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FOSSASIA accepted as Google Summer of Code organization

FOSSASIA has been accepted as mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code 2012. It is fantastic to join the international free software community in the study program and we are looking forward to student applications.

Applications can be added through the GSoC website. Please also introduce your ideas on the mailing list and add them to the ideas page. If you are proposing an idea for a subproject like Cryptostick, people on the list will direct you to specific contact points if needed. 

FOSSASIA is acting as an umbrella organization for projects related to Asian users and the community in the region. We welcome applications from student projects around the world who work on software tools benefiting users in the region.

The FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code program is looking for applications including: 

  • software development for projects supporting social change; 
  • internationalization projects benefitting users in the region, e.g. support for Asian fonts in applications and enhancing user experience; 
  • software for secure communication and user security including support for international Asian users; 
  • decentral systems for new use cases in emerging regions; 
  • educational development projects; 
  • localized free software distributions (e.g. regional Linux distributions); 

If you are a student there are important links to follow:

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FOSSASIA Summit 2011 Wrap Up

The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit 2011 was held at Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam from November 11 to 12, 2011.

The event attracted 798 participants in 2 days including students, developers, business professionals and government officials. Ninety percent of the participants were local from Vietnam. There were a total of 24 speakers, 60% were local speakers and 40% of them were from other countries, including USA, France, Denmark, Cambodia, Germany, and Singapore. There were 26 talks and many workshops took place over the two days of the event.

It has been a great event. Thank you for joining the community at Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City 2011!

 

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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.

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

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.com

We are now looking for students interested to join GSOC and for mentors who would like to take on student projects.

The FOSSASIA 2011 projects focuses on Internationalization projects, GUI development to make tools available for a wider public in Asia and around the world, and on software supporting social change, e.g. for environmental protection. Please post you ideas in the wiki and on the mailing list. Starting from March 28 to April 8 students can apply on the GSOC website to become scholars for 2011.

Here are some links:

* FOSSASIA Ideas Page: http://wiki.fossasia.org/index.php/GSoC_Ideas

Please browse through ideas that people have already put up and post your own ideas.

* FOSSASIA mailing list

Join the mailing list and discuss project ideas: http://groups.google.com/group/fossasia

* FOSSASIA on Google Melange

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/fossasia

* Timeline

March 28: 19:00 UTC Student application period opens.
April 8: 19:00 UTC Student application deadline.

* Events

There are events informing students about GSOC 2011 all over the world. Check out http://goo.gl/aKBQ4

One event in Asia where you can get more info about the FOSSASIA GSOC project is the Open Design Camp Saigon. 

http://opendesign.asia

Sunday, 3 April, 2010, 9.00-17.00
University of Fine Arts, Đại học Mỹ thuật Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
5 Phan Dang Luu, Dist. Binh Thanh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118997938175310
Registration: http://goo.gl/zljbL

All the best and good luck to all applicants!

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA accepted as Google Summer of Code 2011 Mentoring Organization