FOSS4G Auckland 2025: Tech Trends and People

Introduction

Hello, everyone.

I’m Yamazaki, an Engineering Manager at MIERUNE.

Lately (in 2025), FOSS4G events have been very active in regions across Japan.

This fiscal year, a total of five FOSS4G events in Japan, from Kyushu to Hokkaido, are being held.

A FOSS4G event is a gathering where you can learn about FOSS4G (free and open source software for geospatial) technologies, hear presentations on how people use them, and meet other participants.

FOSS4G events are of course held around the world, too. One of them is a world-class event held once a year, and we call it FOSS4G Global.

In 2025, FOSS4G Global was held in Auckland, New Zealand.

My company gave me the opportunity to go to FOSS4G Auckland 2025, both to attend and to present.

FOSS4G Auckland 2025 was a long event, lasting five days plus a bit more, and it featured many QGIS-related workshops and sessions.

Since I am reporting for QGIS LAB, it would have been nice to share more QGIS-related information. However, I was drawn to a wide variety of FOSS4G topics beyond QGIS and related technologies, and I tended to attend those talks.

I don’t have much QGIS-related information to share, but the event was a lot of fun and very motivating, so I’d like to tell you what it was like.

Overview of FOSS4G Auckland 2025

FOSS4G Auckland 2025 ran from November 17 to 23, 2025, on the schedule below.

It had three main parts. The first part was the workshops, followed by the conference, the main event, with many session presentations. Last came Community Events and Code Sprints, with far fewer participants.

Three people from MIERUNE, including me, attended the event. We left Narita Airport on Friday, November 14, and flew back to Narita from Auckland International Airport on Monday, November 24.

The venue was Auckland University of Technology in Auckland, a beautiful, wonderful venue within walking distance of the sea.

Since it was a university, the inside of the building was stylish and highly functional (there were many desks and chairs, and power outlets were often available).

Now, on to the report, focusing on QGIS-related topics.

Workshops (11/17 to 11/18)

The workshops were held over two days, in half-day slots, either morning or afternoon.

https://2025.foss4g.org/program/workshops

The fee was 50 New Zealand dollars per workshop, or a little under 5,000 yen. Considering the content, that is very cheap.

The workshops took place in rooms like this one.

There were a great many workshops, and the QGIS-related ones were as follows. There were quite a few.

• QField & QFieldCloud: Hands-On Fieldwork Workshop
• Cartography for Rebels: Building Beautiful Maps with Free Tools Workshop
• International QField Day Workshop
• QGIS Graphical Modeler: Build Smarter Workflows with Algorithms and Expressions Workshop
• QGIS Plugin Development
• Cloud-based Remote Sensing with QGIS and Google Earth Engine Workshop
• Introduction to QField plugin authoring Workshop

I did not take any of the workshops above, but “Cartography for Rebels: Building Beautiful Maps with Free Tools Workshop” drew a very large turnout, and the lecture slides I caught a glimpse of looked fun and full of energy.

The two workshops I took were not directly related to QGIS:

• Exploring Cloud-Native Geospatial Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data Workshop
• Running and Auto Scaling Geoserver and PostgreSQL/PostGIS without managing servers in the AWS cloud Workshop

“Exploring Cloud-Native Geospatial Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data Workshop” was about gaining a deep understanding of cloud-native raster formats: COG, which is often used in QGIS as well, and Zarr, which is expected to see more use in the future.

It was my first time taking an educational workshop like this at a FOSS4G event, and I learned a lot.

There are frequent breaks throughout the event, and the workshop days also had breaks, with coffee and light snacks provided.

The breaks during the workshops had an atmosphere that made it easy for participants to start talking. You could chat with the people at your table about the lecture or about each other’s work.

The person I talked to was an engineer from New Zealand, who told me they use QField to map places such as farms. As I also felt on the Core Day, I got the impression that New Zealand is ahead of Japan in QField adoption, or rather in using it in the field.

Conference (11/19 to 11/21)

The conference was the main event this time, with many session presentations and a lavish dinner event.

More people came to the venue, too.

The session schedule is of course published in advance, so I had a rough idea of which talks to attend. Still, to reconsider which sessions to go to, I kept dropping by the “Today’s Schedule” sheet in front of reception.

During the conference, except when I had to do some work that couldn’t wait, I basically just kept listening to sessions that caught my interest.

The QGIS-related sessions I attended (including QField) were as follows.

• QGIS Feature Frenzy
• QGIS "Ask me Anything" session
• QGIS and Democracy - Defining New Zealand’s Electoral Boundaries
• Fighting Invasive Predators with Open Source | How QField Empowers ZIP’s Mission for a Predator-Free New Zealand

The following two sessions introduced recently added QGIS features and let attendees ask QGIS core developers anything about QGIS.

• QGIS Feature Frenzy
• QGIS "Ask me Anything" session

If you follow QGIS LAB, many of the features presented were ones QGIS LAB has already covered, so I think there was nothing new for you. Still, as a chance to look back, it was a very enjoyable session.

In the Q&A, there were questions such as “Why can’t QGIS features work on Mac at the same level as on Windows?” and questions about the direction of QGIS Server.

The answer was, roughly, “We’re working on a limited budget, so we’re doing our best on the parts that help the most users” (this is a loose paraphrase). After hearing this, I ended up donating to QGIS when I got back to Japan.

This session was memorable.

• Fighting Invasive Predators with Open Source | How QField Empowers ZIP’s Mission for a Predator-Free New Zealand

The published abstract, machine-translated into Japanese, reads as follows (shown here in English). As far as I know, ZIP had made its field surveys more efficient with QFieldCloud at the largest data volume I know of. I want to make good use of FOSS4G tools like this and achieve the kind of business reform that takes root in the field.

Zero Invasive Predators (ZIP), a New Zealand-based charity, has set itself a bold mission: to eliminate invasive predators and restore New Zealand’s native ecosystems. To tackle this challenge, ZIP uses a powerful open source geospatial stack (QGIS, QField, and QFieldCloud) to link technical planning with fieldwork.

This talk shows how ZIP’s field teams use QField and QFieldCloud to collect accurate data efficiently in remote areas and sync updates instantly. This near real-time feedback loop enables fast, data-driven decision-making in the fight against invasive species.

Besides the QGIS-related topics, the sessions covered a truly wide variety of FOSS4G subjects. They are a valuable chance to catch up on unfamiliar technologies and recent tech trends, so I thought that even people who normally only use QGIS can gain a lot from listening to non-QGIS talks.

This is just my personal impression, but there seemed to be a lot of Zarr talks and a lot of interest in Zarr at FOSS4G Auckland 2025.

The three of us from MIERUNE also each gave a presentation.

We have written a participation report about the presentations here, so take a look if you are interested.

At the conference’s Closing Ceremony, the location of next year’s FOSS4G Global was announced.

The location is none other than Hiroshima, Japan!

So next year, we can attend this wonderful event without worrying about airfare.

The event overview has already been published. I recommend starting to prepare now, for example by saving the dates or asking your employer about attending.

QGIS Community Day Event (11/22 to 11/23)

Community Events and Code Sprints were held on the Saturday and Sunday after the main event.

Participation was free, and you could join in wherever your skills and interests intersect: not only FOSS4G development but also translation, documentation, feedback, discussion, and so on.

https://2025.foss4g.org/program/community-day

The actual turnout was quite small, I think fewer than 20 people.

There was no designated room. We were told, “Use any free space you like!” So people naturally gathered, and some worked quietly on their own tasks while others asked questions. It was a pretty free-form space.

I was able to ask the people I had wanted to ask directly about things I had been wondering about, which was very worthwhile.

However, I regret that I could not contribute to FOSS4G there. Now that I know how things work, I felt that I want to work toward making a real contribution at next year’s event.

Conclusion

FOSS4G Auckland 2025 was a wonderful opportunity, not only for technical learning but also for meeting people from FOSS4G communities around the world.

It was my first time attending an overseas FOSS4G event, and I was deeply moved to meet well-known people I had known from the internet, as well as developers of the technologies and software I rely on every day. It may sound cheap, but I felt that “the world really is connected” and that “I have to contribute something, too,” and my motivation grew.

I look forward to seeing more people from Japan attend next year’s event in Hiroshima and contribute as members of this community.

QGIS LAB readers, I hope you will consider joining FOSS4G Hiroshima 2026, too!