Episode
Reflections from FOSS4G 2025
- Podcast
- The MapScaping Podcast - GIS, Geospatial, Remote Sensing, earth observation and digital geography
- Published
- Dec 2, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 836
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://mapscaping.podbean.com/e/reflections-from-foss4g-2025/
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Summary
Reflections from the FOSS4G 2025 conference Processing, Analysis, and Infrastructure (FOSS4G is Critical Infrastructure) The high volume of talks on extracting meaning from geospatial data—including Python workflows, data pipelines, and automation at scale—reinforced the idea that FOSS4G represents critical infrastructure. AI Dominance: AI took up a lot of space at the conference. I was particularly interested in practical, near-term impact talks like AI assisted coding and how AI large language models can enhance geospatial workflows in QGIS. Typically, AI discussions focus on big data and earth observation, but these topics touch a larger audience. I sometimes wonder if adding "AI" to a title is now like adding a health warning: "Caution, a machine did this". Python Still Rules (But Rust is Chatting): Python remains the pervasive, default geospatial language. However, there was chatter about Rust. One person suggested rewriting QGIS in Rust might make it easier to attract new developers. Data Infrastructure, Formats, and Visualization When geospatial people meet, data infrastructure—the "plumbing" of how data is stored, organized, and accessed—always dominates. Cloud Native Won: Cloud native architecture captured all the attention. When thinking about formats, we are moving away from files on disk toward objects in storage and streaming subsets of data. Key cloud-native formats covered included COGs (Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs), Zarr, GeoParquet, and PMTiles. A key takeaway was the need to choose a format that best suits the use case, defined by who will read the file and what they will use the data for, rather than focusing solely on writing it. The Spatial Temporal Asset Catalog (STAC) "stole the show" as data infrastructure, and DuckDB was frequently mentioned. Visu…