A retrospective of FOSS United's travel grant for OpenStreetMap India

Drafted: 2026-04-14
Published: 2026-04-17
Updated: 2026-04-18

The background

For the past few years, I have been organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties each month. Participation rarely exceeds, say, 14 people for Delhi events, and 10 people for pan-India virtual events.

In comparison, FOSS United events seem to have no issues in getting 50+ people to attend city FOSS meetups, and getting hundreds to attend city FOSS conferences.

With that in mind, I asked Vishal Arya during BiharFOSS last year for help in expanding the OpenStreetMap community.

This request turned into a serendipitous meeting with Poruri Sai Rahul, and I became the fortunate recipient of a FOSS United grant.

The grant required me to attend one FOSS event each month 1 Regardless of whether it was a FOSS United event or not. and give a workshop about OSM. This way, we hoped that FOSS events would benefit from a greater variety of activities, and that I would be able to spread greater awareness about OSM and expanding the user, contributor, and developer base. The grant would cover my travel, accommodation, and time.

The itinerary

Thanks to the grant, I was able to attend the following events over the next 12 months. At each of them, I hosted an OSM talk or workshop - often both.

  1. April 2025
    1. LucknowFOSS
    2. MumbaiFOSS
  2. May - FOSS Meetup Kanpur
  3. June - FOSS Meetup Mumbai
  4. July - none
  5. August
    1. FOSS Meetup Lucknow
    2. FOSS Meetup Delhi (postmortem notes)
  6. September - IndiaFOSS
  7. October - none
  8. November - FOSS Meetup Kolkata
  9. December - MiniDebConf Navi Mumbai
  10. January 2026 - MangaloreFOSS
  11. February - FOSS Meetup Madurai
  12. March
    1. MiniDebConf Kanpur
    2. Document Freedom Day @ Essentia.dev, Noida

What has been achieved?

Greater awareness

Thanks to the activities made possible by this grant, a large number of people have…

  • become aware of OSM,
  • have become acquainted with its ecosystem of freedom-respecting software,
  • have acquired at least a vague idea of developer resources for it,
  • and have had their first brush with what OSM community events (whether indoor or outdoor) can look like.

As one metric, many more people are present in the OSM India XMPP channel compared to one year ago.

(If desired, I can share some numbers for participation in mapping activities.)

Refinement of approach

Thanks to this grant, I have been able to iterate over my "pedagogy" far more than I would otherwise have.

For example, whereas I started out pitching OSM workshops to FOSS events, I came to the realization that it's better to give a talk introducing OSM first, and do a separate workshop/mapping party later. That way, I'm not trying to squeeze in both an introduction to OSM and an introduction to contributing to OSM into the same activity. And it's better to teach contribution to people who are interested in OpenStreetMap, rather than large crowds with people who may or may not be sold on it.

As another example, I ended up writing 5 presentations from scratch in the course of this year. (Each one has a directory of its own in my repository of OpenStreetMap presentations.) The latest talk is being received better than all others before it, which is exciting to see.

Attending meetups and conferences each month also gave me the opportunity to study many other speakers and learn from their mistakes. For example, many go too deep into details and lose their audience's interest. Another common issue is that the speaker lacks energy, or clarity of speech.

Better āzād data

Of course, each mapping event improves OSM data in the area where it is held…but a side-effect of this grant has been that I've been traveling all over India - and wherever I travel, I map very actively.

While a lone traveler is no substitute for an active local community, it's also hard to understate the impact of one really active and experienced contributor. And the financial support from the grant let me focus on mapping without worrying about how to make rent 🙂

2026-04-17_20-25-32_hdyc.png
Figure 1: Screenshot of my contribution statistics on How Did You Contribute To OpenStreetMap?

(As before, I could post more specific statistics if there's interest.)

What remains to be achieved?

The "conversion ratio" remains depressingly low.

  1. A large percent of the audiences (like 80-90%?) don't attend the mapping events.

  2. Even those who do attend, rarely go on to become regular contributors 2 Or at least, that's what I suspect - I haven't actually crunched the numbers to see how many participants became active contributors. I should probably get around to it at some point. and/or regular participants at OSM India Monthly Online Mapathons.

    (Recently, someone suggested that while concluding mapping events, I could have newcomers assign themselves to areas, give them a small target (e.g. add 5 shops per week), and have short virtual meetings each week to help keep people motivated. This is something I might try.)

  3. …and hardly anyone goes on to start organizing local mapping events themselves. Niya (niyabits) and Souhrud Reddy (sounddrill) are the only people I know who have attempted this.

I wish I could know the reason. Here are some of my common suspicions -

  1. Perhaps they are attending for better career prospects, and don't quite see how contributing to OSM could help? (While my talks do mention developer-oriented usecases and resources, the mapping parties themselves are entirely about gathering data…)
  2. Perhaps it feels too much like "work"? Perhaps I'm not succeeding at demonstrating the fun of contributing… 🤔

Conclusion

It's been a fun time hopping around the country, attending so many FOSS events, getting to know loads of new people, and introducing them to OpenStreetMap.

I hope I'll be able to renew this grant and redouble these efforts. I want OpenStreetMap to become a household name in India, and surpass proprietary maps like it has in Europe. 3 Granted, we'll also need to employ other means for that - like publishing videos on popular proprietary platforms. …and I want OSM events in India to draw as many crowds as FOSS United events themselves 🙂