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Read more about the article UNESCO Hackathon Vietnam 2018 Wrap Up

UNESCO Hackathon Vietnam 2018 Wrap Up

204 participants gathered at the UNESCO Hackathon over the weekend of October 13 - 14 in Ho Chi Minh City to develop digital applications that tackle climate change and sustainable development challenges in Vietnam and the Mekong region. The event was a great success thanks to support from the Government of Malaysia, UNESCO YouthMobile Initiative and Officience. 24 project teams were formed during the Hackathon. With the dedication of team members and mentorship from facilitators, all teams managed to complete their hacks. It was challenging for the judges to make their final decision as all proposed solutions appeared to be innovative and applicable. The three winning teams were Klima Kage, Climap & Bird's Eye View. Additionally, the judges also selected three runner-ups ThreeWolves, DBTFC & GreenELF, whose projects directly address the issues related to climate change in the country. Winning Projects: Klima Kage, Bird's Eye View and Climap Klima Kage is a website application which consists of two parts: main page and community page. The main page contains data from open source database and tutorials extracted from the UNESCO handbook for journalists on climate change and sustainable development in Asia Pacific, which directly assist journalists in selecting data to monitor. On the community side, there is a forum for discussion and a news section where relevant articles will be published. The team decided to give priority to female journalists (ration 6:4) in reviewing and releasing news articles on this page, as a way to raise public awareness on gender dimension. SUSI.AI was also integrated into the web app to record users’ behaviour and offer suggestions for their next visits. Bird’s Eye View is a mobile game built in unity with an objective to educate people about the impacts of climate change on all kind of creatures under the sea. In each level of the game, players are brought into a different coastal city in Vietnam, where they learn about the real problems which are happening to the regional aquatic animals. The game was designed to target on younger age groups, who generally have less awareness on environmental issues, yet are expected to create big differences in the community once they grow up. In the future, the development team hopes to expand the application, to include more terrains and other kinds of animals in order to provide players with a more overall image of the situation in Vietnam and the region. Climap is the last project selected as a winner of the hackathon. Proposed and developed by a team of young developers from Ho Chi Minh City, Climap acts as an EXIF based Image Sharing System that enables users to to collect and instantly share data/images of places before, during and after disasters happen (due to the impacts of climate change).  By using Climap, users can view all relevant data from the uploaded photos including: its location, weather index, and the occurred events/incidents, etc. They can write tags for each picture to label what was happening at that moment so the data can…

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Read more about the article UNESCO Hackathon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

UNESCO Hackathon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Join UNESCO Hackathon in Ho Chi Minh City on Oct 13 -14, 2018 to learn about climate change and environmental challenges in Vietnam, meet regional sustainable development experts and listen to their successful startup stories by doing sustainable and green businesses. There is no restriction of age or backgrounds of participants. Students, NGOs reps, journalists, bloggers, developers and all open source contributors are invited to join! The hackathon is open for all and awesome prizes are waiting for you! The objective of the hackathon is to propose innovative solutions that help journalists to monitor and report on climate change and sustainable development issues in Asia and the Pacific. The participants will be introduced to UNESCO’s Guidebook for Journalists Reporting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific which includes information and knowledge on climate science, related international and regional treaties and policy frameworks including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development, and tips for journalists for finding and telling stories. Time and Location Time: Saturday October 13 - Sunday October 14, 2018 Location: Officience Vietnam, 16A Le Hong Phong, Ward 12, District 10, Ho Chi Minh City Why should I participate? Learn how to create a chatbot within an hour with SUSI.AI Carry out experiment with electronic devices PSlab.io Update yourselves with knowledge of technology and sustainable development in Vietnam Meet special guest speakers from the UNESCO, Embassy of Sweden and many more. Improve your language skills, presentation skills and build up your leadership abilities Receive certificates from UNESCO, T-shirts, swags, and special prizes from the sponsors How do I know if I am qualified to join? The hackathon is open for everyone, especially for those: Curious and willing to learn new things Interested in technology and sustainable development Like to make new friends and expand their networks Able to communicate in English No prior coding skill is required How do I sign up? Get your ticket to the Event on eventyay.com Sign up on Devpost as you will need to submit your final hack there. Join the Gitter channel at https://gitter.im/fossasia/hackathon (requires login with Github). Find team members and form a team with at least 2 members and maximum 4 contributors. You are also welcome to sign up and then wait until the Presentation of Ideas on Saturday before deciding to join a team, however we’d encourage you to form/join a team in advance if you already have an idea that you’d like to work on. Join the event at the Officience Vietnam on Saturday, Oct 13 at the opening at 8.30am until 9.00pm and on Sunday, Oct 14 from 8.00am until 5.00pm. Visit the website at unesco.sciencehack.asia and stay connected, join the event on Facebook and follow FOSSASIA on Twitter. Prizes All participants will receive a gift bag (Tshirt, sticker, wristband and lanyard) and a certificate from UNESCO for participating in the hacking. Each winner of the three top teams will be awarded special gift package including: A Pocket Science Lab - hardware device by FOSSASIA Special…

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Tom Lechner Libre Graphics Artist and Developer in Vietnam

We invited Tom Lechner, Libre Graphics artist and developer of the desktop publishing software Laidout, to spend the summer vacation with us in Vietnam to work on some Libre Graphics projects together and to work on training materials.Hong Phuc Dang and Tom Lechner Many designers hesitate to switch to Libre Graphics tools as they have been mainly trained with proprietary tools.We often hear from designers that for example Gimp does not offer the same features as Photoshop. Well, rather than thinking to exchange an application designers should also think about opening up the way they creatively work. In fact Open Source tools can offer even more possibilities to be creative, but you need to stop thinking in categories of programmes or applications. Open Source programmes can incorporate new features easily by including existing libraries.In the Linuxworld there are many tools available that can be accessed by command line as well. You could write your own script and change an enourmeous amount of images. Well, those are the few things we are exploring together with Tom this summer. Vietnam Impressions by Libre Graphics Artist Tom LechnerLinks:* Tom Flickr Stream for Vietnam: flickr.com/photos/tomlechner/sets/72157630879789412/with/7865406572/* Website: tomlechner.com

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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 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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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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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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