Vishwas Babu – Winner of the 2015 Pizzigati Prize
It’s rare to meet individuals like Vishwas Babu who are so intelligent and gifted yet so dedicated and devoted to helping others. Vishwas has an enormous heart and a brilliant mind yet is so truly humble in all his actions. We are so excited to announce that he’s been selected as the 2015 Pizzigati Prize Winner by the Tides Foundation.
Join us in congratulating Vishwas Babu of Conflux Technologies for this well-deserved recognition for his visionary leadership and his tireless commitment to customers.
About the Pizzigati Prize
The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest annually awards a $10,000 cash grant to one individual who has created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change.
The Pizzigati Prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing.
Honoring Collaboration and Sharing
The Pizzigati Prize seeks to honor software developers who create, for free public distribution, open source applications and tools that nonprofit and advocacy groups can put to good use.
These developers are making a two-faceted contribution to social change.
- First, they are having an important practical impact: their software helps nonprofits both become more effective on a daily basis, and build their capacity to better inform and mobilize their constituents.
- Second is their commitment to collaboration and sharing, public interest software developers in their leadership of the open source movement, fully demonstrate that we all benefit when we work together.
Vishwas – a Leader and a Role Model
Vishwas truly embodies the ethos of Tony Pizzigati and these two enablers of social change. Vishwas has been a driving force behind the evolution of the Mifos X platform, helping to bring the world’s first open platform for financial inclusion to those serving the Base of the Pyramid.
Even more important is Vishwas’ leadership and his willingness to share and collaborate with everyone. From the day he and his colleagues at Conflux Technologies first joined the community, their actions and their attitude have been a model for the rest of the community – the knowledge, tools, and enthusiasm shared with the rest of the community has been contagious.
The results and testimonials of the lives that Vishwas has touched speak for themselves – customers around the world like Nuru and SECDEP can always count on Vishwas and his team for their creativity, their responsiveness, and their expert knowledge at a moment’s notice.
HFOSS Pioneers
Vishwas is now part of an impressive class of former Pizzigati Prize winners who are true pioneers for HFOSS and software in the public interest like Ken Banks from FrontlineSMS, Yaw Anokwa from OpenDataKit and Darius Jazayeri from OpenMRS, just to name a few.
Vishwas unfortunately won’t be able to accept his award in person at the NTEN Technology Conference in Austin, TX on March 6 so I will be accepting it on his behalf.
Read Vishwas’ nomination packet and his recommendation from SECDEP to learn more about his impact.
Congratulations Vishwas!!