FOSSASIA

FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code 2011

FOSSASIA was prominently featured on the Google Open Source Blog. I wrote a short sum up of the student summer projects.FOSSASIA is participating in Google Summer of Code for the first time this summer. The goal of the FOSSASIA network is to bring young Open Source developers together with experienced international developers to join or start new Free and Open Source projects.FOSSASIA’s Google Summer of Code projects focus on open source for social change and communication. All the students are putting in a lot of effort, however their progress is varying as students have different skill levels.The project of “foo-script” (Adam Rakowski) is moving forward most quickly. He expands the uses for the next Crypto-Stick (an USB hardware device with an integrated openGPG smart card firmware) edition and develops plugins for popular applications like Firefox. With the Stick you can easily encrypt your emails and achieve convenient online authentication.Secondly Chanrithy Thim, the MoonOS developer from Cambodia has been improving Appshell, a framework for applications that lets developers easily create application bundles. A single file contains all the data and files needed to run an application, so all a user has to do is to launch it.Google Summer of Code projects will be presented at this year’s FOSSASIA Summit taking place in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on November 11-13, 2011.Links:* http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/08/whos-new-in-google-summer-of-code-part.html 

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FOSSASIA Summit 2011 in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) from Nov. 11-12

FOSSASIA 2011 was announced officially during the Desktop Summit in Berlin by Chanrithy Thim and Mario Behling from the organization committee. FOSSASIA 2011 will take place from November 11-12 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a special focus on "Women in IT" and "Mobile Applications"."We had amazing people gathering at events in previous years, starting with FOSS Bridge in 2007 and 2008, GNOME.Asia in 2009, and FOSSASIA and the Open Design Weeks Asia in 2010. With the fantastic support of people from all over the world FOSSASIA 2011 is a place to meet the community, government officials and open source IT businesses. There are many opportunities to learn about existing projects and to meet people to start new software projects." says Hong Phuc DANG, chair of the event.

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OpenDesign.Asia Weeks

The OpenDesign Weeks Asia took place throughout South Vietnam in 2011 and 2012. The idea of the row of events was to bring together participants under the motto "All About Sharing" of graphic designs, Libre Graphics, Open Source Software, open content and Free Culture Practices, FashionTec and the maker community. We were proud to welcome hundreds of people talking to designers from Asia, Europe and the US. Events during the design weeks include workshops, design camps to share expertise in an unconference, company meet ups to establish international cooperations, presentations in Universities and training workshops. Special thanks go to the Open Source Publishing Group (OSP), who have formed a group of 8 people to come over to participate in the events.  

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FOSSASIA accepted as Google Summer of Code 2011 Mentoring Organization

FOSSASIA has been accepted as a mentor organization for Google Summer of Code 2011.About GSOC: Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 4,500 students and more than more than 4,000 mentors & co-mentors from over 85 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all. (http://socghop.appspot.com/) More info also on the Google Open Source blog: http://google-opensource.blogspot.comWe are now looking for students interested to join GSOC and for mentors who would like to take on student projects.The FOSSASIA 2011 projects focuses on Internationalization projects, GUI development to make tools available for a wider public in Asia and around the world, and on software supporting social change, e.g. for environmental protection. Please post you ideas in the wiki and on the mailing list. Starting from March 28 to April 8 students can apply on the GSOC website to become scholars for 2011.Here are some links:* FOSSASIA Ideas Page: http://wiki.fossasia.org/index.php/GSoC_IdeasPlease browse through ideas that people have already put up and post your own ideas.* FOSSASIA mailing listJoin the mailing list and discuss project ideas: http://groups.google.com/group/fossasia* FOSSASIA on Google Melangehttp://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/fossasia* TimelineMarch 28: 19:00 UTC Student application period opens.April 8: 19:00 UTC Student application deadline.* EventsThere are events informing students about GSOC 2011 all over the world. Check out http://goo.gl/aKBQ4One event in Asia where you can get more info about the FOSSASIA GSOC project is the Open Design Camp Saigon. http://opendesign.asiaSunday, 3 April, 2010, 9.00-17.00University of Fine Arts, Đại học Mỹ thuật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh5 Phan Dang Luu, Dist. Binh Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamhttp://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118997938175310Registration: http://goo.gl/zljbLAll the best and good luck to all applicants!

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Hackerspace Singapore Vietnamese Tech Scene Meetup

Thanks to all you folks who came by and Thank you for Preetam on posting some nice comments and photos about the event. And last but not least, thank you to the great hosts from the Hackerspace.sg."One point they made strongly was that having a local partner would ease a lot of pain, right from registering your company to collecting market data. Hong Phuc talked about her method of working with local universities and government agencies to gather customer data." 

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Join us at Hackerspace.sg

Vietnam has one of the fastest growing online population in the region, probably globally too. Vietnam is also seeing growth in IT companies exploring the local market and setting up offshoring centers.Vietnam-based entrepreneurs and FOSSASIA event organizers Dang Hong Phuc and Mario Behling are visiting Singapore and will be talking about the startup and tech scene in VN and what opportunities there might be for collaboration (tech events, open source, women in IT etc.).Event DetailsWhen: Thursday 3rd March 2011Time: 7pmWhere: Hackerspace.sg, 70A Bussorah Lanehttp://sgentrepreneurs.com/2011/02/26/conversations-on-vietnam-tech-scene-3-mar

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Open Design Weeks 2011 Saigon

The Open Design Weeks Asia take place in Hochi Minh City and Cantho (Vietnam) from April 2-16, 2011. The program has been announced. There will be an Open Design Camp in Saigon and intensive workshops in Cantho. The focus of the Open Design Weeks are on design, Free, Libre and Open Source software, open content and Free Culture practices. Events during the design weeks include workshops, design camps to share expertise an unconference, company meet ups to establish international cooperations, presentations in Universities and training workshops. The intensive workshops with local designers, software developers and typographers focus on collaborative font design, mapping and publication. This will be a great chance to get involved in some new and exciting projects Open Design Weeks: http://opendesign.asia

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Libre Graphics Meeting – How to Attract Asian Developers

The talk of my video is online thanks to Rivervalley TV. Thank you! In my presentation I talk about the situation of Open Source in Asia and how to attract new contributors. Many people still do not know about Free and Open Source in Asia, but we need more people to support each other and help new users und developers. We need more developers in Vietnam to adapt existing solutions for Vietnamese and Asian users. We need people to organize events, where we can meet face to face. We need mentors, who developers and contributors can turn to. We need business people who understand business models and opportunities around Free and Open Source. Slides: http://de.slideshare.net/hpdang/libre-graphics-meeting-2010-brussels-presentation-by-hong-phuc-dang

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FOSSASIA 2010: Bridge to Asia

FOSSASIA 2010 took place at the Raffles College campus in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam from November 12th to 14th. This inaugural event brought together over 350 international and local developers and users in 62 presentations and panels. An amazing crowd of 90 enthusiastic volunteers supported participants. FOSSASIA attendees came from 30 countries including Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany, France, England, Australia, and the US.The goal of FOSSASIA is to provide knowledge of free and open source software and to offer the community a place to meet and share ideas. The annual conference brings together members of the Asian FOSS community along with the international community, thus fostering cooperation across projects and across borders. Special Tracks: Women in IT and Lightweight ComputingThe 2010 event offered 5 tracks including the two special theme tracks "Women in IT" and "Lightweight Computing". Hong Phuc Dang from MBM Vietnam said of the Women in IT panel:"It is fascinating to see so many girls participating. I am very happy that we have chosen 'Women in IT' as a theme as it attracted many students to join us."Other participants of the women panel were Lilly Nguyen (UCLA, US), Van Thi Bich Ty (PCWorld, Vietnam), Mary Agnes James (Seacem), Lita Cheng (Community Cambodia) and Kounila Keo (ICT4D Cambodia).The heated debate during the panel definitely portrayed some of the issues and challenges young female developers face. I hope that it made many of the younger women more interested in participating in the community. I am excited to see more involvement of women in IT in Asia in the near future" said Lilly Nguyen from the US.The "Lightweight Computing" track also generated a lot of interest. Lubuntu, the lightweight version of Ubuntu, attracted the attention of local developers. Additionally, mobile solutions such as Android and Xpad/Xpud were covered in several presentations by Ping-Hsun Chen (Taiwan), Pham Huu Ngon (Vietnam) and Tan Quang Sang (Vietnam).OpenOffice.org Asia Meet UpFOSSASIA was particularly happy to welcome the OpenOffice.org community who sponsored the event. As head of the Vietnamese OOo localization team, Vu Do Quynh from Hanoilug presented on the various ways that people could contribute to the OOo community while Yutaka Niibe and Yukiharu Yabuki presented on OOo's use by the Japenese government in the Osaka Prefecture.Mini-Debconf, Fedora Release Party and MozillaFOSSASIA 2010 was also an opportunity for the Debian community to organize a Mini-Debconf. Debian developers present included among others Jonas Smedegaard (Denmark), Paul Wise (Australia) and Thomas Goirand (France/China).To celebrate the release of Fedora 14, Ambassador Anh Tuan Truong (Vietnam) and Pierros Papadeas (Greece) hosted the world's largest release party. The even took place at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy. Pierros--an active Mozilla contributor---had  this to say about the release event:"It was AWESOME. At first I thought most of them were there due to their teachers, but  when we started a Q&A session I realized I was so wrong… they were  asking about PAE kernels, broadcom drivers, dual boot and LVM etc! By the…

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FOSSASIA 2010 press coverage

Our FOSSASIA event 2010 was covered in quite a few online media.Press Articleshttp://www.laodong.com.vn/Tin-Tuc/35-dien-gia-du-Hoi-nghi-phan-mem-ma-nguon-mo-Chau-A-tai-TPHCM/20121http://vovnews.vn/Home/Ngay-1211-se-dien-ra-Hoi-nghi-FOSSASIA-nam-2010/201011/160026.vovhttp://www.vietnamplus.vn/Home/Sap-dien-ra-Hoi-nghi-FOSSASIA-nam-2010-tai-TPHCM/201011/67336.vnplushttp://thethaovanhoa.vn/350N20101110003346856T0/sap-dien-ra-hoi-nghi-fossasia-nam-2010-tai-tphcm.htmhttp://www.khoahocphothong.com.vn/news/detail/6626/hoi-nghi-cong-nghe-phan-mem-ma-nguon-mo-dien-ra-tu-12-14-11.htmlhttp://e-info.com.vn/vn/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43558&Itemid=99http://www.baoangiang.com.vn/newsdetails.aspx?newsid=25553http://www.thongtindoingoai.vn/c1006n20101110083153890/sap-dien-ra-hoi-nghi-fossasia-nam-2010-tai-tpho-chi-minh.htmhttp://mic.gov.vn/tintucsukien/tintonghop/Trang/S%E1%BA%AFpdi%E1%BB%85nraH%E1%BB%99ingh%E1%BB%8BFOSSASIAn%C4%83m2010t%E1%BA%A1iTPHCM.aspxhttp://www.baomoi.com/Info/1211-Khai-mac-Hoi-nghi-FOSSASIA-2010/76/5173201.epihttp://webtinhoc.vn/home/showthread.php?t=39953http://news.ndthuan.com/viet-nam/ngay-1211-se-dien-ra-hoi-nghi-fossasia-nam-2010-275480/

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