeoLadies PH workshop was held! Here was where I also tried to bring my human-centered design expertise into mapping by doing a Human-centered Design (HCD) mapping workshop.
And now, Pista ng Mapa 2022 is where Ausome Maps was officially launched to the public.
Journey to Bicol
The journey from my hometown in Oriental Mindoro to Manila was already long. However, I’m already used to that.
Now, the journey from Manila to Bicol was full of excitement. I rode my first sleeper bus. It. Was. An. Experience. At first, I was doing some sketches for my workshop. Then, I fell asleep. Time hopped to morning. I woke up with a foggy view of the majestic Mt. Mayon. Initially, I got taken aback that it was spewing smoke. I quickly caught myself saying, “Of course, that how active volcanoes work!” I arrived a day early to be able to see the city of Albay a bit and rest before starting the week-long Pista.
Here we go
For 2022, Pista ng Mapa and State of the Map Asia were back-to-back events. State of the Map Asia was equally-packed with interesting talks and workshops by speakers from all over the world.
I arrived at the venue. Immediately, my heart swelled with pride when I saw how everything was setup. The organizing committee really did an excellent job.
Some of the talks I found personally fascinating and useful are my former college instructor, John Louie Fabila’s talk about using qGIS temporal controller for communicating hazard data. It is definitely a tool I will use in my future visualization projects. Another would be Tanapon Lilasathapornkit’s discussion of how they use computer vision to map sidewalks. This talk made me realize how much urban space was allotted for roads – for cars. It was also the first time in a long time that I held an actual printed map. I have Ruby Magturo of Bahaghari maps to thank for her trail maps. And last, would be Shogo Hirasawa’s and Taichi Furuhashi’s UNVTPortable -Offline Web Map Server, which I think will help remote mapping activities in internet-challenged parts of the country.
Ausome Maps at Pista ng Mapa
Public speaking is always a nerve-wracking experience for me. But this time, it was different. Yes, I was nervous. However, my excitement to share about Ausome Maps helped me overcome my nervousness.
A little bit of background on the project, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication. It’s estimated that about 1 in 100 children has autism worldwide. This translates to 1 in 100 families needing all the support they can get from the community to raise their children.
In the Philippines, out of over 5000 points of interest (pois) identified as a school, only 12 are tagged as ‘special needs’. And fewer than 10 POIs are identified as places for therapy.
According to the Philippine Association of Speech Pathologists(PASP) and Philippine Academy of Occupational Therapists(PAOT), in NCR alone, there are over 40 clinics with speech therapy and 29 clinics with occupational therapy. The National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) identified 71 schools with special education classes in Quezon City alone.
With all these data available but not mapped, Ausome Maps aims to update and enrich our map by adding these therapy clinics, schools with SPED classes, and establishments geared toward the development of differently abled Filipinos as POIs in the map.
During my workshop, we launched the Ausome Maps Challenge published on Map Roulette. The challenge covers updating/adding specialized_education=”special_needs” tag on already existing school POIs in OpenStreetMap.
Currently, we are only at ~15% of the number of POIs that needs to be tagged. So if you are interested in suporting our initiative, head over to the Map Roulette platform, sign up, and join the challenge here, MapRoulette - Browse - Challenges - Ausome Maps - Updating school POIs in the Philippines to include special education tags
To be updated with Ausome Maps’s activities, follow us on Facebook
Since, my workshop was already done. I was able to attend other workshops and even participate in the impromptu but rather super fun Amazing Race Challenge! We didn’t win but I met cool team members and go around the Bicol University Campus for the first time since the conference started.
Socials Nights!
GeoLadies PH, together with Youth Mappers PH, hosted a social night for all the women, youth mappers, and supporters of these groups, so everyone. It was a night filled with laughter, people getting to know each other, and of course, since we were in the Philippines, a showcase of singing talents.
With that, the 5-day long event came to a close. It was nice seeing people from the past Pistas and SOTM Asia get together again after a few years. We even joked that attending the annual Pista ng Mapa is like our panata (vow). I met new equally awesome people that I look forward to seeing again.
It was great!
I would like to thank everyone, the organizing committee, volunteers, and sponsors, who made the back-to-back Pista ng Mapa and State of the Map Asia 2022 possible and for the travel support that helped me be able to participate on the event in-person.
I’m looking forward to the next one!
Cheers,
Cham