FOSSASIA 2011 in Van Lang University is attracting many developers and interested students. We have a big hall that is filled for most of the talks and some seminar rooms where we have some intense talks, discussions and workshop to get hands on experience.
We had a get together of speakers and participants at the Spotted Cow Bar in the center of Saigon. It is a nice group of people and looks like everyone really enjoyed the first meet up at the FOSSASIA conference.
The FOSSASIA Speaker Registration form is online available at http://fossasia.org/speaker-registration
We are using a simple Google form. So you can also access the form directly here: Speaker Registration Form
Please fill in your information to get a slot!
We are looking forward to welcome you at FOSSASIA 2011.
FOSSASIA was prominently featured on the Google Open Source Blog. I wrote a short sum up of the student summer projects.
FOSSASIA is participating in Google Summer of Code for the first time this summer. The goal of the FOSSASIA network is to bring young Open Source developers together with experienced international developers to join or start new Free and Open Source projects.
FOSSASIA’s Google Summer of Code projects focus on open source for social change and communication. All the students are putting in a lot of effort, however their progress is varying as students have different skill levels.
The project of “foo-script” (Adam Rakowski) is moving forward most quickly. He expands the uses for the next Crypto-Stick (an USB hardware device with an integrated openGPG smart card firmware) edition and develops plugins for popular applications like Firefox. With the Stick you can easily encrypt your emails and achieve convenient online authentication.
Secondly Chanrithy Thim, the MoonOS developer from Cambodia has been improving Appshell, a framework for applications that lets developers easily create application bundles. A single file contains all the data and files needed to run an application, so all a user has to do is to launch it.
Google Summer of Code projects will be presented at this year’s FOSSASIA Summit taking place in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on November 11-13, 2011.
Links:
* http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/08/whos-new-in-google-summer-of-code-part.html
FOSSASIA 2011 was announced officially during the Desktop Summit in Berlin by Chanrithy Thim and Mario Behling from the organization committee. FOSSASIA 2011 will take place from November 11-12 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a special focus on “Women in IT” and “Mobile Applications”.
“We had amazing people gathering at events in previous years, starting with FOSS Bridge in 2007 and 2008, GNOME.Asia in 2009, and FOSSASIA and the Open Design Weeks Asia in 2010. With the fantastic support of people from all over the world FOSSASIA 2011 is a place to meet the community, government officials and open source IT businesses. There are many opportunities to learn about existing projects and to meet people to start new software projects.” says Hong Phuc DANG, chair of the event.
The OpenDesign Weeks Asia took place throughout South Vietnam in 2011 and 2012. The idea of the row of events was to bring together participants under the motto “All About Sharing” of graphic designs, Libre Graphics, Open Source Software, open content and Free Culture Practices, FashionTec and the maker community. We were proud to welcome hundreds of people talking to designers from Asia, Europe and the US.
Events during the design weeks include workshops, design camps to share expertise in an unconference, company meet ups to establish international cooperations, presentations in Universities and training workshops.
Special thanks go to the Open Source Publishing Group (OSP), who have formed a group of 8 people to come over to participate in the events.
FOSSASIA has been accepted as a mentor organization for Google Summer of Code 2011.
About GSOC: Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 4,500 students and more than more than 4,000 mentors & co-mentors from over 85 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all. (http://socghop.appspot.com/) More info also on the Google Open Source blog: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com
We are now looking for students interested to join GSOC and for mentors who would like to take on student projects.
The FOSSASIA 2011 projects focuses on Internationalization projects, GUI development to make tools available for a wider public in Asia and around the world, and on software supporting social change, e.g. for environmental protection. Please post you ideas in the wiki and on the mailing list. Starting from March 28 to April 8 students can apply on the GSOC website to become scholars for 2011.
Here are some links:
* FOSSASIA Ideas Page: http://wiki.fossasia.org/index.php/GSoC_Ideas
Please browse through ideas that people have already put up and post your own ideas.
* FOSSASIA mailing list
Join the mailing list and discuss project ideas: http://groups.google.com/group/fossasia
* FOSSASIA on Google Melange
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/fossasia
* Timeline
March 28: 19:00 UTC Student application period opens.
April 8: 19:00 UTC Student application deadline.
* Events
There are events informing students about GSOC 2011 all over the world. Check out http://goo.gl/aKBQ4
One event in Asia where you can get more info about the FOSSASIA GSOC project is the Open Design Camp Saigon.
http://opendesign.asia
Sunday, 3 April, 2010, 9.00-17.00
University of Fine Arts, Đại học Mỹ thuật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
5 Phan Dang Luu, Dist. Binh Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118997938175310
Registration: http://goo.gl/zljbL
All the best and good luck to all applicants!
Thanks to all you folks who came by and Thank you for Preetam on posting some nice comments and photos about the event. And last but not least, thank you to the great hosts from the Hackerspace.sg.
“One point they made strongly was that having a local partner would ease a lot of pain, right from registering your company to collecting market data. Hong Phuc talked about her method of working with local universities and government agencies to gather customer data.”
Vietnam has one of the fastest growing online population in the region, probably globally too. Vietnam is also seeing growth in IT companies exploring the local market and setting up offshoring centers.
Vietnam-based entrepreneurs and FOSSASIA event organizers Dang Hong Phuc and Mario Behling are visiting Singapore and will be talking about the startup and tech scene in VN and what opportunities there might be for collaboration (tech events, open source, women in IT etc.).
The Open Design Weeks Asia take place in Hochi Minh City and Cantho (Vietnam) from April 2-16, 2011. The program has been announced. There will be an Open Design Camp in Saigon and intensive workshops in Cantho.
The focus of the Open Design Weeks are on design, Free, Libre and Open Source software, open content and Free Culture practices. Events during the design weeks include workshops, design camps to share expertise an unconference, company meet ups to establish international cooperations, presentations in Universities and training workshops. The intensive workshops with local designers, software developers and typographers focus on collaborative font design, mapping and publication.
This will be a great chance to get involved in some new and exciting projects
Open Design Weeks: http://opendesign.asia