Areeb Jamal Forever in our Hearts and our Memory

Areeb was a truly good person with a diverse and very interesting personality with so much to discover. He had a special humor as one could see in his tagline on social media “Coder . Introvert . Gruelingly Boring”. He was not an introvert when he worked on software. He shared his knowledge with the world openly and freely. He wanted to make the world a better place. He helped so many to learn how to use and develop technologies. He was an amazing person, a brilliant developer. I wanted to talk to him many times and ask him to change his tagline. I thought it was just not correct. That is not him. But, I also thought this is his way and idea to show himself. So, I never asked him to change it.

I had the chance to meet him only a few times in person. I always hoped we would have an opportunity to live together in the same city for some time and I can get to know him better. We were building a friendship while we have worked together since 2017. Over the last two years we communicated several times nearly each day. He was working very hard, extremely hard and we both shared a passion for the projects we worked on together. I could send him a message at any time and to my surprise he responded right away even at 2 AM. I asked him to take some time off, but when he traveled somewhere he still responded to questions of other developers from his phone. He was so supportive to everyone.

He was a straightforward person, but respectful of people in his communication. It is sometimes difficult for me to find the right words in discussions with developers from India and all around the world, but with Areeb it was all possible. He could always make things work. Areeb achieved to create an amazingly efficient collaborative environment where developers and community contributors could thrive and we could build something together that was valued by thousands around the world. Some of the most outstanding developers in the world used what Areeb built when they joined our annual event online just a month ago. It was a good feeling.

Areeb was a fighter for free speech, privacy, justice and democracy. He did not do it with big words, sometimes he shared his views online, but mostly he tried to change the world more through his actions and work in the open source and free software community. 

The memes and cartoons he shared often had a sarcastic touch and I believe this gave him strength to continue despite a lot of injustices that happened in his home country India and around him. Once he shared a photo of Modi with Shahrukh and Aamir Khan and wrote “Best actor of India with Shahrukh and Aamir Khan” it made me laugh and at the same time the laughter got stuck in my throat when I thought about politics in India. But, this was the humor of Areeb. 

He was not as geeky as he might have appeared to some. Only today I saw his post of his computer set up last month with a lot of colorful blinking lights. He liked to learn about the world, watch and read about science, nature and humanity. Besides all the scientific and political literature he also liked a book with a love story – though with a love story with a challenge – and he also liked all the Harry Potter books.

While I never saw any attempt of him dancing I know that he liked Indian music, Bollywood, Elvis Presley and Enrique Iglesias. Our tastes of music were not so different, but we will never have the chance to enjoy them together now. 

Traveling was difficult for him as he had to deal with corrupt and bureaucratic administration to even get travel documents. When he was finally getting a passport the pandemic made it impossible for us to meet again in Singapore.

I am grateful that I had the chance to meet Areeb in Hyderabad and Delhi and spent time with him. Last year we organized the OpenTechSummit India as a small event in Delhi and discussed our plans for the future. He was getting on board as a full time developer with FOSSASIA and we discussed our ideas to make projects into their own Open Source companies. Areeb was too young to leave us. For many years we were working with different people and great developers in the community, but to find Areeb with such a strong dedication and understanding of technology and logic – this was a once-in-a-lifetime lucky chance. Areeb wanted to go further and built an example of a technology project and company that is doing good. He wanted to prove that his and our ideas to create a free, respecting and sharing world is possible. Areeb, you are leaving a huge gap. We will miss you forever.

GitHub: https://github.com/iamareebjamal

Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamareebjamal

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamareebjamal/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IamAreebJamal

Continue ReadingAreeb Jamal Forever in our Hearts and our Memory

Welcome the Visdom Project at FOSSASIA Now Fully Open Source

We are proud to announce that FOSSASIA is welcoming the Visdom project. The project is being transitioned from Facebook AI Research to the FOSSASIA Organization. As part of this transition it has been relicensed to the Apache License 2.0 as fully Open Source.

Visdom is a flexible tool for creating, organizing, and sharing visualizations of live, rich data. It aims to facilitate visualization of (remote) data with an emphasis on supporting scientific experimentation. It supports PyTorch and Numpy

Visdom was created in 2017 by Allan Jabri and Laurens van der Maaten of Facebook AI Research, and further developed under the leadership of Jack Urbanek. To date, 90 developers from around the world have contributed to the project with over 3000 projects depending on Visdom. It is now available on the FOSSASIA GitHub.

“I’m excited to see how Visdom continues to grow as a FOSSASIA project, as the community will set a new vision for what we all want out of it. While I’ll no longer be leading the project, I will remain engaged to provide clear context for transitions, code reviews, and direct code contributions.”

Jack Urbanek, Facebook Research Engineer and Visdom project lead

“My goal continues to be building amazing communities around state of the art AI rooted in open source collaboration. Bringing the Visdom project to FOSSASIA is a great example of this and I am extremely pleased to see the project continue this path with FOSSASIA as the new host of Visdom.”

Joe Spisak, Product Manager for Facebook’s open-source AI platform and PyTorch

FOSSASIA has been developing Open Source software applications and Open Hardware together with a global community from its base in Asia since 2009. FOSSASIA’s goal is to provide access to open technologies, science applications and knowledge that improve people’s lives stating in its mission: “We want to enable people to adapt and change technology according to their own ideas and needs and validate science and knowledge through an Open Access approach.” 

This mission perfectly aligns with the goals of Visdom as an Open Source tool that aims to:

  • Facilitate visualization of data with an emphasis on supporting scientific experimentation and 
  • Organize a visualization space programmatically or through the UI to create dashboards for live data, inspect results of experiments, or debug experimental code.

Hong Phuc Dang, OSI vice president and FOSSASIA founder says:

“We will continue the development of Visdom in cooperation with the developer and user community. We already discussed lots of ideas to move forward on an exciting roadmap with the core team and adding it to FOSSASIA’s Pocket Science Lab applications. We are looking forward to the input and involvement of the community to bring the project to the next level.”

Mario Behling, co-founder of FOSSASIA and CEO of OpnTec adds:

“We are thrilled that the Visdom project becomes fully Open Source as part of the project transition. It is fantastic to see how Facebook supports open technologies and takes an active role to foster International cooperation and development in the FOSS ecosystem by making this transition. I would like to thank Jack Urbanek who worked so hard on the project for years as well as the project creators Allan Jabri and Laurens van der Maaten, Joe Spisak whose role was essential in making this transition happen and the entire Facebook AI team.”

What are the plans for Visdom at FOSSASIA?

The short term plans are to establish all project channels to enable the developer community to actively participate in the project. On the technical side of things we are in the process of making the continuous integration work on the new deployment and adding tests and update checks. Visdom is also joining the Codeheat Coding Contest as a participating project. The contest runs until 30th June 2021.

Where is the list of issues?

The issue tracker is available on the code repository here: https://github.com/fossasia/visdom/ 

How can developers and users communicate?

Apart from adding issues in the issue tracker we invite you to join us on a dedicated chat channel here: https://gitter.im/fossasia/visdom. Login with GitHub, Gitlab or Twitter is required.

Where else is information about the next steps and the roadmap?

For technical discussions the issue tracker is the best place. To stay up to date about general project developments please follow us on:

Continue ReadingWelcome the Visdom Project at FOSSASIA Now Fully Open Source

Let’s Collaborate on Open Solutions at FOSSASIA

The FOSSASIA Summit 2020 in March already feels like an eternity away. With support from many contributors and sponsors we were able to pull off the event despite all the challenges. Thank you!

It has been impossible for FOSS contributors and Open Source companies since to organize in-person events, meet developers or collaborate on projects face to face.

There is not just a pandemic crisis happening right now, we see a violent political crisis in many regions of the world and also the climate crisis continues to affect people everywhere. These crises show more than ever that – just like in the FOSS community – we need everyone to collaborate on a global scale and to solve problems together with an open on all layers approach.

Below is some information on solutions we are working on at FOSSASIA and how we can team up in the Codeheat coding contest.

Let’s make Virtual Events Use Only FOSS/Open Source!

Currently we are integrating our hosted open source event solution with online video tools such as Jitsi or Big Blue Button. Right now many organizers depend on proprietary tools to run virtual events. Let’s change that. Check out the latest features of Open Event on eventyay.com, have a look at some of the upcoming events and sign up!

Let’s Develop Together and Share our Knowledge in Codeheat

We are running more and more activities online and we are adapting our annual coding contest Codeheat. We support participants by providing “Ask Me Anything” online support sessions, giving out more prizes every two months and extending the overall time of the contest until June 2021. Please join now at codeheat.org or contact us if your company would like to sponsor the program.

Let’s Make Science Truly Open Again with Pocket Science Lab

At FOSSASIA we believe it is only possible to solve our global issues by giving everyone access to open knowledge and tools. For this reason we are working on the miniaturization of science tools by developing the open hardware Pocket Science Lab.

Our goal is to create a science measurement device that is easy to handle, easy to transport, and easy to use. And of course it must fulfill the promise of science to provide every aspect of science openly starting with the hardware and software that collects data.

The PSLab can be connected to a smartphone and extend its capabilities. It enables everyone to collect data through sensors, control robots and to exchange data easily. Currently we are in the final steps of prototyping the next version which will come with an SD Card, on board real time clock, optional WiFi, Bluetooth, or Lora extensions, sleeping mode for datalogging and much more.

To learn more please download and test the project and start contributing to the repositories. Our weekly open hardware meetings take place every Saturday.
 

Continue ReadingLet’s Collaborate on Open Solutions at FOSSASIA

Announcing the FOSSASIA Codeheat Winners 2019/20

We are very happy to announce our Grand Prize Winners and Finalist Winners of Codeheat 2019/2020.

Codeheat participants solved a stunning number of issues in FOSSASIA’s projects, reviewed pull requests, shared scrums, and wrote blog posts, but most importantly they encouraged and helped each other and collaborated across borders and cultures. More than 800 developers from 19 countries participated in the contest supported by more than 30 mentors. Over 2000 pull requests were merged. Thank you all for this amazing achievement!

With so many excellent developers participating it was extremely difficult to decide the Grand Prize and Finalist Winners of the contest. Our winners stand out in particular as they contributed to FOSSASIA projects on a continuously high level following our Best Practices.

Each of the Grand Prize Winners is awarded a travel grant to join us at the FOSSASIA Summit in Singapore in March where they receive the official Codeheat award, and meet with mentors and FOSSASIA developers. Other Finalist Winners will receive travel support vouchers to go to a Free and Open Source Software event of their choice.

Congratulations to our Grand Prize Winners, Finalist Winners, and all of the participants who spent the last few of months learning, sharing and contributing to Free and Open Source Projects. Well-done! We are truly impressed by your work, your progress and advancement. The winners are (in alphabetical order):

Grand Prize Winners

Kush Trivedi
Prateek Jain
Suneet Srivastava

Finalist Winners

A.Dilshaad
Dheeraj Kotwani
Nitin Kumar
Pulkit Kashyap
Robin Singh
Sundaram Dubey
Shantnu Kumar

About Codeheat

Codeheat is an online coding contest organized by FOSSASIA and OpnTec annually from September to February since 2016. Grand prize winners are invited to present their work at the FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit in Singapore every March and receive travel funding to attend. Mentors and the Codeheat jury choose three winners from the top 10 contributors according to code quality and relevance of commits for the project. The jury also takes other contributions like submitted scrum reports and technical blog posts into account. Other participants have the chance to win Tshirts, Swag and vouchers to attend Open Tech events in their region and get certificates of participation.

Thank you Mentors and Supporters

Our mentors and many project developers, the heart and soul of Codeheat, are the reason the contest thrives. Mentors volunteer their time to help participants become open source contributors. Mentors spend hundreds of hours during answering questions, reviewing submitted code, and welcoming the new developers to project. Codeheat would not be possible without their patience and tireless efforts. Learn more about this year’s mentors on the Codeheat website.

Certificate of Participation

Participating developers, mentors and the FOSSASIA admin team learnt so much and it was an amazing and enriching experience and we believe the learnings are the main take-away of the program. We hope to see everyone continuing their contributions, sharing what they have learnt with others and to seize the opportunity to develop their code profile with FOSSASIA. We want to work together with the Open Tech community to improve people’s lives and create a better world for all. As a participating developer or mentor, you will receive your certificate over the upcoming weeks. Thank you!

More Links

Continue ReadingAnnouncing the FOSSASIA Codeheat Winners 2019/20

FOSSASIA Confirms Annual Summit Takes Place from March 19-21 + DevSprints on March 22 at Lifelong Learning Institute in Singapore

We are glad to announce that the annual FOSSASIA Summit will take place from 19-21 March and the DevSprints on March 22, 2020 at the Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) in Singapore after official meetings confirming that relevant measures are put in place to ensure the health and safety after the Covid-19 crisis.

Singapore has been widely praised in the International community for preventing the spread of the virus, a Harvard study hails the country as a gold standard for case detection. 

The FOSSASIA organization and LLI are following all recommendations of the Ministry of Health and taking necessary measures throughout the event. These include among others: Carrying out temperature screening for all attendees, providing health information on each day, adding prominent notices at entrances about hygiene measures, that are put in place throughout the venue, offering excellent bathroom and hand washing facilities, providing free disinfectants, increasing the frequency of cleaning of commonly used areas and more. 

Everyone can help to prevent the spread by following hygiene measures and regularly washing hands. The FAQ of the ministry of health is a good starting point to learn more about the virus and how Singapore is stopping its spreading.

The FOSSASIA Summit program will be online next week. We are happy that we are able to run the event with the help of the Lifelong Learning Institute and we cannot wait to see you in Singapore! 

Global issues, pollution, the threat of climate change, new illnesses, lack of education and poverty show more than ever that it is vital that we all work together to save the planet. Only through open collaboration and sharing can we solve the problems of the world. We need to meet and share our experiences. Events like the FOSSASIA Summit are an important platform. Rest assured we are taking all necessary steps to ensure the continued health and safety of all participants at the event.

More information on the FOSSASIA Summit 2020 is here.

Please check out a list of confirmed speakers and sessions.

Communities interested in running a DevSprint on Sunday, March 22 can still register here.

See you in Singapore!

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA Confirms Annual Summit Takes Place from March 19-21 + DevSprints on March 22 at Lifelong Learning Institute in Singapore

Join Codeheat Coding Contest 2019/20

Master Git, contribute to Open Source, and win a trip to the FOSSASIA Summit Singapore with Codeheat! Codeheat is the annual coding contest for developers to contribute to Free and Open Source software (FOSS) and open hardware projects of FOSSASIA. Join development of real world software applications and win awesome prizes, build up your developer profile, learn new coding skills, collaborate with the community and make new friends from around the world! Sign up now for the fourth edition of Codeheat on the website and follow Codeheat on Twitter.

Start date: September 15, 2019

End date: February 2, 2020

Which Projects Participate

Open Event – Eventyay / Code / Chat

SUSI AI – Website / Code / Chat

Pocket Science Lab (PSLab) – Website / Code / Chat

Phimpme Android – App / Code / Chat

Meilix Linux Distribution – Code / Chat

Voicerepublic – Website / Code / Chat

Badge Magic- App / Code / Chat

Neurolab – Code / Chat

Badgeyay – Website / Code / Chat

How to Join the Contest

  • The contest is open to everyone.
  • Participants can join at any time
  • Register on the site and check out the Frequently Asked Questions for more details.
  • Also join the FOSSASIA Gitter chat and communicate with mentors and follow developers on project specific channels. 

What are the Prizes

  • Winners (3 prizes): Listed on website, certificate, 600SGD travel voucher, 5-night accommodation in Singapore, Tshirt and FOSSASIA limited edition swags. 
  • Finalist (7 prizes): Listed on website, certificate, travel voucher of 100 SGD, Tshirt and FOSSASIA limited edition swags. 
  • Active Contributors (unlimited): Certificate, CodeHeat Tshirt and FOSSASIA limited edition of swags (with at least 10 merged pull requests)
  • Community Participants (unlimited): Digital Certificate of Participation (with at least 5 merged pull requests)

What are the Judging Criteria

Our jury will review the work of the 10 developers who have the highest number of quality contributions during the contest. Contributions include pull requests/code commits, scrum reports, articles, screencasts, community engagement and outreach activities. The mentors will look at the:  

Sustainability, which means that we specifically value contributions that make the project sustainable by building a community where developers collaborate with each other in a friendly way and support the project development through peer reviews, on-boarding new members, and helping fellow contributors. It also means that, while code is the most important success criteria for winning the contest, furthermore we are looking for contributions in other areas to make projects easy to join, to deploy and to use. This includes:

  • creating and enhancing documentation
  • developing how-tos
  • writing technical blog posts
  • sharing work in regular scrum updates to enhance communication
  • organizing local meetups, workshops, presentations 

Quality vs. Quantity: The sheer number of pull requests is not the only criteria for choosing the winners. Quality work is appreciated – some issues are more challenging than others just by their nature (for example, heavy coding versus solving a text typo bug). It is entirely possible that someone who completed 53 issues could be chosen as a winner over someone who completed 88 issues.

How Are the Winners Decided

  • Grand Prize Winners: Three developers will be selected by mentors from the top 10 contributors according to code quality, relevance of commits and contributions that help to bring the project forward.  
  • Finalist Winners: After the grand prize winners are selected, the remaining seven contributors of top the 10 will receive finalist winner prizes.
  • Other contributors who have more than 10 merged pull requests during the contest will receive a Thank you package. Anyone who has 5 pull requests merged will receive a digital certificate.

Links

Website: codeheat.org

Codeheat Twitter: twitter.com/codeheat_

FOSSASIA Twitter: twitter.com/fossasia

Codeheat Facebook: facebook.com/codeheat.org

Continue ReadingJoin Codeheat Coding Contest 2019/20

Open is Becoming the New Common Foundation across Business, Government, Science, and Industry

Interview with Shanker V Selvadurai, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Cloud and Cognitive Software for IBM Asia Pacific

Could you briefly introduce yourself?

I am Shanker Selvadurai and currently the Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Cloud and Cognitive Software for IBM Asia Pacific. I am based in Singapore and lead the technical organization that helps clients across Asia Pacific to explore and co-create cloud-based solutions that leverage data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to deliver better decisions and outcomes.

I joined IBM in 2006.  Prior to IBM, I held key leadership positions in areas of research, development, consulting, sales and marketing with technology companies like AT&T, NCR and Fujitsu as well as start-up BlueGill Technologies. During this period I lead teams varying in size from 6 to over 1,000 while being based in North America, Europe and Asia.

I have a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Business Administration. I am also an Open Group Certified Distinguished Architect. Besides having published international patents/papers, I have actively contributed to international technology standards committees that include the IFX Forum, OFX Consortium and the Microsoft Advisory Council. I was also an adjunct lecturer at the Singapore Management University, teaching courses related to Services Science and Advanced Business Technology.

Tell us about your session at the FOSSASIA Summit, what will you cover?

At the FOSSASIA Summit, I am participating in a panel on “Business, Government, Science – What Opportunities Does “Open” Bring to Society”.  I hope to share IBM’s involvement in the open source movement, how businesses like IBM benefit from open source, as well as share thoughts about approaching open contribution and open governance in the future.

Shanker V Selvadurai handing over IBM Cloud Prize for Hackathon Winners

Business, Government, Science – What Opportunities Does “Open” Bring to Society from your point of view?

Open is becoming the new common foundation across business, government, science, and industry today.  For example, companies that still compete head-to-head in the marketplace are coming together to collaborate in open source communities.  They contribute to open source software and use it in their own IT systems and applications. They gain a competitive advantage — even though they may be helping their competitors in the short run.  The data demonstrates that companies with open source programs see more benefits from open source code and community participation.

IBM Connecting with Open Source Community at FOSSASIA Summit
International IBM Team Participating in FOSSASIA Summit

What is the role of Free Open Source Software in cloud and AI solutions in IBM?

Our offering portfolio, especially for our growth initiatives such as cloud and AI, is based on a solid foundation of open technologies.  Most of our strategic initiatives are founded on open source projects or communities, and we work across a wide variety of internal stakeholders to ensure that that the contributions we make to the community also provide greater value to our clients.

IBM Training on Open Source Cloud and AI Technologies at FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit
Many Open Source Developers Connect with IBM At the Booth

What was your motivation to work for IBM and to participate in the FOSSASIA Summit?

IBM has a long history as a leader in, and supporter of open source communities, most notably in the Apache, Linux, and Eclipse Foundations.  I joined IBM to help continue this tradition and I am looking forward to discussing new ideas to help build the future of open source at FOSSASIA Summit.

Which FOSS projects in the area of cloud and AI can interested developers contribute in IBM? In which domains could you use some help?

IBM believes that communities with open governance and an inclusive philosophy will attract the largest ecosystems and markets.  For a listing of some of the top open source projects that IBM believes represent significant opportunity areas, I would like to share with information how IBM supports high-impact open source projects here.

Participants from Around the World Following IBM Keynote on FOSS Collaboration

Which new features can we expect in IBM cloud and AI this year? Do you plan to release any new projects as FOSS?

Most of our strategic initiatives today are founded on open source projects or communities (Cloud Native Computing, Hyperledger, CD Foundation, etc.), and we work across a wide variety of internal stakeholders to ensure that that the contributions we make to the community also provide greater value to our clients. For a specific example of open source innovation from IBM, please check out the Egeria Project, which was founded in part by IBM.

Shanker V Selvadurai with Panelists and FOSSASIA Founder Ms. Hong Phuc Dang at the Singapore Summit 2019

As well, at the FOSSASIA Summit in Singapore, IBM shares the “Call for Code Global Challenge, which IBM is the Founding Partner.  

This multi-year global initiative rallies developers to create practical, effective, and high-quality applications based on cloud, data, and artificial intelligence that can have an immediate and lasting impact on humanitarian issues.  Call for Code brings startup, academic, and enterprise developers together and inspires them to solve the most pressing societal issues of our time. Building on the success of the 2018 competition, the 2019 Call for Code Global Challenge again asks developers to create solutions that significantly improve preparedness for natural disasters and accelerate relief when they hit. This year’s challenge introduces an emphasis on individual health and community wellbeing. This includes solutions that can reduce the risk of disease, improve access to data and the availability of resources, and address the mental health needs of those impacted before, during, and after disasters.

Hands-on Training with IBM Cloud and AI Experts at FOSSASIA Summit
Hands-on Training with IBM Cloud and AI Experts at FOSSASIA Summit
Continue ReadingOpen is Becoming the New Common Foundation across Business, Government, Science, and Industry

10 Years FOSSASIA Anniversary OpenTechSummit 2019 Taking Place in Singapore

We are thrilled to update you with the amazing line-up at the 10 Years Anniversary Summit. The event is co-organized by the Lifelong Learning Institute and SkillsFuture under the theme “The Future is FOSS”.

Highlights of the FOSSASIA Anniversary Summit 2019 include:

  • Thu Mar 14 12:30 – Sun Mar 17 16:00 Exhibition: Showcases and job opportunities with tech companies and FOSS projects: Overview
  • Fri Mar 15 9:00 Cloud and AI Workshops: Join us for two intensive workshops with IBM experts from around the world on the latest technologies, development and deployment covering ‘Cloud, Containers and DevOps’ and developing ‘Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence’ applications at the FOSSASIA Summit. Seats are limited. Sign up here.
  • Fri March 15 16:30 SUSI.AI – Create Skills for Your AI Solution: Sign up
  • Fri Mar 15 / Sat Mar 16 19:00 FOSSASIA Academy: Learn new tech skills in free introductory level technology workshops conducted with BuildingBloCS Computing students from Singapore. Topics include Introduction to Python, ML with Python, SQLite, MongoDB,  Vue.js, SUSI.AI Sign up to reserve.
  • Fri Mar 15 – Sun Mar 17 OpenTech Hackathon with UNESCO: Build open source apps and win prizes. Join Friday or Saturday.
  • Sat Mar 16 12:00 Capture the Community: Singapore Open Source Picture Taking and Birthday Cake. Join us
  • Sat Mar 16 13:30 Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Learn how to setup Kubernetes on Azure. Sign up here.
  • 12 Conference Tracks: Join talks by industry experts from IBM, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Flowchain, Red Hat, Alibaba, Sysdig, Pivotal, Elastic, Codethink, Gitcoin and open source projects like VLC, Linux, CentOS, SELinux, Debian, Kubernetes, Lionsforge, Tensorflow, PostgreSQL, MySQL, FreeBSD, ReactJS, the Blockchain community as well as hardware experts from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, ARM, Bunnie Huang from Chibitronics, Mitch Altman and many more. We will be covering Conference Tracks such as AI, Blockchain and Cybersecurity: Schedule
  • Daily: Social Events: Pub crawls and city tours along with other techies from around the world! Sign up.

Meet companies, FOSS projects and communities and do hands-on workshops in the Exhibition:

  • Participate in workshops like doing experiments with Pocket Science Lab or Learn Soldering with Mitch Altman (Thu Mar 14 14:00, Fri Mar 15 14:00, Sat Mar 16, 14:00)
  • Get together with community developers and reps from Fosdem, CCC, Openfest, Linux Foundation, OSI and many companies and projects in the Hackers Lounge on Floor 1.
  • Exhibition Booths and Job Board: See showcases and find out about job opportunities from industry-leading companies and sponsors like IBM, UNESCO, Google, Indeed, Microsoft, Facebook, Flowchain, MySQL/Oracle, Singapore companies like Singapore Press Holdings and more: Overview 

Don’t miss out on our Social Events:

  • Sat Mar 16 19:00 10 Years FOSSASIA Party with Buffet, Live Music, Indian Dance, Chinese Performance & Cultural Program** : Celebrate FOSSASIA 10th Anniversary Party with us! Featuring Live Music, Cultural Highlights and Good Food! Indian dance, magic, music, Karaoke and so much more! (Social Event Tickets Required) : Tickets 
  • Wed Mar 13 15:00 FOSSASIA Meet & Greet: Join the FOSSASIA Speakers and Attendees Meet & Greet, meet the local tech scene, explore Singapore in a Culture and Exploration Wednesday Afternoon, and enjoy the taste of Asia at a local dinner: Attendance
  • Thu Mar 14 19:00 Welcome Dinner: With FOSSASIA Summit Speakers and Exhibitors: Attendence
  • Fri Mar 15 7:00 Cultural Morning Tour to Merlion Statue and View of Marina Bay: Attendence
  • Fri Mar 15 19:00 Chinatown & Clarke Quay Snacks and Pub Crawl: Network with speakers and participants of the FOSSASIA OpenTech Summit for a Chinatown and Clarke Quay Snacks an Pub Crawl on Friday Evening: Attendance
  • Sun Mar 17 20:30 Dim Sum and Midnight Hacks: Didn’t get enough of techie stuff? Want to work on this awesome project you found at FOSSASIA? Met some amazing developers at the weekend? Join us for the FOSSASIA After-Event hacking, coding, relaxing at Hackerspace.sg on Sunday evening: Attendance
  • Mon Mar 18 12:00 Community Lunch: Gather with us on Monday Noon for yummy local Singapore food: Attendance

FOSSASIA Summit – Schedule Roster


Featured Speakers and Sessions

We have more than 180 speakers and close to 200 sessions where participants can learn how to work with Cloud solutions, train their personal AI, create voice interfaces, build their own Operating Systems, create AR and VR apps for the web, learn about databases or prepare for Linux certification. Find out more about the speakers.


FOSSASIA Summit Theme: The Future is FOSS

Today we see that Free and Open Source is mainstream. The large online providers are offereing their services mainly based on FOSS solutions. FOSSASIA is part of a movement advancing FOSS to the next level developing not just software, but also Open Hardware like the Pocket Science Lab. The FOSS model provides us with a way to collaborate easily, freely and efficiently and it can help us to solve the problems of this planet together. Let’s do it at the FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit! The theme of the event is “The Future is FOSS”.


Thank you for sponsoring!

Thank you to our sponsors IBM, Google Open Source, Microsoft, Indeed.com, Flowchain, Facebook, MySQL/Oracle, SPH and partners for supporting the event!


Thank you for celebrating FOSSASIA’s 10th Anniversary with us.

Do follow us on our Social Media accounts to get the latest updates on the Summit and other Open Tech stuff.

We can’t wait to see you to share and gain techie knowledge with and from you!

Continue Reading10 Years FOSSASIA Anniversary OpenTechSummit 2019 Taking Place in Singapore

Announcing the FOSSASIA Codeheat Winners 2018/19

We are very proud to announce our Grand Prize Winners and Finalist Winners of Codeheat 2018/2019.

Codeheat participants not only solved a stunning number of issues in FOSSASIA’s projects, reviewed pull requests, shared scrums, and wrote blog posts, but most importantly they encouraged and helped each other and collaborated across borders and cultures. More than 700 developers from 18 countries participated in the contest supported by 37 mentors. Over 2000 pull requests were merged. Thank you all for this amazing achievement!

With so many outstanding developers participating it was extremely difficult to decide the Grand Prize and Finalist Winners of the contest. Our winners stand out in particular as they contributed to FOSSASIA projects on a continuously high level following our Best Practices.

Each of the Grand Prize Winners is awarded a travel grant to join us at the FOSSASIA Summit in Singapore in March where they receive the official Codeheat award, and meet with mentors and FOSSASIA developers. Other Finalist Winners will receive travel support vouchers to go to a Free and Open Source Software event of their choice.

Congratulations to our Grand Prize Winners, Finalist Winners, and all of the participants who spent the last few of months learning, sharing and contributing to Free and Open Source Projects. Well-done! We are truly impressed by your work, your progress and advancement. The winners are (in alphabetical order):

Grand Prize Winners

Aakash S. Mallik
Harshit Khandelwal
Shubham Gupta

Finalist Winners

Aditya Srivastava
Samagra Gupta
Shridhar Goel
Shubham Kumar
Pranav Kulshrestha
Raj Vaibhav Dubey
Yogesh Sharma

About Codeheat

Codeheat is a contest that the FOSSASIA organization is honored to run every year. We saw immense growth this year in participants and the depth of contributions.

Thank you Mentors and Supporters

Our 40+ mentors and many project developers, the heart and soul of Codeheat, are the reason the contest thrives. Mentors volunteer their time to help participants become open source contributors. Mentors spend hundreds of hours during answering questions, reviewing submitted code, and welcoming the new developers to project. Codeheat would not be possible without their patience and tireless efforts. Learn more about this year’s mentors on the Codeheat website.

Certificate of Participation

Participating developers, mentors and the FOSSASIA admin team learnt so much and it was an amazing and enriching experience and we believe the learnings are the main take-away of the program. We hope to see everyone continuing their contributions, sharing what they have learnt with others and to seize the opportunity to develop their code profile with FOSSASIA. We want to work together with the Open Tech community to improve people’s lives and create a better world for all. As a participating developer or mentor, you will receive your certificate over the upcoming weeks. Thank you!

More Links

Continue ReadingAnnouncing the FOSSASIA Codeheat Winners 2018/19

Jugaad Fest Hyderabad on 30th September 2018 – Hack, Fix, Trick It, or Simply Make Open Tech Work for You

Jugaadfest is a gathering of developers and FOSS contributors who get together to learn, share, and hack on Open Source projects for one day with the goal of making things work. 30+ mentors and successful FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code students from India and Europe will guide you during the day. At Jugaadfest you can:

  • join various hands-on activities, e.g. set up FOSSASIA apps, install conversational voice assistants, do experiments with PSLab
  • learn from developers how to find innovative fixes or simple work-arounds to get FOSSASIA prototypes working
  • learn how to build up an awesome developer profile that improves your job chances by collaborating in the FOSS community
  • improve your coding and tech skills while contributing to open source software and hardware projects
  • enjoy presentations conducted by veteran developers

Jugaadfest is a hands-on event. Please bring your laptop.

We kick-off in the morning with short introductions by developers of FOSS projects. After that participants have the chance to join teams at different tables and start learning and collaborating on Open Tech projects.

At the lunch break participants mingle and discuss what they have learned before they continue browsing  projects. At the end of the event day we ask developers to share their learnings in short lightning talks.

Certificates: Participants of Jugaadfest receive a certificate of participation. (Prerequisite: Full-day participation)

Contributors Discount Tickets

You are a contributor to FOSSASIA project or other Open Source communities? Apply for a discount ticket. There is a limited number of contributor tickets for 90, 80, and 70% discounts available. Please fill in the form here: https://jugaadfest.com/community-ticket

AGENDA

Jugaadfest Hyderabad

  • Location: BVRIT HYDERABAD College of Engineering for Women
  • Date: Sunday, September 30, 2018
  • 8:30 Registration and Breakfast Snacks
  • 9:30 Introduction and Opening Sessions
  • 9:45 How to Participate in FOSSASIA Coding Programs, Google Summer of Code and Codeheat
  • 10:00 Project Presentations: SUSI.AI, Open Event Solutions, Pocket Science Lab, Meilix, Badgeyay
  • 11:00 Developers Join Project Tables
  • 12:30 Lunch Break
  • 13:30 Developers Learn and Participate at Project Tables
  • 16:00 How to Collaborate in International Open Source Projects and Global Enterprises Using Best Practices
  • 16:15 Lightning Talks
  • 16:30 What’s Next?
  • 17:00 End of Event

Social Event (Ticket Required)

  • Date: Sunday, September 30, 2018
  • 19:30 Dinner in Hyderabad City

Jugaadfest Extended (Contributors – Invitation Only)

  • Location: Co-Working Hyderabad
  • Developer Workshops: Monday October 1 – Wednesday, October 3, 2018
  • Brunch: Thursday, October 4, 2018

LINKS

Continue ReadingJugaad Fest Hyderabad on 30th September 2018 – Hack, Fix, Trick It, or Simply Make Open Tech Work for You