2025-11-29 –, Audition Room - 1st Floor Language: English
Building and leading OpenStreetMap communities requires passion and dedication, but too often leads to volunteer burnout and unsustainable practices. Drawing from personal experiences, this interactive workshop explores whether it's possible to build thriving mapping communities while maintaining personal well-being, and if so, how.
This session combines practical frameworks with honest discussions about the realities of community leadership. We'll explore various approaches to sustainable community leadership, including distributed leadership models that prevent over-reliance on individuals, and strategies that are effective within African contexts.
We would like the workshop to create space for both emerging and experienced leaders to share challenges, learn from each other's experiences, and develop strategies for building resilient communities. Through small-group discussions and interactive exercises, attendees will create personalized sustainability plans and connect with one another.
Laura is a Geospatial engineer and technical community manager working at the intersection of open data, free and open-source software, and sustainable development. With a commitment to building for impact, she harnesses the power of communities to drive positive change. Currently, Laura is an Implementation Officer at Ushahidi, where she leads the implementation of the African Union Civic Tech Fund and partner climate projects. She previously worked at Code for Africa, leading community and project activities for africanDRONE and sensors.AFRICA; initiatives that are pioneering the use of drones and sensors for climate change & deforestation monitoring, and water & air quality pollution detection in African cities.
Additionally, Laura is an active volunteer and enjoys giving back to the tech community. She has been a YouthMappers regional ambassador for the past four years, supporting student-led and faculty-mentored university clubs in East and Central Africa. She also co-created OSM Kenya, advocating for the adoption of open data locally.