2025 Update
With two days to go before the end of the year and I realised that I have not written anything of substance this year on my blog (again, sigh). A few days ago I updated the blog achieve a few things, firstly to remove links to Twitter and add them to Bluesky, also to improve the responsive design of the site as there were a few issues at various screen sizes. I wanted to bring the core dependencies like 11ty up to speed too. When I did this, I also noticed that the CI for GitHub Actions was failing because Eleventy 3.x requires at least Node 18 and the CI actions were using Node 12 (yikes!). The Netlify build was also broken, something to do with an older version of Sharp which I was able to resolve by upgrading it. Anyway, long story short, I managed to get everything more or less in line and moving forward after some trial and error and I think it should be okay for the short term. Sort of a stark reminder of how much a software project can decay even if the source code is untouched (bit rot!).
I was saying on Bluesky that it feels so important at the moment to have a space on the internet which you own and control. In the last 10 years I've seen many people put their personal output and content on third party platforms, and in turn seen these third party platforms become less user friendly or even collapse. It feels like the best long term bet is to keep things as first party (as is realistically possible on a cloud first world).
In terms of updates I'll try and be brief and talk about the more interesting bits - I started a new role at Addresscloud in August after just over three years at Nearform. I've known a few of the folks at Addresscloud from the FOSS4G community over the years and I've always really admired them as a business with them being big supporters of open source. Needless to say Addresscloud is doing some really interesting work in the open source geospatial arena and also has started working with my drawing library for maps, Terra Draw, which is a very cool cross over of my personal project and my job.
On the extra-curricular front I joined the OSGeo UK committee in October - I'm looking forward to making an impact and trying to grow the open source geospatial community in the UK. I also joined Open UK's advisory board for Space. For those of you unfamiliar, OpenUK is a UK not-for-profit organisation that advocates for open source software, open hardware, and open data by supporting communities, skills, and public policy around open technology. This aligns closely with my belief that open technology is critical for a prosperous future for everyone.
On the open source front things are going well with the Terra Draw project having grown from about 2000 npm weekly downloads to a peak of about 40000 at the end of October. The project received funding again this year from OSGeo UK as part of their GoFundGeo programme. I also have been working on Terra Route which is an open source shortest path library in JavaScript. It is comparable with the open source GeoJSON Pathfinder library. You can use Terra Route with a custom mode for Terra Draw called terra-draw-route-snap-mode.
I was able to speak at three events this year about open source, FOSSDEM in February, FOSS4G EU in Bosnia in July and FOSS4G UK in Leeds in October. It was my first time at FOSSDEM and it was an incredible event - the scale is somewhat daunting. Brussels also grew on me, having only been once before and only really hanging around in the city center on that first trip. A bit outside the center there are so many nice wood paneled bars and cafes with a great vibe that I had completely missed the first time around. Bosnia was also a very fun experience, spending a few days in Sarajevo and then down to Mostar for the FOSS4G conference. Mostar is a beautiful city, with it's incredible historic bridge spanning across the river far below. It made for a very interesting back drop for the conference. One thing that is always so great about FOSS4G is it takes you to places you probably wouldn't actively venture to on your own and opens you up to some wonderful and unique experiences.
Looking forward to 2026, there's not too much on the horizon for me at the moment. One thing I am doing is helping organise the geospatial dev room at FOSSDEM 2026 - you should come if you are able to, there's a great lineup and I'm sure it will be another fun event if last year was anything to go by. I think I will also try to attend FOSS4G EU again, which I believe will be in Romania. I would like to find some other events where I could speak about my open source antics at.
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