FOSS4G-2026/BirdsOfAFeather

Introduction

Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are unstructured timeslots where people can self-organise themselves to discuss topics of interest.

General Information

At the FOSS4G 2026 conference in Hiroshima, a number of spaces have been reserved for people to flock together in Birds of a Feather sessions.

For reference, an overview of the FOSS4G schedule is available at here.

How to organize a BOF

BoF sessions are informal gatherings of people around a specific topic. BoF's can be held in: BoF rooms or taken off-site for breakfast, lunch or dinner!

The FOSS4G conference provides the spaces, but the setup of the bird-of-feather meetup is done informally using this wiki.

Capacities

The BoF sessions rooms used are the ones in which the conference takes place, and are available during the hours listed below:

Room	Day1 (Sep.1)	Day2 (Sep.2)	Day3（Sep.3）
Phoenix Hall	17:00~18:00	-	-
Himawari	15:30~18:00 (Not available in case of rain)	-	-
Dahila1	13:30~18:00 (Not available in case of rain)	-	-
Dahila2	14:30~18:00 (Not available in case of rain)	-	-
Room5	-	11:00~12:00	-
Room6	-	11:00~12:00	11:00~15:00

We will also put a BoF organizing board on site for better organization.

Tuesday 1 September

Himawari

Common Space - Humanitarian Satellite

• Time: 17:00-18:00
• Description: Let's get together and review the state of https://www.commonspace.world
• Person to contact: Batuhan Kavlak

Who is coming:

• Batuhan Kavlak
• Edoardo Neerhut

Phoenix Hall

A5 DGGS community biweekly meeting on FOSS4G Hiroshima

• Time: 17:30-18:00
• Description: Open discussion on A5 and Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS), with reference to A5 at https://a5geo.org/
• Person to contact: Takashi Nojima

Who is coming:

• Takashi Nojima
• Felix Palmer (Remote)
• Json Singh

Dahila1

Portolan SDI Sprint

• Time: 13:30–14:30
• Description: An open sprint and discussion around Portolan SDI. We will work together on Portolan specifications, catalogs, tooling, examples, and interoperability, and discuss ideas and contributions from the geospatial community. Everyone interested in modern Spatial Data Infrastructure, cloud-native geospatial data and STAC is welcome to join.
• Person to contact: Youssef Harby

Who is coming:

• Youssef Harby
• Anthony Lukach
• Matthias Mohr

Wednesday 2 September

Room 6

Open Discussion on AI

• Time: Day 2, 11:00–12:00
• Description: Anyone curious about AI in open source, open data or generally any opinion, comments on AI. Everyone is welcome, everything is accepted.

Who is coming:

• Dennis Bauszus
• Json Singh
• Joana Simoes
• Luís de Sousa

Thursday 3 September

Introduction to Scipy-India

• Time: 11:00-11:15 am
• Description: Learn about Scipy in India
• Person to Contact: Shubham Sharma
• Contact-+91-8347668919

Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalog Meet the PSC

• Time: 12.20 pm - 1.00 pm
• Description: Grab your lunch, and then come along and meet the STAC PSC, find out what STAC is or how you can be involved.
• Person to contact: Alex Leith

Who is coming:

• Pete Gadomski
• Alex Leith
• Michelle Roby
• Matthias Mohr
• Matt Hanson
• Youssef Harby
• ??

QGIS Trainers Network

• Time: 1 pm
• Description: At FOSS4G Europe 2025, a group of QGIS trainers and other open source geospatial educators got together for a Birds of a Feather, and established an informal "QGIS Trainers Network". There are a lot of people at FOSS4G this week who deliver QGIS training in their respective communities. This is a great chance to get together, compare notes, and join the network! Trainers in other open source tools might also be interested - everyone welcome!
• Person to contact: John Bryant

Who is coming:

• John Bryant
• Michał Żugajewicz
• ??