2013 Mifos Summit Recap

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Amid the hustle and bustle of the summit, we shared a couple of posts recapping the vigor and vitality of the opening days of the summit.  Now that we’ve all settled back into our day-to-day routines, we want to look back on the 2013 Summit, rekindle that energy, and map out what lies ahead for 2014.

IMG_2833First off, a tremendous thank you to Paul Maritz, the lead sponsor of the summit as well asGoogle’s Open Source Programs and the ThoughtWorks Social Impact Program who came on as silver-level sponsors. Their financial contributions made possible the scholarships to bring so many delegates to the summit and the selection of such a world-class city and venue in Jaipur. A huge thank you to Amit Jain, and all the staff of Digamber Finance for welcoming us to Jaipur as the local host guiding all the preparations and assistance during the summit that made it such a memorable event.

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2013 Mifos Graduating Class for Google Summer of Code

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I’m proud to now call our interns, affectionately known as A Team – Here’s Y, graduates of the 2013 Google Summer of Code program. The three months of coding flew by in an instant so I marvel at the amazing work our interns made across all areas of the platform. Hats off to our students and a huge thank you to Google for inviting us to be a part of Summer of Code once again. Apart from the dedicated efforts of our students themselves, the biggest gratitude must go to our team of mentors, Gurpreet, Michael, Udai, and Kojo who selflessly guided our interns on their journey throughout the summer. Michael Vorburger put this summer in perspective in the most beautiful and perfect of ways:

“How amazing is it that GSoC gets four students – from Germany, from China, from Sri Lanka and from India, coached by mentors from India, Ghana, and, Switzerland – to collaborate purely in cyberspace together on adding features to a microfinance platform… the world truly is flat”

 

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Reflections on Day 2 of the Summit

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One striking takeaway, I’ve seen at this year’s summit which shows the evolution of the project moving towards a true community is how hands-on and engrossed all audiences at the summit have been with the Mifos X product and platform itself.
Being together face to face has helped to heighten this participation even more. This all speaks to how valuable this gathering is and how important our local chapters will be for enabling this at a regional level on a more frequent basis. Training. Training. Training – we need to double down on it for users, Specialists, and Developers alike.
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Google Summer of Code – We’re Halfway Home

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Put on your socks and lace up your shoes. Our Google Summer of Code interns are racing along and making amazing progress. We just passed the midterm evaluation point and all our projects are well on-target for completion. Since you all aren’t a part of our weekly check-ins or daily status updates we wanted to give you a glimpse into each project and what the interns are readying by the end of the summer. We also got a nice shout-out on the Google Open Source blog.

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We Call Them our A Team – Here’s Y

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Earlier this week we gave you a brief glimpse into the professional and academic backgrounds of our interns. You’ll certainly be seeing and hearing often from our interns his summer but we wanted to share a few personal details to help you get acquainted. We asked each of them a few questions – their responses show that they’re a fun-loving yet focused group that will make this summer unforgettable.
Keith came with a clever nickname that I couldn’t resist using – the “A Team”. Everyone’s first name begins with “A” except for Yanna. Send us your suggestions on how we can incorporate her name -apart from making the Y silent 🙂

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Meet the 2013 Google Summer of Code Class of Interns

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Google Summer of Code is one of the most exciting times for an open source project and community. It’s a chance to inject new energy into a project and help build the next generation of coders and tech entrepreneurs that are ready to contribute to HFOSS.

We’re honored to have been awarded four slots by Google for the 2013 program, the first time the Mifos project has participated since 2010.  With those four slots, we’ve selected an exceptional class of interns that I’m certain will provide tremendous contributions to our community as they themselves grow and learn from the awesome leaders in our community.

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Google Summer of Code 2013 – End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time

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gsoc-2013This summer you’ll have the ability to change lives – three billion of them – one line of code at a time.The Community for Open Source Microfinance (COSM) and it’s Mifos X project will be participating in Google Summer of Code for the third time. Mifos X is an open source technology platform for enabling financial inclusion to the poor. Google Summer of Code is a global program sponsored by Google that offers students stipends to write code for open source projects.  Students accepted to the program will spend their summers coding from June 17 to September 23rd and upon successful evaluation receive a $5000 stipend provided by Google. For full details on GSoC, read the FAQ and browse the program timeline – student applications open April 22! You can apply from our organization page.

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Optimizing UX for Mifos X – Deanna “Takes 3” to Join our Community

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Deanna_smallOne of the hallmarks of the current Mifos product is its simple and familiar browser-based user interface. As we launch our new Mifos X platform, we want to retain the essence of this user-friendly UI while injecting a modern refresh into the design of the platform.  As a platform, we aim to have one consistent user experience with products and applications that are as usable and accessible to our global community as Mifos has been.

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Aligning Volunteer Passion with User Pain

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4549865709_0c58f4c739_bHead on over to the Community for Open Source Microfinance blog for a post on how we’re trying to help channel the passion and talents of our volunteers to solve the needs and pains of our users. We recently published the process for requesting new features and voting on suggestions to make their way into the product roadmap.  The product roadmap is what guides our volunteer contributors and we want it be user-driven so they can provide new features that directly meet your business requirements. Our Community Feature Requests Dashboard captures all feature requests that have come in and provides a visual glimpse of how the product management team prioritizes your feedback.

Read more on the COSM blog