FOSSASIA Summit

Read more about the article Participate in the #OpenTechNights Program today and Win a Free Stay during the FOSSASIA Summit 2018 from the Open Source Initiative and UNESCO

Participate in the #OpenTechNights Program today and Win a Free Stay during the FOSSASIA Summit 2018 from the Open Source Initiative and UNESCO

The FOSSASIA Summit 2018 takes place in Singapore from Thursday, March 22 – Sunday, March 25. Open Source contributors can now apply for a free ticket to the event, and accommodation throughout the conference. In addition, you’ll be eligible to participate in: Featured cloud workshops, the UNESCO hackathon, and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Open Source Initiative. All you have to do is convince us, that you are an awesome Open Source contributor and book your trip to Singapore! About #OpenTechNights Developers from all over the world are joining the FOSSASIA Summit. We want to connect established and new Open Tech contributors alike. With the support of UNESCO, the Open Source Initiative, and other partners, we are inviting Free and Open Source Software contributors to join us. Winners will receive free lodging at a shared accommodation in the centre of Singapore, and a free ticket to the conference. Winners are expected to join the summit each day, to participate in the workshops, and the Hackathon on Saturday/Sunday, March 24/25. We would also hope you can support the Open Source Initiative at their booth. How do I sign up? Step 1: Please fill in our form here before February 28, 2018. Step 2: We will notify all winners within three days of their submission, however judging will begin immediately, and continue until all open spots are filled, so the earlier you apply, the higher your chances to win. Please note, winners will receive free accommodations in Singapore. Flight and other travel costs are not included and are the responsibility of the attendee. Step 3: Selected applicants must confirm their itinerary and tickets before March 1st to insure their free stay in Singapore. Earliest check-in possible is Wednesday March 21, latest check-out is Monday, March 26. Please indicate your arrival and departure times in the application form. Expectations of Participants – Share what you learn Attendees support volunteers, speakers and participants at the event, and take a shift at the Open Source Initiative’s booth. Let’s bring the spirit of sharing Open Technologies and learning together! Please confirm your participation at the opening event at 12PM, Thursday, March 22, 2018 and participate in the specially featured cloud workshops on Friday, March 23, 2018 from 9.00 AM – 5.00PM. Attendees participate in the UNESCO Hackathon on Saturday, March 24 (2.00 PM - 10.00PM) and on Sunday, March 25 (9.00 AM - 5.00PM). Attendees help reach out to community members who cannot join us at the event, make tweets, share what you learn on social media, publish photos and put up blog post about the summit. Apply Now Apply for a free stay with #FOSSASIA #OpenTechNights supported by the Open Source Initiative and the UNESCO and participate in the FOSSASIA Summit 2018 now here! More Information More updates, tickets and information on speakers on our website: https://2018.fossasia.org Links Open Source Initiative: https://opensource.org UNESCO: http://unesco.org

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Read more about the article FOSSASIA Summit 2018: “The Open Conversational Web” with Open Source AI

FOSSASIA Summit 2018: “The Open Conversational Web” with Open Source AI

FOSSASIA teams up with Science Centre Singapore and Lifelong Learning Institute for Asia’s premier open technology summit. The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit is taking place from March 22-25, 2018 under the tagline “The Open Conversational Web” with a strong focus on Artificial Intelligence and Cloud for the Industry 4.0. More than 200 speakers will fly in to present at the event. International exhibitors will showcase their latest advancements and meet developers in a careers fair. The FOSSASIA Open Tech Summit is an annual tech event featuring tech icons from around the world since 2009. The event is all about the latest and greatest open source technologies and their impact and applications on business and society. With more than 3,000 attendees the FOSSASIA Summit is the biggest gathering of Open Source developers and businesses in Asia. A great feature of 2018 is the expanded exhibition space where tech businesses, SMEs and startups converge with developers and customers and meet potential candidates in a careers fair. “The goal of the FOSSASIA Summit is to bring together developers, technologists and businesses to collaborate, share and explore the full potential of open source to create opportunities for new industries. And, right now there is a shift happening where users increasingly communicate through their voice with computer applications enhanced by Open Source AI technologies.“, says Ms. Hong Phuc Dang, chair of the summit and continues: “We expect to see interesting new voice gadgets to try out at the event. And, attendees will be able to learn how to develop solutions for these new voice interface devices here.” Associate Professor Lim Tit Meng, CE of Science Centre adds: “Technologies like Big Data, AI and VR, and the web itself are becoming more open and conversational. They are also the engines behind the Industry 4.0 innovations. The open source community, with its spirit of co-creation and sharing is at the forefront of conversations on the web. At Science Centre Singapore, we aim to showcase and create content using these technologies and look forward to learning from and working with the open source community.” The call for speakers is open and “we are seeing a large increase in proposals this year” says Mr. Mario Behling from the FOSSASIA Summit committee. Speakers are expected from companies such as car manufacturer Daimler, tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Samsung, Intel and from many Singapore startups with topics ranging from algorithms and cognitive experts to DevOps, cloud containers, Blockchain and Neurotechnologies. Voice assistants and Open Source development solutions for SUSI.AI, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, Siri, and solutions using Nuance or IBM Watson are a big topic. Tickets are available on the website 2018.fossasia.org. The press representatives signup is here. Links Event page http://2018.fossasia.org Royalty-Free/Freely Licensed Images: www.flickr.com/groups/fossasia-2017-singapore/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/fossasia Facebook: https://facebook.com/fossasia Call for speakers https://blog.fossasia.org/fossasia-summit-2018-singapore-call-for-speakers FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Recap https://blog.fossasia.org/fossasia-summit-2017-wrap-up

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Read more about the article FOSSASIA Summit 2018 Singapore – Call for Speakers
Too big Crowd for only One Photo / One of Many Group Photos by Michael Cannon

FOSSASIA Summit 2018 Singapore – Call for Speakers

The FOSSASIA Open Tech Summit is Asia’s leading Open Technology conference for developers, companies, and IT professionals. The event will take place from Thursday, 22nd – Sunday, 25th March at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Singapore. During four days developers, technologists, scientists, and entrepreneurs convene to collaborate, share information and learn about the latest in open technologies, including Artificial Intelligence software, DevOps, Cloud Computing, Linux, Science, Hardware and more. The theme of this year's event is "Towards the Open Conversational Web". For our feature event we are looking for speaker submissions about Open Source for the following areas: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Search Engines, Cognitive Experts Open Design, Hardware, Imaging Science, Tech and Education Kernel and Platform Database Cloud, Container, DevOps Internet Society and Community Open Event Solutions Security and Privacy Open Source in Business Blockchain There will be special events celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative and its impact in Open Source business. An exhibition space is available for company and project stands. 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. Submission Link: 2018.fossasia.org/speaker-registration Dates & Deadlines Please send us your proposal as soon as possible via the FOSSASIA Summit speaker registration. Deadline for submissions: December 27th, 2017 Late submissions: Later submissions are possible, but early submissions have priority Notification of acceptance: On an ongoing basis Schedule Announced: January 20, 2018 FOSSASIA Open Tech Summit: March 22nd – 25th, 2018 Sessions and Tracks Talks and Workshops 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 is also looking for team members who…

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Event-driven programming in Flask with Blinker signals

Setting up blinker: The Open Event Project offers event managers a platform to organize all kinds of events including concerts, conferences, summits and regular meetups. In the server part of the project, the issue at hand was to perform multiple tasks in background (we use celery for this) whenever some changes occurred within the event, or the speakers/sessions associated with the event. The usual approach to this would be applying a function call after any relevant changes are made. But the statements making these changes were distributed all over the project at multiple places. It would be cumbersome to add 3-4 function calls (which are irrelevant to the function they are being executed) in so may places. Moreover, the code would get unstructured with this and it would be really hard to maintain this code over time. That’s when signals came to our rescue. From Flask 0.6, there is integrated support for signalling in Flask, refer http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/latest/signals/ . The Blinker library is used here to implement signals. If you’re coming from some other language, signals are analogous to events. Given below is the code to create named signals in a custom namespace: from blinker import Namespace event_signals = Namespace() speakers_modified = event_signals.signal('event_json_modified') If you want to emit a signal, you can do so by calling the send() method: speakers_modified.send(current_app._get_current_object(), event_id=event.id, speaker_id=speaker.id) From the user guide itself: “ Try to always pick a good sender. If you have a class that is emitting a signal, pass self as sender. If you are emitting a signal from a random function, you can pass current_app._get_current_object() as sender. “ To subscribe to a signal, blinker provides neat decorator based signal subscriptions. @speakers_modified.connect def name_of_signal_handler(app, **kwargs):   Some Design Decisions: When sending the signal, the signal may be sending lots of information, which your signal may or may not want. e.g when you have multiple subscribers listening to the same signal. Some of the information sent by the signal may not be of use to your specific function. Thus we decided to enforce the pattern below to ensure flexibility throughout the project. @speakers_modified.connect def new_handler(app, **kwargs): # do whatever you want to do with kwargs['event_id'] In this case, the function new_handler needs to perform some task solely based on the event_id. If the function was of the form def new_handler(app, event_id), an error would be raised by the app. A big plus of this approach, if you want to send some more info with the signal, for the sake of example, if you also want to send speaker_name along with the signal, this pattern ensures that no error is raised by any of the subscribers defined before this change was made. When to use signals and when not ? The call to send a signal will of course be lying in another function itself. The signal and the function should be independent of each other. If the task done by any of the signal subscribers, even remotely affects your current function, a signal shouldn’t be…

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Read more about the article FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Wrap Up
Too big Crowd for only One Photo / One of Many Group Photos by Michael Cannon

FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Wrap Up

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 There were 23.6% female attendees. 60% of attendees were IT professionals. 5 keynotes, 231 scheduled sessions, 22 lightning talks, and over 30 projects and companies presented their work in the exhibition. 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. 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 Cloud Open Source products and related projects, including machine learning, systems, client-side libraries and data analytics tools. 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. 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…

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Read more about the article The Mission Mars Challenge with NodeJS and Open Source Bot Framework Emulator

The Mission Mars Challenge with NodeJS and Open Source Bot Framework Emulator

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! Winners to be announced at 17:30! Be there! Installations needed: NodeJS (https://nodejs.org/en/) Any Code Editor (Visual Studio Code/Atom/Sublime Text etc.) Open Source Bot Framework Emulator (https://emulator.botframework.com/)

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Read more about the article Apply for Your Free Stay during the FOSSASIA Summit 2017 with our 100 #OpenTechNights Program
FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit 2016. http://2016.fossasia.org/

Apply for Your Free Stay during the FOSSASIA Summit 2017 with our 100 #OpenTechNights Program

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. The Process Step 1: Please fill in our form here before February 17 (23:00 Singapore Time). 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. Our Team Our team of "100 #OpenTechNights" - Hong Phuc Dang, Mario Behling, and Roland Turner - is excited to meet you in Singapore! Apply Now Apply for a free stay with #FOSSASIA #OpenTechNights and participation at the FOSSASIA Summit 2017 now here! More Information More updates, tickets and information on speakers also on our #OpenEvent system: https://eventyay.com/e/45da88b7/

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Introducing Design, Art & Culture Track of FOSSASIA 2017

This year at FOSSASIA under a new “Design, Art & Culture” track we aim to unite designers, artists and developers in FOSS. The goal of this track to showcase design/art/culture projects done within open source communities and in open source way, as well as strengthen the connections between designers and FOSS community. Picture by Hong Phuc FOSSASIA Possible topics may include, but not limited to:      Design (Graphic, UX)      * FOSS Design Tools      * Design Techniques      * Design - Engineering Collaboration Approaches      * Project Case Studies      Art      * Art projects with open source license      * Art & Open Source     Culture     * Culture of Open Source     * Open Source beyond software FASSASIA is a biggest open source community and a conference in Asia, so it will be a great chance for attendees to expand the community in the region. New design track in particular is an opportunity to spread the word among developers regarding how and where to get design help for their projects.   Another chance that this track provides is a help for non-code contributors to find their place in FOSS communities. Volunteers from Open Source Design Community will promote several initiatives, like presenting successful projects and having a "jobs board" where FOSS projects looking for design contributors can connect with available designers. If you want to help - join preparations for the track here. Dates & Deadlines Please send us your proposal as soon as possible via the FOSSASIA Submission Link: 2017.fossasia.org/speaker-registration December 20th, 2016: Deadline for submissions January 18th, 2017: Notification of acceptance March 17th – 19th, 2017: FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit

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Read more about the article FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Singapore – Call for Speakers

FOSSASIA Summit 2017 Singapore – Call for Speakers

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. Submission Link: 2017.fossasia.org/speaker-registration Dates & deadlines Please send us your proposal as soon as possible via the FOSSASIA Summit speaker registration. 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…

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Read more about the article Engelsystem GSoC 2016 Summary

Engelsystem GSoC 2016 Summary

This blog post I would like to share my work done during the GSoC period (May - August). Doing GSoC has been one of the most wonderful experience in my life. Introduction ENGELSYSTEM - Engelsystem is a volunteer management application for events written in PHP. It is used for coordination among different angels who want to volunteer. END USERS FOR ENGELSYSTEM SYSTEM ADMINS It will make it easy for them to coordinate with the volunteers by the product we developed. VOLUNTEERS /USERS Those who want to volunteer finds it difficult to coordinate, contact admins. This platform helps all those who want to help. Volunteers can register and can allot their shifts. A better User Interface, Integration with different Asian languages will allow the system to be used globally and in their local languages and ease for the volunteers to use. As a part of the project I developed many new features for engelsystem. Implemented a workflow similar to wordpress, Implemented MVC model, Importing user data to database directly through script, Implemented a copy function for shifts, sending messages to entire group/ AngelType, Implemented a search for all Angels View, Date Picker for shifts, New Settings Page for admin where we can write event related information, Deployed the system on different platforms, Added Documentation, Re-factor the code, Improved the code standards, Blog Post tutorials on various technologies. I am really happy with the outcome of the project. I learnt lot of new technologies and was improving day by day. My initial proposal, time line of the project My GSOC 2016 Proposal. I have proposed a many UI changes for the system, Improving Documentation, Refactoring. All of these are done during the period. And I have implemented extra features and surpassed the proposal. I have finished most of the proposed features before the Mid Evaluation. There was a shift in the timeline but I am very happy that the outcome was excellent. I was able to finish all the issues assigned to me on time. What I have done to make Engelsystem better? Overview of my contributions Commits: 172 Additions: 87,528 Deletions: 80,555 Issue Completed: 60 Pull Requests Merged: 36 Scrum Reports: 99 Blog Posts: 15 Daily Timeline during GSOC. Everyday we need to write a scrum report about our progress and submit it before 10 AM local time. Scrum consists of the following information. 1.What did you do yesterday? (which areas, issues you worked on, links) 2.What do you plan to do today? (which areas, issues you want to work on, links) 3.What is currently preventing you from achieving your goals? What blockers do you encounter? I have written total of 99 scrum reports from May 10 - August 23. I have never missed a scrum report. My Activity on Engelsystem Google Group : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/engelsystem Working Environment All the issues for engelsystem are available on github. Whenever we need to implement a new feature or resolve a bug we need to make a issue and start working on it. There are…

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