Tag Archive for: volunteer

2016 Google Summer of Code Wrap-Up

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Google Summer of Code has come and gone in a flash…of brilliance that is. It seems like it was only yesterday that we were flooded with applicants for GSOC – now that we’ve concluded, our seven interns did not disappoint in their contributions throughout the summer. This marked our fifth year as a mentoring organization and each year GSOC continues to unite and grow our community in different ways. Once again, we received incredibly valuable contributions to our Mifos X web and mobile clients this summer; most importantly we have cultivated numerous passionate contributors that will be a part of our community long into the future. This year’s program also taught us many valuable lessons of how we can improve our communications and collaboration to realize the full potential of each of our interns.

imag7587Before we recap the new features that the community will soon be able to benefit from, a round of thank you’s:

  • Thank You to our GSOC Interns – persistence, patience, and passion were all critical factors needed along with your programming skills to help you succeed in navigating the complex FinTech domain. You have used cutting edge technologies to develop valuable innovation to help move millions out of poverty
  • Thank You to our Mentors – thanks to Nayan, Ashok, Pranjal, Antony, Ayuk, Ishan and Gaurav – you are the lifeblood of GSOC – your tireless commitment, your wise advice and your visionary insight have helped shape this next generation of open source contributors. We welcomed five new mentors this year including 2 of our former GSOC participants – Ishan and Gaurav.
  • Thank You to Google Open Source Programs – thanks to Stephanie, Cat, Joshua, Mary, and the entire team. Year after year, you continue to make the program more effective including the rollout of a brand new program website this year. We appreciate the attention and commitment you give to the hundreds of orgs and thousands of students you impact in so many ways.

Here’s a brief recap on what the interns worked on over the summer followed by a closing interview on their experiences over the summer.

Want to see all of the brand new features and innovation in action? Register and attend our GSOC Demo Day for a showcase of all their work via GoToTraining. GSOC Demo Day is Thursday September 15 at 1400GMT.

Register to Attend GSOC Demo Day 2016

See a showcase of everything our students have worked on.

 

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OSCON and the Growing Influence of Open Source Technology

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Hello Mifos Community!

I’m back again with another post about yet another conference.

Over this past weekend, I was blessed with the ability to go to OSCON, an Open Source conference centered on the power that open source technology can have over a variety of industries, countries, and methodologies. From healthcare reform to open source cloud computing, this conference had an amazing variety of industries that were positively impacted by open source technology. To give you a glimpse of our weekend, I would like to both highlight a few of my favorite moments and give some insight into how the Mifos Initiative has both been a beneficiary and contributor to the open source movement.

OSCON general

Unlike most years, this year OSCON was held at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. Personally, I thought it was very powerful holding the conference in Austin, (a vastly different city than its predecessor Portland) as it shows how open source is now truly a national movement and is being embraced across the country, even in areas that are historically more resistant to change. With the new venue came a host of new organizations and new speakers, all with new views and stories on how open source has helped advance their respective fields in one way or another. Below are a few of our favorites:

Performance Case Study: Capital One’s quick shift from closed source to open source

This session was especially intriguing to me, as a large bank (Capital One) is finally starting to embrace the open source movement that we at the Mifos Initiative have been a part of since 2006. After the first few minutes of the session, it was easy to see the commonalities between the big banks and our open source initiative. One common thread was the idea that banks must be a technology company first. In other words, in order to be a successful organization, the bank had to produce a banking platform that was easily scalable, user-friendly, and customizable to suit client needs. Sound familiar? All of these features are what we at the Mifos Initiative hang our hat on and are what makes the open source movement so powerful. In our age of agility, scalability, and customization, big banks are beginning to realize the power that the smaller open source initiatives, like the Mifos Initiative, are starting to have on a global scale.

Modern JavaScript Architectures: Clients, microservices, and containers

This session was more technical than the other sessions I went to but nevertheless fit very well with the third generation of our Mifos platform. For those of you that don’t know, the third generation of our platform encompasses taking our current MifosX platform and converting it to a series of microservices that we will containerize and navigate using a variety of cloud-based apps. So, as you can already tell, this talk directly correlated to the work we are doing in the conversion from our current Mifos X platform to the third generation of our open source platform. While I am currently on the business side of the Mifos Initiative, this talk helped me visualize how our platform will be set up at the developmental level. It was a great way to learn more about the inner workings of our platform and see how and why we are following the popular trend towards microservices and cloud-based apps.

Want students who are ready to contribute? Here’s what they should know.

As a student at the University of Washington, this session also struck very close to home for me. I’m lucky to have gotten the opportunity to intern for a great organization that works in the open source community, but not everyone is as fortunate as I am. For those that do not get exposed to the power of open source technology, how do we, as teachers and industry professionals help mold the future developers of the world? As a Google Summer of Code mentoring organization, the Mifos Initiative deals with this issue quite often. While we hope to get interns that are well equipped to take on any project we give them, we realize that not everyone is set up for success coming out of college. In order to maximize the production of these interns, we realize that we have to utilize the techniques given in the session to make sure all our students are ready to contribute right away so our projects will get done faster and more developers will be getting necessary experience to help them start their open source development careers.

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OSCON booth

In addition to the new speakers and exhibitor crowd, we were happy to see that a few members from our Mifos community made the trek from Cameroon to learn more about our organization and our industry. Among them was Nyah Check, a good friend of Ayuk the head of Skylabase Solutions, our partner organization in Cameroon working on creating a customized Mobile Wallet/Mobile Money application integration with Mifos. Nyahis currently in the States trying to learn as much as he can about open source technology from the various conferences he’s attended. He hopes to bring this knowledge back to Cameroon so he can build on top of the Mifos banking platform to give needed support to his community back home. He is truly an inspiration to everyone at Mifos and is living proof of just one of the millions of people that we have reached through our open source banking platform.

To wrap up, I would just like to say a quick thank you to our very own director Director of Community Programs, Ed Cable. It was a pleasure running the booth with you and I had a great OSCON experience. I look forward to many more exciting adventures with the Mifos Initiaitive over the summer!

Signing off,

Drew Fass

4th Generation Mifos Intern

Two Interns Take LinuxFest NW 2016

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Hello to the Mifos Community!

Recently, a few members from our Mifos management team went to LinuxFest NW to run a booth and spread our social message of financial inclusion. Led by our Director of Community Programs, Ed Cable, and our two Business Development Interns, Drew (myself) and Jacob, we were able to successfully spread our social message and broaden our Mifos Volunteer corps.

This year marks the third straight year that we have been to LinuxFest NW. Although it is a smaller conference, we are truly thankful for the many volunteers that take time out of their week to put on such a smooth, well run weekend. It is held at Bellingham Technical College, and is mainly run by the students and faculty at the school. While it is easy to overlook these selfless volunteers, we’d like to take a moment to thank them for their service. They are one of the main reasons we continue to come back every year.

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2015 Winter Outreachy Intern Wrapup

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As we look towards bringing on a full class of Google Summer of Code interns, let’s reflect on our recent group of interns who completed our Winter 2015 Outreachy program with Mifos for the first time.  Outreachy was a journey for both our interns and our mentors as it brought home many lessons in communications and collaboration across an open source community as  our three interns collectively worked on our Android field operations app. After their contributions we now have a refactored and redesigned app, a wide range of new functionalities for field officers, and a mobile UI for capturing surveys.  Join us in giving a big thank you to Olya, Nelly, and Nasim, and their mentors, Ishan, Gaurav, and Markus. Read on to learn more about what they built and what their most lasting experiences from their internship were.

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Star Contributor of the Month – Terence Monteiro

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terence-nymtrsWe’re recognizing Terence Monteiro of San Jose Solutions from Bangalore as our Star Contributor. Terence has only been a part of our community since late June but he’s exactly what we look for in a partner – an amazingly talented contributor who lights up our community with his passion for our social mission. He’s eager to share his talents and give back to the community in all ways. Listening to him talk, you can hear the genuine enthusiasm he has and the conviction with which he carries out his work. Join us in congratulating Terence who has many good things to come including more successful deployments and innovation for the community. 
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Star Contributor of the Month – Markus Geiß

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We’re recognizing Markus Geiß as our Star Contributor. He’s a one-of-a-kind volunteer that stepped right in and immediately became a tight-knit member of the community. In the brief 6 months he’s been here, he’s become a dedicated mentor, a sage architect, a proficient contributor, a respected committer, and most importantly a trusted friend. Join us in congratulating Markus who was also recently recognized by Social Coding 4 Good as their Featured Contributor (pictured in his now famous flower photo from back in the day). 
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2014 Google Summer of Code Wrapup – Bigger and Better than Ever

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It’s been just over a month since the 2014 Google Summer of Code program has officially concluded so now that things have settled down it’s due time to recognize our fantastic students, their dedicated mentors, and their long-lasting contributions they have made to the community. Each of our students excelled in their projects and have cemented themselves as anchors in the community, eager to contribute more code and continuing as they’ve done this summer. A huge thank you to Google for allowing us to be a part of GSOC – Carol, Cat, and company have done a remarkable job with the program in its tenth year.

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Volunteer with Mifos in 2014

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Would you like to help change the world? Did you know that you can volunteer your time to help build technology that has the potential to lift billions from poverty?

At the Mifos Initiative, we guide the development of Mifos X, an open-source cloud-based platform for delivering financial services to the poor. We use open source technology and the power of community to scale financial inclusion worldwide to achieve our shared vision of creating a world of 3 Billion Maries, a world where each individual has access to the financial services to create a better life for themself and their family.  We connect the on-the-ground organizations serving the base of the pyramid with open source contributors building applications on top of the platform to enable financial inclusion to the poor.

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Star Contributor of the Month – Laurie Wilmot

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FLaurie Wilmotor the month of June, we’re recognizing Laurie Wilmot as our Star Contributor. While initially entasked with simply working on documentation in our user manual she’s gone so much further. Laurie has helped with usability, providing feedback and suggestions on the design and flow of the user interface. She’s done quality assurance reporting numerous bugs, has made various functional enhancement suggestions, and helped to comprehensively think our full suite of documentation and support for using and implementing Mifos. 

Laurie is only just a newcomer to the community but she’s come on with such vigor and commitment that we rarely see from volunteers. We crossed paths with Laurie through the British Columbia Institute of Technology Technical Writing Program. Each student takes on an industry placement where they contribute 80 hours as a volunteer getting practical experience. We have been lucky enough to work with several students on our User Manual Project. Read more

GSoC ’14: A mid-term experience

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Working with strangers spread all over the world can be a double-edged sword. You’ll face the “Time Zone Pain”, barriers in communication, and cultural pitfalls. On the other hand you’ll meet like minded geeks that share the same passion, coding for good – making the world a better place.

The Mifos community offered me the possibility to mentor a project for this years Google Summer of Code. It took me one light-second to agree. I love to share my experience and knowledge with others and I was lucky to find my counterpart with Rishabh. He is a 3rd year undergraduate student from Jammu in India.

During the last 6 weeks he is like a sponge absorbing everything, advancing his knowledge on a daily basis and increasing his coding skills like I never expected. We communicate at least once a day and we start to become friends. We not only talk about our project, we talk about our families, circumstances in life and even our plans for the weekend. Read more