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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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How to get contributors from Asia for your Open Source project – Talk at Libre Graphics Meeting Brussels

I had the chance to talk about the topic of how to get contributors for Free/Libre/Open Source projects from Vietnam and Asia at the Libre Graphics Meeting Brussels. It was a a fantastic experience to meet developers and contributors from all over the world and I hope to support projects with the insights of this talk. Libre Graphics Meeting 2010, Brussels, Presentation by Hong Phuc Dang from Hong Phuc The situation in 2010 in Asia is, that many people still do not know about Free and Open Source. 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. We need you! FOSS can be a sustainable model for Vietnam as it is for other countries. Please join us in our effort for education, spreading knowledge, developement of better, faster and energy-saving software, designing easy to use interfaces and promoting opportunities for everyone with Free and Open Source. Links * Libre Graphics Meeting 2010: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2010 * LGM: http://libregraphicsmeeting.org  

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GNOME.Asia Vietnam Wrap Up

GNOME.Asia Summit 2009 was a big success as one of the one of the very first Open Source conferences in South East Asia. The event took place on Nov 20 - 22, 2009 at Quang Trung Software Park in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Quang Trung Software Park is a home of more than 200 tech-companies (including local start-ups, multi-nationals, and state-owned companies such as FDI). The conference was organized by the GNOME.Asia community in cooperation with the organization team in Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh City government supported the event through the Department of Information and Communications Technology. Numbers and facts * 1000+ attendees * 79 speakers * 138 volunteers * 5 keynotes * 109 presentations * 25 lightning talks * 17 workshops Main Tracks Six tracks were organized in parallel during the 3-day conference. The focus was only on GNOME technologies and desktop deployments based on GNOME  but also a variety of topics including: * GNOME 3.0 * GNOME library and application development * Localization & Internationalization * Mobile platforms and thin clients * Desktop deployments * School software In addition to the majority of software presentations, hardware talks such as 'How to build an Open Source printer' by Frederic Muller gathered a big interest. Workshops A focus of the workshops were applications for thin clients, localization and translation for Asian users. In parallel, there was also Linux course for beginners, map party, installation fest, and Ubuntu release party which was organized by the Vietnamese Ubuntu user group. Women in IT Panel Unlike many tech-conferences around the world, more than 50% of GNOME.Asia 2009 participants were female. They were young, curious and enthusiastic. Therefore the "Women in IT" Panel was somewhat overwhelmed with tons of questions. Stormy Peters from the US, chair of GNOME.Asia, shared her inspired story of being a mother, a housewife, an employee, an active open source contributor and a chair of the GNOME Foundation. Pockey Lam and Emily Chen, two founders of the Beijing linux users group explained how to start, grow and maintain a successful open source community. Hong Phuc Dang, who brought the first open source conference to Vietnam spoke of how her open source journey was started and encouraged female audience to explore the beauty and value of sharing, openness and collaboration which can be found easily in an open source community. Mini job fair A mini job fair was organized at the conference site with 15 companies on board. Every year thousands of computer science fresh-graduates in Vietnam are seeking for job opportunities in the tech field. Less 20% is able to get a right job of his/her major. More than 80% is forced to start their career in a non-tech environment. The idea of the job fair is (1) to provide a platform where tech companies can announce their vacant positions, recruitment process, job requirements, expectation; (2) to organize a meeting place of employers and their potential employees; (3) to foster knowledge sharing community which aims to help students prepare themselves with skill sets that fit the current marketplace. Vietnam - a great host country Visitors from oversea could not be…

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