Organisers
Alex Leith
Conference Co-Chair + Sponsorship, Finance
Alex is an open geospatial technologist; a global leader in the field of Earth observation with a track record in delivering operational data infrastructure. He has extensive expertise in software development, cloud infrastructure, and program governance. Beyond all that, he is a founding Director of OSGeo Oceania and former Chair of the organisation. He enjoys organising small and large events, including as Chair of last year’s FOSS4G SotM Oceania event in Hobart. And... he runs a cloud native geospatial consultancy = https://auspatious.com/
LinkedIn
BlueSky
Simon Nitz
Conference Co-Chair + Program, Finance
Simon is the Geospatial Lead at Whanganui District Council, a local government organisation in New Zealand. With 35+ years in the industry, he is highly regarded throughout Australia and New Zealand as a leader in his field. He has provided GIS consulting services to organisations in the region, focusing on FOSS4G desktop and web mapping solutions. For a stand out 16 years, in the 90’s and 00’s, Simon was chair of the MapInfo User Group in New Zealand. More recently, he has been involved in organising FOSS4G SotM Oceania events.
LinkedIn
GeoSpatial Whanganui
Elisa Puccioni (Eli)
Travel Grant Program
Elisa is a Senior Data Manager with over 15 years’ experience as a GIS specialist and database administrator. Originally from Italy, she moved to New Zealand in 2008 and has worked at Kenex Ltd, a GIS consultancy, delivering projects across mineral exploration, renewables, land management, and environmental science. She has been involved with OSGeo Oceania since 2019, serving as Board Member, Chair, and Deputy Chair. During this time, she redesigned and implemented OSGeo Oceania’s current grant scheme and has coordinated the Travel Grant Program for the FOSS4G Oceania conference for the past three years.
LinkedIn
Dawn Hendrick
Communications, Merch
Starting her professional career as a geologist/seismic geophysicist, Dawn now has more than 40 years of cartographic experience. She runs her own part-time consultancy, DH Geodata Services, compiling maps for mining, engineering and environmental companies both in Australia and overseas. Though based in Tasmania, she was a Spatial Science Teacher with TafeNSW for 5 years, a position she retired from in 2023. She has run courses using QGIS for the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI), now GeoSpatial Council of Australia (GCA), and for commercial operations with Alex Leith. She uses QGIS software with two volunteer organisations who would not have a mapping capability otherwise. Dawn attended the first FOSS4G SotM Oceania conference in Melbourne back in 2018 and has attended every year (except 2022 in Fiji) since then. During COVID, she organised the Hobart Hub for 2020 and 2021. In November 2024, Dawn was an Organising Committee member for the Annual FOSS4G SotM Oceania Conference held in Hobart.
LinkedIn
Pierre Kurth
Logo Competition
Pierre is a seasoned Cartographer and GIS specialist with 20+ years of experience across print, digital, and spatial domains. Known for his hands-on approach and client-first mindset, he delivers impactful GIS training and guides organisations through seamless transitions to modern spatial systems. Since joining NGIS in 2022, he’s expanded his training expertise across both open-source and enterprise GIS platforms. Catch him at FOSS4G Auckland - he might just map his way into your next project.
LinkedIn
NGIS
Kamsin Raju (Kammy)
Side Events and adventure guide
Kamsin is one of the creative chaos agents behind the scenes! She is helping organise the Women in Geospatial Breakfast and the Geochicas side event - two spaces extremely close to her heart. She also dips her toes into various planning bits and pieces, and proudly crafted a playful adventure guide to help attendees explore Auckland. At work, she plays at the intersection of geospatial technology and climate resilience, focusing on remote sensing, blue carbon ecosystems, and disaster risk reduction in the Pacific. Her background includes everything from writing adaptation concept notes and slum upgrading strategies to leading user engagement for digital Earth platforms; a love of using GIS and storytelling to bring technical work to life and make it accessible for communities and decision-makers alike. Outside of work, you’ll find her lost in fantasy romance novels, experimenting in the kitchen, or planning her next escape. Kamsin has been part of the FOSS4G community since 2019, which has proven itself an inspiring space to grow in. She says: 'Bringing FOSS4G to Auckland this year is such an exciting full-circle moment!'
LinkedIn
Leo Ghignone
Volunteers, Program, Merch
Leo is an all-round helper for FOSS4G 2025 - doing the odd jobs, the invaluable bits ‘n’ pieces! By day, he is a computer scientist and software engineer. His focus and experience is in artificial intelligence as a data engineer for cloud-optimised geospatial data. Split between the AI and geospatial worlds, Leo’s current project naturally includes elements of both. He is thrilled to be part of a newly-established institute for international cooperation focused on developing technological tools and building expertise in local organisations operating in at-risk states in the Indo-Pacific region. His experience with FOSS4G started in 2023 with the Oceania conference in Auckland. Followed by volunteering to be part of the organising team for the 2024 edition in Hobart, where he lives, and is now excited to head back to Auckland for his first global FOSS4G experience.
LinkedIn
Nick Forbes-Smith
Website, AV and Entertainment
Nick is a Technical Leader and Software Engineer specialising in building Web platforms for data visualisation. He focuses on making data accessible and understandable to all, regardless of expertise.

Nick is committed to open data and open-source tools, and actively contributes to these communities. He's driven by projects that create meaningful, positive change.
Greg Lauer
Sponsorship, Travel Grant Program
Greg is a Geographer and is passionate about open data and geospatial technology. Originally from Auckland and now living in Brisbane he has worked in a range of technical and consulting roles across multiple industries including defence, construction and mining. He was a founding Director of OSGeo Oceania, and has been actively involved in organising FOSS4G SotM Oceania events. Outside of work Greg is an avid off road enthusiast and frequent traveler, especially in the Pacific region.
Hamish Campbell
Venues and Events
Hamish is a software engineering manager who’s been working in and around geospatial tech for over 15 years. He’s been a committed contributor to open source software and chaired the FOSS4G Oceania committee that brought the regional conference to New Zealand in 2023. He recently started a new role as Head of Engineering for Urban Intelligence - building software for resilient communities in the face of a changing environment.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hncampbell/
https://bsky.app/profile/polemic.nz
Daniel Silk
Registrations
Daniel is a data engineering product owner who works with Aotearoa’s openly available aerial imagery, elevation and bathymetry data holdings. Daniel has been working with open geospatial technologies for over 10 years and was a founding director of OSGeo Oceania. He has also previously chaired the FOSS4G SotM Oceania conference series, bringing it to Wellington in 2019. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking in our native forests (tramping!), tackling a long list of DIY projects and trying to keep up with three kids.
Jessie Lindsay
TGP Breakfast
Jessie is a geospatial analyst who has spent the past seven years working in environmental consulting. She’s passionate about using open source tools to tackle environmental challenges and is always keen to learn new approaches. At FOSS4G 2025 in Auckland, Jessie is excited to have the opportunity to work with the Travel Grant Program to help bring as many people to the FOSS4G conference as possible from across the world. When she’s not at a computer, you’ll usually find her out paddle boarding or tinkering with DIY electronics projects.
Martin Tomko
Academic Papers
Martin is a spatial information scientist at the Univeristy of Melbourne. He mostly does computational research in how people interact in and about space now and in the past, using and developing open-source tools. He has work on mobility, Geo question-answering, epidemiology, cultural heritage, and more.
Dr Ivana Ivánová
Academic Papers
Ivana currently works as a senior teaching & research academic Spatial Sciences at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Ivana’s research interests and expertise are in spatial data quality, metadata and provenance of spatial resources, and spatial information infrastructures. In her teaching, she is an advocate and promotor of the FOSS4G tools, currently helping students to develop open standards-compliant geoweb applications. Ivana is an OSGeo Charter Member and represents Curtin University at UN-GGIM Academic Network. She also volunteers at OSGeo’s Geo4All where she coordinates the PostGIS training for the UN OpenGIS Initiative. Ivana co-chairs Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)’s Domain Working Group on Data Quality, develops ISO standards for geographic information quality and convenes various advisory groups at ISO/TC211.
David Ramiro
Website
So much to say - we're still putting the words together!
Phoebe Adams
Volunteers
Phoebe is a contributor to many open source projects, in the Geospatial space, mostly OpenStreetMap. Currently living in Auckland, she is studying towards a Bachelor of Computer and Information Science majoring in Software Development and Digital Communication at AUT.
Michel M Nzikou
Committee Member
Michel works as a research fellow at the Center of Exploration Targeting (CET), at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He is a data enthusiast with a focus on building QGIS plugins for Geological and Geophysical 3D modelling. A part being an organising committee member, he is the ASEG WA Branch president and part of the MAG 24 committee. Outside work, he enjoys playing volleyball and is also a team member of Fury River Dragon boat for 4 years.
Byron Cochrane
Committee Member
So much to say - we're still putting the words together!
Lanieta Rokotuiwakaya (Lani)
Committee Member
So much to say - we're still putting the words together!
Colin Mazengarb
Committee Member
So much to say - we're still putting the words together!
Anne Harper
Committee Member
So much to say - we're still putting the words together!
FOSS4G Auckland 2025
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