The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) 2025 conference happened in Auckland, New Zealand from 17-23 November 2025. It was a week-long event with 2 days of workshops followed by 3 days of talks and networking sessions. Traveling to New Zealand from India is quite difficult – both in terms of cost and the visa process. I feel privileged that I could make it there and was able to participate in the conference. I want to share my experience and resources in this post.Opening Keynote SessionWorkshopSThe first 2 days of the conference were dedicated to workshops. There were over 50 workshops on a range of topics.Cloud Native Geospatial for Earth Observation WorkshopAlex Leith led the workshop on cloud native geospatial, going over the basics of using odc-stac, xarray. Michelle Roby then went over a complete workflow for Exploring Sea Surface Temperature Data using STAC Geoparquet.Alex Leith at the Cloud Native Geospatial for Earth Observation WorkshopThe materials for the workshops are shared on the GitHub Repository, which also has a nice example of Land Productivity for SDG 15 using a Cloud-Native approach.The Deep Magic of QGIS Cartography WorkshopNyall Dawson at the QGIS Cartopgraphy WorkshopNyall Dawson and Mathieu Pellerin gave a workshop on QGIS cartography covering many advanced use cases. Nyall focused on creating static maps – showing features and processes for createing a production-quality map within QGIS.There were many highlights – such as features to lock the scale of the map, display the extent of a print layout on the main map, custom label placement, using label masks, placing curved annotations and more. The workshop started with a mediocre map and we incrementally applied small tweaks to make it a great one. I learnt many new tricks and will be sharing these in new tutorials soon.My WorkshopsI hosted 2 workshops: The first one was Scalable Remote Sensing Workflows with Xarray, which was a structured introduction to cloud-native geospatial technologies for remote sensing. I got good feedback from the participants on how they would use these techniques in their work. My workshop on Cloud-based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine and QGISThe next one was Cloud-based Remote Sensing with QGIS and Google Earth Engine which was targeted at QGIS users and showed how to use the new GEE Plugin in QGIS to get data from Earth Engine data catalogs. This workshop generated quite a bit of interest and participants were really excited to be able to use GEE’s massive data catalog without having to learn coding.The ConferenceThe conference has over 400 attendees and many talks happening in parallel. Here are some of my observations and key takeaways.Cloud-Native GeospatialMy current interest is in cloud-native technologies, so I attended many talks on this track. Kyle Barron presented about a new package obstore by Development Seed. His talk Faster, simpler access to cloud-based geospatial data with Obstore compared the API and performance with the widely used fsspec package for accessing data from cloud storage systems such as GCS, S3 and Azure Blobstore. Another interesting talk was Geospatial Cloud-Native at Scale – LINZ’s Path from Legacy Stacks to a National Data Lake by Jeeremy Palmer. He talked about the challenges of implementing such a large transformation project and generated a good discussion during Q&A about similar challenges faced by others.Jeremy Palmer presenting LINZ’s migration to cloud-native stackKyle Barron talking about ObstoreMy TalksI presented a total of 3 talks at the conference. Two of my talks were full-length talks on QGIS. The first QGIS talk was Workflow Automation with QGIS: Case Studies and Tips where I presented three real-world applications of the QGIS Model Designer. The next one was a fun talk titled Wait… QGIS Can Do What?. This talk was a collection of lesser-known features of QGIS full of “aha moments” for the audience. Got great feedback and encouragement on this presentation format.Workflow Automation with QGIS: Case Studies and TipsWait… QGIS Can Do What?I gave a 5-minute lightning talk on the journey of building Spatial Thoughts. In my talk Building a Business with Open Content and Open Source Software I shared my motivation and lessons learnt over 5 years of creating open-access educational content.A slide from my lightning talkNew DiscoveriesI have been meaning to start using Kart for a while, and finally Craig de Stigter’s talk on Kart: Git for Geospatial – Version Control for Vector, Raster, and Point Cloud Data convinced me to start using it. I had a chat with Craig afterwards and he clarified some of the inner workings.Craig de Stigter talking about KartFor many GIS users and new programmers, learning Git is quite challenging. Many of our students have been requesting a course on Git and data management. This talk gave me some good ideas on how a course combining Git and Kart can be of immense value. This will be on my list of new things to explore in the coming year.Shrividya Ravi talking about Exploring urban form in New ZealandI learnt of a Python package called momepy, which helps analyze urban form using OpenStreetMap data. In her talk –Exploring urban form in New Zealand – Shrividya Ravi shared how she used this package to analyze different neighborhoods in New Zealand. Her github repository has nice code examples that can be adapted for other regions.Another new discovery was the weavingspace python package for creating beautiful multi-variate maps. I missed David O’Sullivan talk on Weavingspace: a new way to make multivariate maps but he shared his presentation and it looks fascinating. That’s a talk definitely want to catch on recording.KeynotesThe closing session had two inspiring keynotes. Amy Rose talked about Overture Foundation in her talk The Space Between: Where Open Data Matures Into Infrastructure. The talk outlined the inherent difficulty in creating and maintaining open data and Overture’s solution in the form of Global Entity Reference System. The last keynote Scaling Impact: Enabling Open Source Adoption in Business and Government by Ana Belgun was the perfect topic for an open-source conference – How can we make governments and organizations adopt open-source software? – The key ideas presented were to offer solutions that address legal and compliance issues along with documenting the value offered by the open-source software. The QGIS project is a great example of this. Large enterprises were wary of adopting QGIS due to misinformation and lack of clarity on compliance issues. The QGIS team did a great job documenting ‘boring’ compliance issues like Security information and highlighting the thriving commercial ecosystem.Amy Rose delivering her online keynote “The Space Between: Where Open Data Matures Into Infrastructure”Ana Belgun’s talk on “Scaling Impact: Enabling Open Source Adoption in Business and Government”Sol Katz AwardThe Sol Katz Award is an annual award given at FOSS4G conference to individuals for their outstanding contributions to open-source. This year the receipinent was Nyall Dawson. Everyone in the QGIS community knows Nyall and it was a moment of pride to see his contributions recognized at the global scale. Nyall Dawson – one of the most prolific QGIS contributors – receiving the Sol Katz Award 2025Hanging out with Nyall Dawson I have known Nyall for many years but met him for the first time in-person. Hanging out with Nyall and geeking out about QGIS was one of the highlights for me at the conference.AucklandIt was a busy week at the conference but I did get to explore Auckland during the week. My go-to activity in. new city is to look for bike tours. I found a e-bike tour from Power to the Pedal which was amazing. The weather was perfect and we could bike all the way to the top of Mt. Eden and see a panoramic view of the city.View from the top of the extinct volcano crater of Mt. EdenSky TowerView of Queens Wharf from Gala DinnerFlowers at Auckland DomainGroup e-bike tour of AucklandWhat next?After a week full of knowledge and sharing of ideas – I left Auckland with new friends and memories. The next FOSS4G conference will take place in Hiroshima from August 30 to September 3, 2026. I hoping to attending it and meeting the community again!FOSS4G 2026 will be at Hiroshima