I still remember that cloudy
March morning when I nostalgically left the Netherlands after completion of my
MSc degree. I experienced many apparently isolated issues afterwards, but only
realize until now how the long the road I had ahead was. One of the visions I
cherished the most from the dutch experience, was the growing importance of the
sociotechnical advances in the Geo-spatial and geo-sciences disciplines. With this vision in mind and together with other geo geeks from Chile,
Colombia and Guatemala I managed to start up GeoCensos, a social enterprise project
to support the adequate use of geoinformation in all kinds of organizations,
especially at National Statistics Offices.
When
we started we were just a bunch of geo enthusiasts posting online geo tech news
from our desktop computers at home. Nowadays we can count over 60 members
working in 7 countries, having developed together more than 27 geo apps, aiding
in 5 national census processes and advocating for the good use of open geo data
within a United Nations sponsored organization.
The road was no silky
cruise. Just after graduation I lived briefly in Chile surviving as a research
assistant and had even to work as a bilingual call center agent in Argentina.
Suddenly dreams began to take off as a good friend called me to help in a
cadastral project in La Plata. When the project ended I could also muddle
through to work for a small consultancy firm in Colombia. My experiences and
knowledge empowered me with confidence and so GeoCensos thrived:
·
My group and I wrote 647 papers including articles, blogs and posts for
12 newspapers and media in the region, reporting on geotechnologies and geodata
in several studies from 2010 to 2016.
·
Contributed as back office to give support in the Santiaguito volcano earthquake in Guatemala in 2012 for CONRED,
National Coordination Agency for Natural Disasters.
·
We organized a self-funded Road Show called GeoCensos Mesoamerica RS in 7cities in 5
Mesoamerican countries for the evangelization with geo data tools for
universities and NGOs.
·
Provided support to the Space Apps Challenge promoted
by NASA Aerospatial Agency in 2013 in Bogotá, Panama and Santa
Marta, and also in San Salvador, Central America
in 2014.
·
In 2015, we represented the Latin American civil society at the International Open Data
Conference in Ottawa, participated at the SoTM United States in New York and
attended the 8th meeting of the Statistical
Conference of the America in Quito.
·
Organized Mapps Hackathon I and II in
Bogota, Guatemala City, Medellin, Panama City, Quito, Santa Marta, San
Salvador, Soacha and Neiva between 2013 and 2014.
·
We joined the eDiplomacy US State Dept program presenting a GeoData speed geek at Techcamps in
San Salvador, Bogotá and Cali in Colombia.
·
In 2016, we portrayed updated
results from the Stats Up project and benchmarked
other Openstreetmap evangelization experiences at State of the Map US
Conference in Seattle 2016. Also, we lectured on census data collaboration at the Global Partnership for
Sustainable Development Data workshops in Nairobi and Dar es Salam.
·
Just recently, we participated as part of the civil
sector in the the high level seminar on the 2020 round of censuses and the 2030 Agenda in Panama.
As the universal athlete Muhammad Ali once said: “Wars
of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map
change”. This quote inspires us every day to keep on walking the road ahead and
mapping together a better world.
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