The OpenTechSummit China is a unique Open Technology conference for developers, companies, and IT professionals. The event will take place from November 30th – 2nd December in Shenzhen.
Day 1, November 30: Shenzhen Tech Scene Exploration Day
Day 2, December 1: Conference Day
Day 3, December 2: Culture and Networking
During the event developers, technologists, scientists, and entrepreneurs convene to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Artificial Intelligence software, Cloud Computing, Hardware and IoT.
For our China feature event we are looking for speaker submissions about Open Source for the following areas:
The event features an exhibition space for companies and communities to showcase their products and solutions.
Submission Guidelines
Please propose your session as early as possible and include a description of your session proposal that is as complete as possible. The description is of particular importance for the selection. Once accepted, speakers will receive a code for a speakers ticket. Speakers will receive a free speakers ticket and two standard tickets for their partner or friends. Sessions are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Talk slots are 20 minutes long plus 5-10 minutes for questions and answers. The idea is, that participants will use the sessions to get an idea of the work of others and are able to follow up in more detail in break-out areas, where they discuss more and start to work together. Speakers can also sign up for either a 1-hour long or a 2-hours workshop sessions. Longer sessions are possible in principle. Please tell us the proposed length of your session at the time of submission.
Lightning talks
You have some interesting ideas but do not want to submit a full talk? We suggest you go for a lightning talk which is a 5 minutes slot to present your idea or project. You are welcome to continue the discussion in breakout areas. There are tables and chairs to serve your get-togethers.
Stands and assemblies
We offer spaces in our exhibition area for companies, projects, installations, team gatherings and other fun activities. We are curious to know what you would like to make, bring or show. Please add details in the submission form.
Developer Rooms/Track Hosts
Get in touch early if you plan to organize a developer room at the event. FOSSASIA China is also looking for team members who are interested to co-host and moderate tracks. Please sign up to become a host here.
Publication
Audio and video recordings of the lectures will be published in various formats under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license allows commercial use by media institutions as part of their reporting. If you do not wish for material from your lecture to be published or streamed, please let us know in your submission.
Sponsorship & Contact
If you would like to sponsor OpenTechSummit China or have any questions, please contact us via office@fossasia.org.
Suggested Topics
Artificial Intelligence (SUSI.AI, Algorithms, Cognitive Expert Systems AI on a Chip)
Hardware (Architectures, Maker Culture, Small Devices)
The FOSSASIA Summit 2018 in Singapore was a successful event thanks to all our fabulous speakers, participants, volunteers and organization team. The support of our host the Lifelong Learning Institute was outstanding. Without all partners and and especially our lead sponsors Daimler & Google Cloud the event would not have been possible. Below are interesting numbers and a wrap up of event highlights from the 4-day conference.
1 Numbers and Facts
* 3,301 attendees over 4 days, 203 speakers and 99 volunteers.
* 5 keynotes, 235 scheduled sessions and more than 50 project showcases/exhibitors.
* 53 nationalities, 66.8% Singapore, followed by India, US, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Germany etc.
* Talks are already available as videos. Hundreds of photos have been uploaded to social networks. Check out a short recap of the summit:
2. Conference Highlights
2.1 Opening Ceremony and Keynotes
Teo Ser Luck, Singapore Member of Parliament congratulated FOSSASIA on playing an important role as the melting pot for businesses software developers and government agencies to innovate ICT solutions. Mr. Teo emphasized that Open Source technology could benefit local businesses and workforce, “Only because the code is open we are able to talk about it. Open code is a wonderful present to the community.”
Mr Teo Ser Luck on Open Tech in Singapore
Jonas von Malottki, Senior Manager Finance at Daimler AG (Mercedes-Benz), introduced the Free and Open Source solutions being used within its products and explained how they thrived to support and collaborate with the Open Source community. According to Jonas, automakers were trying to become software companies, and just like in the tech industry Open Source was the way to move forward.
Kaz Sato, Staff Developer Advocate at Google Cloud team presented different examples of business model around the world where non-techies have adopted TensorFlow and Cloud ML to solve their real-world problems.
Kaz Sato, Real-world Machine Learning with TensorFlow and Cloud ML
A Panel on AI, Cloud, Blockchain and the Conversational Web brought technologists, developers and journalists together, discussed where the society is heading in the face of this rapid change as well as where opportunities and challenges awaited. The panelists were Frank Karlitschek (Founder Nextcloud), Liang Moung (Head of Digital Technology Singapore Press Holdings), Ramji Venkateswaran (Global Head of Cloud Ecosystem Development & Head of Cloud Services Asia J.P. Morgan), Dr Graham Williams (Data Science Director, APAC – Microsoft). The panel was moderated by Mario Behling (Founder, Eventyay).
‘Ready for Future Mobility’ was another keynote emphasized the adaptation of open source in the automotive industry. Vlado Koljibabic (Head of CASE IT at Daimler AG) and his colleague Ronald Grasman (Lead Solution Architect eDrive@VANs) explained how Daimler sees Free Open Source Software as a solution that could support to master the challenge of convenient charging in the future. Check out an interview with Vlado to learn more about open source within Daimler.
The opening session finished by a featured speech of Hong Phuc Dang (Founder of FOSSASIA) on How FOSSASIA Scales Up and What Comes Next.
Hong Phuc Dang, Founder of FOSSASIA
CodeHeat Award Ceremony
FOSSASIA self-run coding contest CodeHeat took place from September 2017 to February 2018. The aim of Codeheat is to encourage more developers to get involved in and to contribute to the FOSSASIA open source projects codeheat.org
650 developers had participated in this year’s contest and more than 2,000 pull requests had been made within the 6-month period. Three grand prize winners were invited to present their work at the FOSSASIA Open Tech Summit 2018.
2.2 Track Summary
Artificial Intelligence Track
AI track focused on topics around natural language processing, how to build skills and actions for voice assistants or how to create Open Source chatbots. It also gave an introduction to existing solutions SUSI.AI, Bot Framework, Tensorflow, Dataprep and more.
SUSI.AI Showcase by Michael Christen
During this first session in the Artificial Intelligence track, Michael Christen, Founder SUSI.AI delivered a talk to predict the future of search engines when the answers to all questions to be provided within the framework of conversational interfaces. Michael also suggested that free and open source implementations of digital assistants would be challenged by the complexity of the conversational web ecosphere of smart devices and the ability to create intelligent skills out of cloud services.
Markku Lepisto, Google Cloud Solutions Architect (APAC & Japan) showed the audience how to build IoT devices and solutions that engage their users in a natural manner with Machine Learning. He also used two Barbies and real device to assist his live demonstrations and provided code examples.
Markku and his Barbie friends
An advanced Deep Learning Workshop has been extended substantially since the last FOSSASIA Summit. This year, Martin Andrews continued to go through different “cutting-edge” topics in Deep Learning. Consequently, participants are able to install the working examples on their own machines, tweak and extend them for themselves.
Large Scale Deep Neural Network Training by Chris Auld gave another interesting angle into the topic of AI & ML
Large Scale Deep Neural Network Training by Chris Auld
Cloud, Container, DevOps Track
There were several discussions on how to save business resources and how to be more efficient by deploying solutions such as Kubernetes, Serverless Architecture, Microservices, Docker Kompose, Omnibus, OpenStack, Virtual Kubelet, and Continuous Integration.
Chris Aniszczyk – CTO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation shared lessons learned from Internet scale companies like Google and others on using containers to manage applications over a decade. Matthew Treinish presented his experience on building a small compute cloud from scratch and gave an introduction to OpenStack. Among the highlights were several talks and workshops on the use of Kubernetes and Machine Learning with Tensorflow conducted by Google developer advocate team. Check out more sessions on FOSSASIA videos.
Blockchain Track
The Blockchain track included talks on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, and the use of blockchain technology in the fields of finance and education, and in applications such as Internet of Things (IoT) and smart contracts. Besides, a hands-on workshop using real Bitcoin mining hardware was conducted.
The track also spotlighted a panel on ‘Solving World Problems with Blockchain and Open Source’, where panelist discussed real-life application cases of Blockchain apart from the hype. The question about energy consumption to generate blockchains and its impact on the society was raised at this panel.
Solving World Problems with Blockchain and Open Source
Cybersecurity Track
Cybersecurity track covered sessions on Encryption with PGP, SELinux, Secrets Management, Backups, QubesOS, Securing Web and Javascript apps. Some of the highlights were:
* A Security State of Mind: Compliance and Vulnerability Audits for Containers by Chris Van Tuin (Chief Technologist, Red Hat) – discussed the top security risks in a container environment including container images, builds, registry, CI/CD, and host.
* Codifying Security and Modern Secrets Management by Seth Vargo (Developer Advocate, Google) – discussed the principles of modern security and how a free and open source tool embodies and enforces the principles of modern security
* BareOS – 100% open source backups by Maik Außendorf
Web & Mobile Track
Web & Mobile track highlighted technologies used for the Conversational Web. A wide range of topics were covered with talks and workshops about JS frameworks, PWA, Android, Web VR and AR. Highlights include:
* Kotlin Native workshop by Stepan Goncharov (Engineering Manager, Grab)- demonstrated the implementation of simple client-server app using Kotlin Native.
* Automating Processes Using TagUI Tool by Ken Soh (Open-source RPA Evangelist, AI Singapore) – discussed about TagUI, an open-source Robotic Process Automation.
* Angular Framework in Susper by Harshit Prasad (FOSSASIA developer ) – Susper is a decentralized search engine that uses the peer to peer system YaCy and Apache Solr to crawl and index search results. Github: https://github.com/fossasia/susper.com
Hardware, Science, Design and Local Production Track
This mixed track covered topics from design to hardware and local production. Lionsforge, with their open source laser cutters, set the movement of bringing production back to Singapore.
The Pocket Science Lab – an open hardware device (open in all layers) was on the spotlight. This tiny pocket lab provides an array of sensors for doing science and engineering experiments. It comes with functions of numerous measurement devices including an oscilloscope, a waveform generator, a frequency counter, a programmable voltage, current source and as a data logger.
FOSSASIA Pocket Science Lab
Open Data, Internet Society, Community
More and more governments, companies and citizens share data for the benefit of the society. This track brought up questions around use cases for Open data, possibilities of a truly free society, in the times of tracking devices, supervision technologies, how to keep communities engaged in Free and Open Source development.
There was a featured session by Douglas Gray, senior vice president at Indeed on ‘How to Overcome Obstacles and Take Control of Your Career in Tech’. During his talk, Douglas shared many tips and useful strategies that could help developers to tackle challenges, competition and proceed their way to a dream job in tech field.
Douglas Gray, Senior Vice President, Engineering at Indeed.com
Database Track
Developers of PostgreSQL, MySQL, Apache Spark, MariaDB and NoSQL projects conducted sessions about Scaling TB of data, Real-time data masking, Replication Features, Performance Schema, BigQuery, and Immutable Key-Value Stores. The main focus was how to save business money with Open Source database solutions.
Joe Conway on Statistical Analysis in PostgreSQL with PL/R
Kernel and Platform Track
The Kernel & Platform track covered topics from the Linux Kernel to BSD and desktop systems such as Meilix or applications like VLC, learning about BSD network servers, hacking with x86 Windows Tablets, asynchronous integration of GPU computing with HPX many task processing, Unikernelized Linux, Open Build Service in Debian, and learning C from the trenches. Check out kernel talks on FOSSASIA videos.
Science Tech and Education Track
This track revolved around the benefits of integrating open technology into different aspects of life, particularly how it could surpass traditional education. In addition, it offered solutions to making technology accessible and engaging to a wider public. Sessions also introduced available tools which might give citizens more chances to become scientists or simply to encourage the participation in science.
Building a Sustainable Open Tech Community through Coding Programs, Contests and HackathonsOpen Source Education
Open Event Solution – Eventyay
The FOSSASIA Summit was managed by an entirely Free and Open Source solution Eventyay (an alternative of eventbrite). This project is developed and maintained by FOSSASIA developer network. https://github.com/fossasia/open-event-server
In this track, the core developers of Eventyay (or Open-Event), namely Saptak Sengupta, Shubham Padia, Aayush Arora, Harshit Dwivedi, Dilpreet Singh, Sumedh Nimkarde and Abhinav Khare delivered several intensive sessions to address different aspects of Eventyay including setting up Open Event Front-end and Open Event Server locally, switching from Java to Kotlin on Open Event Android, Data Handling with EmberJS, Open Event and JSON API, and Decoupling and Demystifying Open Event Server.
Watch this video to understand Eventyay back-end and infrastructure.
UNESCO Open Science and Open Data Hackathon
FOSSASIA partnered up with UNESCO organizing the Open Science and Open Data Hackathon. With 92 participants in 14 teams, the jury had managed to select three winning teams (from India, Singapore & Vietnam) whose projects were assessed on the extent to which they could leverage Open data and knowledge in response to current pressing environmental issues, climate change, sustainable developments and gender equality.
20th Birthday Anniversary of The Open Source Initiative OSI
Italo Vignoli, Director of Open Source Initiative (OSI) had a presentation on the history of Open Source Initiative and called for a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of OSI. Through his talk, Italo summarized the evolution of open source licenses and the Open Source Definition (OSD) across two decades. He also explained why the concept of free open source software has grown both in relevance and popularity and explored trends for the third decade of Open Source.
Italo Vignoli, Director of Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Exhibition and Networking Space
There was a interesting mix of over 50 distinguished showcases from corporations to high profile start-ups and many leading open source projects
This open space enabled discussions and networking besides the main conference program. Participants could explore career opportunities offered by FOSSASIA partners, learn the latest technologies and projects development. In addition, a dev lounge, a relaxing space and an espresso coffee station created an excellent vibe.
Daimler TeamVLC TeamMySQL TeamAutoDesk Team12Geeks SingaporeCoffee StationVISEO TeamGstar.ai TeamJPMorgan TeamMicrosoft WorkshopPlatform.sh TeamFreeBSDLionsforgeEspace TeamWomen Who CodeHardware by Dunman High and Tampines High
3 Social Events, Non-Conference Activities
Pre-FOSSASIA Summit Meet & Greet
A pre-event “Meet & Greet” is an annual activity for overseas visitors. Impact Hub was the host of 2018. At this meeting speakers and attendees from around the world had a chance to mingle and get to know more about each other. A session on Singapore Tech scene and how to do business in the local context was conducted to give some insights to FOSSASIA guests. A guided cultural walk around the island was organized and followed by a dinner at the famous Lau Pa Sat.
Pre-event Meet & Greet, FOSSASIA Summit 2018
PubCrawl
A get-together Pub Crawl is a tradition of every FOSSASIA Summit. At the end of the first day, speakers and participants met up at Chinatown and started a fun evening by strolling around different pubs to taste local beverages and specialties.
FOSSASIA get-together Pub Crawl
Social Event
The Saturday social event was a major highlight of the event. A wide range of activities, consisting of a live music band, traditional Indian dance, performance of local artists, a mentalist show, Karaoke stage, a photo booth, a football table, an outdoor lounge, a lovely buffet with local cuisine and FOSSASIA’s signature homemade cocktails.
Traditional Indian dance performanceMagic showPhotoboothFootball tableKaraoke Station
The FOSSASIA Summit 2017 was an unforgettable event thanks to everyone who helped to make it possible! We would like to thank our co-organiser the Science Centre Singapore and all sponsors, supporters, speakers and volunteers. Below are interesting numbers and facts of 2017 and information on highlights of the event.
FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Numbers & Facts
3,145 people attended the event over 3 days including 229 speakers and 60 volunteers.
41 nationalities participated in the summit: 70.8% from Singapore, followed by India, Indonesia, Germany, China, Japan, Vietnam and many others
Talks are already available as videos. Hundreds of photos have been uploaded to social networks. 2000+ tweets[tw] with the FOSSASIA hashtag were posted during the event.
FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Highlights
The three-day program with nearly 20 parallel tracks made FOSSASIA Summit the biggest open tech event in the region. One very interesting fact was the entire conference was fully managed by FOSSASIA built open source event management system, EventYay. All the technical setting was also done in-house by the FOSSASIA Team. In the effort of making the event the best experience for visitors, FOSSASIA team organized a series of extracurricular activities including pre-event meet&greet, pub crawl, culture walk, social event, see you again cocktails, and a lucky draw.
Day 1 Opening Day with Keynotes
Chan Cheow Hoe, GovTech’s Chief Information Officer, emphasized how the Singapore Government’s central information technology systems and infrastructure drive the development and delivery of innovative public services for citizens and businesses.
Chan Cheow Hoe, GovTech’s CIO, photo by Nguyen Thi Tra My
Follow-up by an interesting story by Øyvind Roti who currently leads Google’s international team of Cloud Architects. He spoke about how to get involved and contribute to the Google CloudOpen Source products and related projects, including machine learning, systems, client-side libraries and data analytics tools.
Øyvind Roti, photo by Gabriel Lee
Andrey Terekhov brought Microsoft into the Open Source picture with some insights that many were not aware of. MS actually are the top contributors to Github and they are hosting many Open Source projects themselves. Andrey explained in details Microsoft’s open source strategy and developing business in Asia Pacific region, with a particular focus on scaling up open source workloads on Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Andrey Terekhov, Open Source Sales & Marketing Lead at Microsoft, photo by Kai En Mui
The final keynote of the day was conducted by a German privacy activist – Frank Karlitschek the founder of ownCloud and later Nextcloud, an open source and fully federated and distributed network for files and communication. As the topic of the privacy and personal data on the internet are under attack by hackers and international espionage programs, Frank shared with the audience how the Internet can be used as a free and democratic medium again.
Open Source AI Topics
The highlight of the day was the introduction of SUSI AI – FOSSAISA’s Open Source Personal Assistant. Michael Christen, founder and also core developer talked about SUSI’s current development stage as well as project’s ambition and the plan for the future. He demonstrated some amazing things you can do with SUSI such as searching for locations, finding translations in over 100 languages, asking SUSI travel information, weather etc. One of the exciting features is the auto-improvement ability: the more you interact with SUSI, the better and accurate its answers become. Michael also showed the audience how they can actually contribute and create the largest corpus of knowledge for SUSI AI Assistant.
Michael Christen about SUSI AI, OpenAI and the role of Elon Musk, photo by Michael Cannon
Liling Tan, a data scientist from Rakuten, spoke about Natural Language Processing (NLP) which is the task of the computationally understanding and production of human languages, often using a mix of hand-crafted rules and machine learning techniques. Konrad Willi Döring brought AI to next level when he presented the Brainduino Project including a brief introduction to EEG-based brain-computer interfaces as well as a look into the future of BCI technology.
Konrad Willi Döring Brainduino Project, photo by Michael Cannon
FOSSASIA’s favorite speaker, Andrew “bunnie” Huang, came back with “Let’s Make Technology more Inclusive”. Bunnie and his team examined some of the cultural and technological barriers that have stymied inclusiveness, using gender imbalance as a case study. They later on, proposed a solution called “Love to Code”, which attempts to address the issue of inclusiveness in technology.
The day finished with a panel discussion on The Future of AI with a diverse group of five panelists: Andrew Selle (Google Brain Team, US), Steffen Braun (KI Group), Michael Christen (SUSI AI), Harish Pillay (Internet Society), Bunnie Huang (Chibitronics PTE LTD)
It was a very interactive session between speakers and attendees, discussing the possibilities and implications of AI.
From September 2016 to February 2017, FOSSASIA held a CodeHeat contest to encourage more developers to get involved and contribute to the FOSSASIA open source projects, namely Open Events Orga Server, AskSUSI project, and LokLak. 442 developers had joined the contest, over a thousand pull requests were made during over this 6 months period of CodeHeat. Three winners and two finalists from the top 10 contributors who have contributed awesome code were chosen to fly to Singapore for the FOSSASIA Summit 2017 to share what they’ve done, and meet the open source community gathered here.
CodeHeat Award Ceremony, photo by Michael Cannon
PubCrawl
A get-together at Pubcrawl has become a tradition of every FOSSASIA Summit. At the end of the first day, speakers and participants met at Chinatown and started a fun evening strolling around various pubs, tasting local beverages and specialties. The hang-out has always been a great opportunity for speakers to carry on their unfinished conversations during the day as well as to enhance the friendship among visitors and residents.
Pub Crawl, photo by Ben SadeghiAndrew “bunnie” Huang, Brady Forrest and Sean “Xobs” Cross at the Pub Crawl, photo by Ben Sadeghi
Day 2 Extensive Day of Workshops and Presentations
FOSSASIA Summit Day 2 is always the busiest day with an extensive program starting from 9 am until 6:30 pm. Dedicated tracks included Startup and Business Development – Database PGDay – Open Tech Google Track – Python – Hardware & Making DevOps – Security and Privacy – Science – Android – Debian Mini-Debconf – Tech Kids – Open Source Software – Health Tech – Web & Mobile – Kernel & Platform – AI & Machine Learning
Open Tech – Google Open Source Track
Stephanie Taylor, the Program Manager at Google Open Source Outreach team gave an educational talk about Google Code-in program as an early opening of the Google’s Open Tech Track. This introduction was favored by local students as well as young international developers. In the following topic about Future of the Web, Anuvrat Rao introduced the latest open technology to address critical user needs on the open web.
Stephanie Taylor and GCI 2016 Students
Andrew Selle from Google Brain Team carried on the session with an overview of the open source software library TensorFlow and discussed how the open source community has shaped its development and success. Devan Mitchem introduced The Chromebook, a new, faster computer that offers thousands of apps. He also showed the audience how to integrate and experience Android apps on this machine for greater productivity and flexibility. Denis Nek wrapped up Google’s Tracks by a talk about Model–view–viewmodel (MVVM), a software architectural pattern. In this last topic, he explained why and how he could solve many common problems of android developers using this approach.
Tech Kids Track
Followed up the success of 2016’s summit, FOSSASIA 2017 extended Tech Kids Track throughout its 3-day event. Many parents brought their kids along to attend the talks and workshops. Most importantly, these young attendees showed their great interest in Open Technology. The kids’ voluntary participation in the tracks completed the aim of FOSSASIA in fostering education at a young age. With the power of open knowledge, we believe the bright future of world leaders start from today’s education.
Elda Webb and Creativity workshop, photo by Ka Ho Ying
Kids workshops covered topics such as Git for beginners, software translation with WebLate, PyGame 101 Codelab, how to developer your first mobile app, make a DIY paper spectrometer, create a promotion video with open source tools etc.
Kids and guardians learn how to work with Git, photo by Ka Ho Ying
This fun and educational workshop was organized by Microsoft Open Source Team. In this rescue mission, attendees learned to create a bot using an open source framework and tools. They were given access to MS code repositories and other technical resources. Workshop participants had to complete 3 missions and 2 code challenges in order to bring the Mars mission back on track. It was pretty challenging but at the same time super exciting.
Mission Mars’ Winner and Mentors
Python Track
Python Track has always attracted good audience’s response since 2015. In this year summit, the track covered very informative topics ranging from metaclasses in Python 2 and 3, computing using Cython to Go-lang (a new open source programming language), Pygame 101, the effective use of python in Science and Maths with live demos of successful experiments etc.
PyGame 101 Codelab Workshop
A 2-hour workshop was conducted by Kushal Das giving the audience the overview of MicroPython, how to update NodeMCU devices with MicroPython firmware and using sensors with NodeMCU for their first IoT device.
MicroPython workshop using NodeMCUPython Mentors, photo by Ka Ho Ying
Database Track – PostgreSQL Day
This was the second year FOSSASIA hosted PGDay. We were delighted to welcome amazing speakers like Dr. Michael Meskes (founder and CEO of credativ Group), Maksym Boguk (co-founder of PostgreSQL consulting), and many other PostgreSQL developers and consultants across the globe.
It was very interesting to learn how an open source database, PostgreSQL, has rapidly extended its application into the enterprise sector, one of the examples was how PostGIS is being by agricultural producer in Australia.
PGDay at FOSSASIA Summit 2017
Day 3 More sessions and the final keynote by Daimler’s Representatives
Day 3 Dedicated Tracks consisted of Hardware & Making – Tech Kids – Science – Android – Blockchain – Open Tech – AI & Machine Learning – Internet, Society & Politics – Web & Mobile – Security and Privacy – DevOps – Database MySQL Day – Design, Art, Community – Open Source Software.
It was wonderful to have two special guests from Daimler headquarter in Stuttgart – Jan Michael Graef (CFO of CASE) and Vlado Koljibabic (leads IT for the new CASE business and COO of the Digital and IT organization). The presence of Daimler, a traditional corporate business in the open source world was not only well received by the audience but also triggered an excitement and the curiosity of the crowd: What is the background of the growing involvement and support of Open Source by Daimler?
Daimler in the house: Danial, Vlado, Hong Phuc, Jan and Mario, photo by Michael Cannon
Daimler AG is known for one of the world’s most successful automotive companies. With its Mercedes-Benz Cars, Daimler Trucks, Mercedes-Benz Vans, Daimler Buses, and Daimler Financial Services divisions. The Group is one of the leading global suppliers of premium cars and is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles. At FOSSASIA Summit 2017, Jan and Vlado made an introduction to CASE – these letters will shape the future of Mercedes-Benz Cars. They stand for the strategic pillars of connectivity (Connected), autonomous driving (Autonomous), flexible use (Shared & Services) and electric drive systems (Electric), which will be intelligently combined with one another by the company.
Jan Michael Graef and Vlado Koljibabic from Daimler, photo by Ka Ho Ying
In their talk Vlado and Jan outlined how Daimler recognizes the power of Open Source development and we had the chance to get insights into some very exciting ideas how Daimler is planning to shape the logistics sector with services based on Open Source technologies. The company is even considering cryptocurrency payments for services in the future and is already working on using Blockchain technologies for its automobile services for logistics companies.
Web & Mobile Track – featured OpenEvent (EventYay) System
Finally, there is an Open Source event management system said Mario Behling, founder of open-event (eventyay) and the summit’s co-organiser. During the last two years, the FOSSASIA team has been working on a complete functional open source solution for event organisers. More than 5,000 commits have been made from more than 100 developers worldwide. The hosted solution of the application is available at EventYay.com and ready to be tested as an Alpha product.
The system enables organizers to manage events from concerts to conferences and meet-ups. It offers features for events with several tracks and venues. Event managers can create invitation forms for speakers, build schedules in a drag and drop interface, implement ticketing system and much more. The event information is stored in a database. The system also provides API endpoints to fetch the data, and to modify and update it. Organizers can import and export event data in a standard compressed file format that includes the event data in JSON and binary media files like images and audio.
OpenEvent Scheduler – Drag & Drop interface
The Open-event core team of 7 senior developers came together at the FOSSASIA summit to showcase the latest development, make live demos, conduct deployment workshops and discuss future applications.
Featured Open Event presentations and workshops:
Better Events with Open Event | Mario Behling
Deploy Open Event Organizer Server | Saptak Sengupta
Scaling Open Event Server with Kubernetes | Niranjan Rajendran
Open Event API | Avi Aryan
Open Event Web App | Aayush Arora
An Introduction to the Open Event Android Project and it’s capabilities| Manan Wason
Agile Workflow and Best Practices in the Open Event Android App Generator Project | Harshit Dwivedi
This year FOSSASIA proudly hosted MySQL Day within the database track. 12 senior developers/speakers from Oracle around the world got together at the summit. 14 scheduled talks and workshop were conducted. Beginning with Sanjay Manwani, MySQL Director from India, he talked about ‘the State of the Dolphin’, sharing an overview of the recent changes in MySQL and the direction for MySQL 8 as well as an introduction to Oracle cloud. The day continued with selective topics from MySQL optimizer features to in-depth workshops such as MySQL operations in Docker – workshop or MySQL Performance Tuning.
Additionally, Ricky Setyawan organized an unconference session or a MySQL Community Meetup Space where he invited the community members to meet and to start a direct conversation with MySQL’s developers.
See you again Cock-Tails
After the closing session, FOSSASIA attendees were invited by Daimler to join an after-event cocktail party. People were happy for the chance to finish up their discussions while enjoying the nice view of the city from a spacious balcony with finger food, drinks and good music from the local band.
Engineers.SG Team, photo by Ka Ho YingPhoto by Nguyen Thi Tra MyFOSSASIA regular friends Felix Dahmen, Joerg Henning & Emin Aksehirli, photo by GunessMusic performance by a local band
Exhibition and Networking Space at FOSSASIA Summit
The biggest goal of the FOSSASIA Summit is to bring people across borders together at a physical space where they can freely share, showcase, discuss and collaborate on existing projects or new ideas. We are happy to see many open source communities across Asia at this year’s gathering. What could be better than a face-to-face discussion over coffee with people who shared the same vision and belief: ‘With open technologies, we can make the world a better place’
Google Cloud Team at FOSSASIADietrich Ayala from Mozilla sharing details about A-frame with attendeesOpen Hardware corner with Dan and Kiwi, FOSSASIA organizersSindhu Chengad explained Open Source at MicrosoftOpenSUSE BoothMichael Meskes (right) and Engineer from Credativ GermanyMatthew Snell from xltech.io, SingaporeMySQL Team, photo by Michael CannonThomas Kuiper from gandi.net, Taiwan, photo by Michael CannonMen gathering at Pyladies Pune tableWan Leung Wong from TinyBoy 3D printer project, HongkongFresh coffee in the house
FOSSASIA What’s Next?
Mark your calendar for the next FOSSASIA Summit, which will take place in March 2018. We are looking forward to seeing you again in Singapore. If you are meetup organizers, community leaders, we would like to invite you to host a track at the next FOSSASIA Summit, please write to us about your experience and contribution in the open source world via office@fossasia.org
As always thanks to Michael Cheng and Engineers.SG team for all the videos, thanks to our photographers Michael Cannon, Ka Ho Ying and the team for capturing some of the very best moment of us. You can search for more photos by typing #fossasia on loklak (or alternatively on Twitter) or Flickr. If you also want to share photos you took during the summit, please add them to the group pool.
Commissioned under the top-secret space project, our first human team had set foot months ago. This mission on the red planet begun with the quest to establish civilization by creating our first outpost on an extraterrestrial body. Not so long ago, the mission control lost contact with the crew, and we are gathering the best of mankind to help save this mission.
In this rescue mission, you will learn to create a bot using an open source framework and tools. You will be given access to our code repositories and other technical resources. We have 3 mission and 2 code challenge to solve in order to bring the Mars mission back on track.
We need you! Be the first to crack the problems and rescue the compromised mission! Your bounty awaits! Receive your mission briefing at the control centre after checking-in at the FOSS Asia Summit!
How to enter:
Join us on March 18 at Foss Asia Summit (Singapore Science Center), Tinker Lab (Hall E) at the following timeslots:3
9:30
11:30
13:30
Bring your own PC or load one from the mission control. We provide internet access at the lab room.
Fill up the registration form and check in with the form at the Mission Control.
Mission briefing will be provided, you will be given access to the github where you mission resources will be provided, and you can proceed to crack the challenges.
Badge of honors to be earned and bounty awaits the team with the best-time!
The FOSSASIA Summit 2017 takes place from Friday March 17 – Sunday March 19 at the Science Centre Singapore. We are now inviting Open Source contributors to apply for a free stay in a Singapore hostel and a free ticket to the event. All you have to do is convince us, that you are an awesome Open Source contributor!
The details
Developers from all over the world are joining the FOSSASIA Summit. We want to connect established and new Open Tech contributors alike. Therefore FOSSASIA is supporting the Open Source community to join the event by offering 100 free nights stay at a hostel in the centre of Singapore and a free ticket to the event. All you have to do is to fill in the form with information that convinces us that you are an awesome contributor in the Open Source community.
Step 2: We will get back to you at latest within 3 days after the deadline if you are selected. But, also we are choosing very convincing applicants on an ongoing basis. So, the earlier you apply the higher your chances to get a free stay might be.
Step 3: The selected applicants will need to confirm their itinerary and tickets before March 1st to re-assure their free stay in Singapore.
Expectations of Participants – Share what you learn
1. Please support volunteers, speakers and participants at the event. Let’s bring all this good spirit of sharing Open Technologies and learning together!
2. Help to reach out to participants who cannot join us at the event. For example make some tweets, share what you learn on social media, publish photos and put up blog posts about the summit.
Drum roll please! We are very proud to announce the 2017 FOSSASIA #CodeHeat Grand Prize Winners and Finalists. 442 participants from 13 countries and 5 continents committed over 1000 pull requests to our repositories over the course of the contest. Congratulations to everyone to this fantastic achievement! The winners were now chosen by our jury. Thank you for reviewing the contributions.
Our three Grand Prize winners will travel to the FOSSASIA Summit in Singapore from March 17-19 and present their work to developers from around the world. The winners are (in alphabetical order):
Many developers made outstanding contributions in the last months and we all learned a lot during the contest. Thank you so much! We hope you stay on board and continue to participate in the community to develop Open Tech that improves peoples lives and to seize the opportunity to develop your code profile with FOSSASIA. To receive your certificate of participation now, please claim it here.
Supporting Partners
We would also like to extend a special Thank you to our jury and to our supporting partners at the UNESCO and the Open Tech Society.
Thanks FOSSASIA mentors!
And we really love the work of our mentors! Thanks for your patient guidance, helping everyone with learning about best practices, reviewing the huge number of pull requests and discussing questions on the chat channels. Many of our mentors have been students in coding programs before and we are very very proud to see how you help newcomers to join. Keep up the fantastic work!
The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit is Asia’s leading Open Technology conference for developers, startups, and IT professionals. In 2017 the event will take place from March 17th – 19th at the Science Centre Singapore.
During three days, thousands of developers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists get together to showcase latest technologies, communicate, exchange ideas, learn from each other, and collaborate. Topics range from information technology and Open Source software development to hardware and maker projects, open design tools, machine learning, DevOps, knowledge tools, and citizen science.
For our 2017 feature event we are looking for speaker submissions for the following tracks:
* Open Source Software
* Design, Art & Culture, * Internet, Society & Politics, * Hardware & Making,
* Health and Technology * Science
* Kernel Track and * Startup and Business Development
Apart from the conference program, the FOSSASIA Summit offers an exhibition space for company and project stands and areas for community assemblies, and developer meetings.
Submission Guidelines
Please propose your session as early as possible and include a description of your session proposal that is as complete as possible. The description is of particular importance for the selection. Once accepted, speakers will receive a code for a speakers ticket. Please indicate on the submissions form if you would like to apply for a sponsored community ticket.
December 20th, 2016: Deadline for submissions
January 18th, 2017: Notification of acceptance
March 17th – 19th, 2017: FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit
Sessions and Tracks
Talks and Workshops
Talk slots are 20 minutes long plus 5-10 minutes for questions and answers. You can also sign up for either a 1-hour long or a 2-hours workshop. Longer sessions are possible in principle. Please tell us the proposed length of your session at the time of submission.
Lightning talks
You have some interesting ideas but do not want to submit a full talk? We suggest you go for a lightning talk which is a 5 minutes slot to present your idea or project. You are welcome to continue the discussion in break out areas. There are tables and chairs to serve your get-togethers.
Stands and assemblies
We offer spaces in our exhibition area for companies, community projects, installations, workshops, team gatherings and other fun activities. We are curious to know what you would like to make, bring or show. Please add details in the submission form.
Developer Rooms/Track Hosts
Get in touch early if you plan to organize a developer room at the event. FOSSASIA is also looking for team members who are interested to co-host and moderate tracks. Please sign up to become a host here.
Publication
Audio and video recordings of the lectures will be published in various formats under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This license allows commercial use by media institutions as part of their reporting. If you do not wish for material from your lecture to be published or streamed, please let us know in your submission.
Sponsorship & Contact
If you would like to sponsor FOSSASIA or have any questions, please contact us via office@fossasia.org
We are happy to announce our upcoming Science Hack Day Singapore! The event will take place on Nov 11 – 12, 2016 at Suntec Convention Centre Hall 401 as a part of the ICM Youth Festival.
There are limited seats for participants intending to take part in the programme for 2 days. Visitors to the ICM youth festival are welcome to visit the space and give their hands where required.
Do not miss this opportunity to explore the wonder of Science, to team up with inspiring people around you and to enjoy the amazing working facilities at Suntec City. Join our event on facebook for further announcement.
What is Science Hack Day?
Science Hack Day is a two-day event where anyone excited about making weird, silly or serious things with science comes together in the same physical space to see what they can prototype. Designers, developers, scientists and anyone who is excited about making things with science are welcome to attend – no experience in science or hacking is necessary, just an insatiable curiosity. Recommended age is 13 and up, though younger students are welcome to attend, with parental accompaniment.
The mission of Science Hack Day is to get excited and make things with science! People organically form multidisciplinary teams over the course of a weekend: particle physicists team up with designers, marketers join forces with open source rocket scientists, writers collaborate with molecular biologists, and developers partner with school kids. By collaborating on focused tasks during this short period, small groups of hackers are capable of producing remarkable results.
Tentative program
Day 1 Friday Nov 11, 2016 11:00 Arrive and check-in 11:30 Welcome & introduction 11:45 Pitches and team building 12:15 Hack begins 13:30 Lunch break 14:30 Hacking continues 19:00 Door closes
Day 2 Saturday Nov 12, 2016 11:00 Doors open 13:00 Lunch Break 15:00 Hack stops 15:30 Hack demos begin! (Typically 2-3 minutes per demo) 17:00 Winning teams announced
FOSSASIA was thrilled to be selected once again as a mentor organisation of Google Code-In (GCI) 2015 – a contest to introduce pre-university students (ages 13-17) to open source software development. Together with 13 other orgs we reached out to 980 students from 65 countries completed a total number of 4,776 tasks. As a part of our participation, I got a chance to present FOSSASIA at the Grand Prize Winners trip.
FOSSASIA Team, photo by Jeremy Allison
GCI 2015 Awards Ceremony
28 grand prize winners, their parents along with one mentor from each participating organisation were invited to a trip to the Bay Area as a reward to their hard work during the last GCI program. Students had a chance to meet with mentors and to interact with their fellow students from other projects, enjoyed a few days in San Francisco and received many cool gifts/swags from Google.
Chris DiBona and Jason Wong, photo by Jeremy Allision
Chris DiBona – Director of Open Source at Google – a super busy man who was so kind to spend his morning personally congratulated each single student in front of his/her parent. I do believe enjoy what you are doing and get recognition for your work is the best gift ever and to be able to share it with your family is even better. Thanks Google for celebrating the open source culture.
Meet, learn and share
I was very impressed by the level of knowledge and abilities of all the 28 students. They are young, enthusiastic and inspiring. Thanks to all the parents for believing and supporting the kids in pursuing their open source journey.
Group photo by Jeremy Allison
It was wonderful to meet our two FOSSASIA GCI students for the first time. Jason grew up in the States, seemed a bit reserved while Yathannsh from India was very outspoken. They both were very new to open source when they joined the program and now have become active contributors and very eager to learn more. Three of us had a team presentation on FOSSASIA labs and our achievement from GCI 2015. Jason expressed his wish to go on as a mentor for the next GCI.
Jason and Yathannsh
I had several interesting conversations with the parents who finally understood why their kids were on the computers all the time. About 14% of the parents are working in IT and very aware of open technology. The rest was super excited to learn about various open source projects. Many said to me they would love to have their second son/daughter to join the program as well.
The mentor group had a few discussions on pros and cons, how to improve and maximize the outcome of the program, and ways to keep students engaging afterwards. I learned a lot from other orgs and also shared FOSSASIA workflow and guidelines with them. The 7 weeks of GCI was an amazing experience for me and my team. I must give our FOSSASIA mentors credit for their incredible efforts. It was truly a pleasure to work with Mario, Sean, Mohit, Praveen, Nikunj, Abhishek, Jigyasa, Dukeleto, Manan, Saptaks, Aruna, Rohit, Arnav, Diwanshi, Martin, Nicco, Sudheesh, Samarjeet, Harsh, Luther, Jung and many more.
GCI 2015 – 14 Org Mentors, photo by Jeremy Allison
The Fun
It was the best field trip ever! The program was carefully planned: Meeting with Google engineers, a tour of the Google campus, a day of sightseeing around San Francisco and much more.
Segway Tour
I was my first time on a Segway and I loved it, so cool! Thanks Stephanie for encouraging me to try this. It is never too late to learn something.
Segway by the bay
Afternoon walk over the Golden Gate Bridge
Sanya and I could have completed the entire bridge but.. because of our slow male mentors we only made it halfway through. To all my geek friends out there – Please do more exercises!
On Golden Gate Bridge
Walking on the bridge, photo by Florian Schmidt
Yacht Dinner Cruise
This was the highlight for many of us: sailing along the bay, relaxing time on the water, beautiful landscape, nice chats and yummy food.
Photo by Jeremy Allison
Ladies pose, photo by Jeremy Allison
with Cat Allman, photo by Jeremy Allison
Thank you organisers!
We just couldn’t thank Stephanie enough for her hard work and the extreme energy not only to GCI but also to the whole open source community and especially her care for us all during our trip. I was amazed by the level of details that been brought in: additional medication, sunscreen, chocolate tips, gift card, travel guide, luggage storage, special diet etc.
Stephanie Taylor, GCI program manager, photo by Jeremy Allison
Last but not least thank to the lovely Mary, kind Helen, cool Eric, friendly Josh, awesome photographer Jeremy and of course my favorite Cat Allman for another unforgettable experience!
FOSSASIA 2016 took place from 18th -20th March in Singapore. Hong Phuc Dang, Mario Behling, Harish Pillay, and Roland Turner were leading the organization efforts for the 2016 summit supported by many volunteers, speakers and the community. With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.
We would like to especialy thank our host venue and the wonderful team of the Science Centre Singapore, our partner UNESCO Youth Mobile and our sponsors Red Hat, Google, GitHub, MySQL, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, gandi.net, General Assembly and the Internet Society Singapore for their support and participation. Thanks to everyone who helped to make FOSSASIA 2016 in Singapore possible!
FOSSASIA 2016 Group Photo at Science Centre Singapore by Michael Cannon
FOSSASIA’16 NUMBERS & FACTS
We reached the number of 2,917 attendees over 3 days including 230 speakers and 72 volunteers.
With a good mix of 37 nationalities, we are proud to be one of most international developer events in Asia.
There were 201 scheduled sessions and lightning talks, and more 50 exhibitors.
This was the first year we organised Tech Kids program with 14 hands-on workshops that covered Mobile Development, Electronics, Digital Fabrication, Pocket Science and 3D Modeling.
Dozens of talks are already available as videos. Thousands of photos have been uploaded to social networks. 1500+ tweets with the FOSSASIA hashtag were posted during the event.
A trend analysis of FOSSASIA shows that web technologies, data analytics and Internet of Things have a huge momentum. The attention of developers is also increasingly turning to open hardware.
Opening HallMario Behling the superman behind our programCat Allman
Happy Volunteers
Day 1 Opening of FOSSASIA
The first day started at the OpenTech and IoT track with a warm welcome message from Mr. Lim Tit Meng, the director of Science Centre, follow by some of our keynotes including Cat Allman with her inspiring story on Science & Education Program at Google; Harish Pillay with his intriguing title ‘A Funny Thing Happened On My Way To The Science Centre’ revealing the history of Internet and Open Source; Bernard Leong caught a huge attention on ‘Rethinking Drone Delivery with Open Source’; and Davide Storti introduced the exciting MobileYouth Program at UNESCO. The day continued with many other interesting talks/discussions and five other tracks were opened that afternoon of the same day namely Tech Kids, Hardware and IoT, DevOps, Big Data, Internet Society and Community.
Day 2 Intensive day of workshops and more discussion
Stephanie Taylor opened the second day of FOSSASIA with her informative presentation on Google Summer of Code Program and Google Code-In. Many GSoC and GCI students from Asia attended this year FOSSASIA. The day continued with series of workshops and discussions on Hardware, IoT, and DevOps. Four new tracks were added into the program including OpenTech Workshop, Python, WebTech and Databases.
Popular DevOps Track
Harish Pillay proudly presenting his first computer
Day 3 Hack Sunday and the closing notes
At the last day, we opened another three new tracks: Privacy and Security, Linux and MiniDebConf, Design VR and 3D. More hacking activities took place on Sunday. Participants formed in-depth discussion groups.
People gathering at the closing
Exhibition
More than 50 project booths and hand-on demos were set up in the Science Centre’s public space where participants could hang out, chat, discuss, share, learn, and hack.
Nanyang Polytechnic teacher and students presenting their Student Enrich ProgramExhibition hallUNESCO YouthMobile InitiativeSnapshot of Red Hat booth – Developers ChatGitHub corner
FOSSASIA – a place of friendship and joy.
As always thanks to our photographer Michael Cannon and his team for capturing some of the very best moment of us. You can search for more photos by typing #fossasia on Twitter or Flickr. If you also want to share some photos you took during FOSSASIA with us, please get in touch with me hp@fossasia.org
Excited developers from across Asia
Baby Py with her parents at the social event
What’s next in 2016?
FOSSASIA will again participate at Google Summer of Code
Call for collaboration: We welcome new contributors to FOSSASIA current projects
FOSSASIA 2016 Group Photo at Science Centre Singapore by 
Opening Hall
Mario Behling the superman behind our program
Cat Allman
Happy Volunteers
Popular DevOps Track
Harish Pillay proudly presenting his first computer
People gathering at the closing
Nanyang Polytechnic teacher and students presenting their Student Enrich Program
Exhibition hall
UNESCO YouthMobile Initiative
Snapshot of 
GitHub corner
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