Muciojad

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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Edward Cable

Mifos OSCON Recap

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oscon2014_logoIt’s become an annual tradition for our Mifos team to gather in Portland for a week of reaching out to new contributors and immersing ourselves in the latest in open source technology and communities at OSCON. This year we had a busy week with the Community Leadership Summit, our quarterly Mifos Initiative board meeting, an exhibition booth in the non-profit pavilion and a speaking slot on the Business and Javascript tracks at OSCON.

Once again throughout the hallways and in our conference booth, our initiative was very well-received. In general, the sector is  familiar with microfinance and their curiosity is piqued when they discover our initiative, an open source platform for delivering financial services to the poor. This year I noted a larger presence of financial services people more heavily involved in open source, including regulators, payments providers, and those involved in alternative currencies like Bitcoin. We are interested in bringing to bear their skills in both open source technology and financial services.

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Edward Cable

Come to our Talk at OSCON

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We’re right in the middle of OSCON and having a blast, meeting some incredibly motivated and talented individuals. After the conference, we’re looking to turn them into great volunteers for our community.

We have one more day at our booth in the Expo Hall tomorrow and have Vishwas Babu’s talk, Bringing Banking to the Poor with the Help of AngularJS at 11:30am, Wednesday July 23,  in room D137/D138

We are excited for Vishwas to take the stage at OSCON and for others in the open source community to see how strong a leader he is.

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Ishan Khanna

Ishan’s GSOC’14 Experience with Mifos

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Story So Far

gsoc-aspirant@mifos: Finding Organisation….[Done]
gsoc-aspirant@mifos: Introduction to Developer Community….[Done]
gsoc-aspirant@mifos: Finding a Project….[Done]
gsoc-aspirant@mifos: Contributing – Iterating – Contributing…………………………………………….[Done]
gsoc-aspirant@mifos: Selected @ Mifos
ishan@mifos: Developing Android Client………………….[Working]

 

androidThis is my first experience as an open source developer for an organisation and undoubtedly it’s been awesome so far. Working alongside experienced developers is always fun, for I love learning from others’ experiences.

Writing code that others can contribute to as well had always been a challenge, until I started with my android-client project. What can give nightmares to others is now a child’s play for me. A cool thing about Mifos is that I just don’t have one mentor, but anyone I ask for help behaves like a kind mentor to me. Always ready to help! Full of zeal and readiness to clear all your doubts! Read more

Edward Cable

2014 Banana Skins – Using Technology To Manage Future Risks

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banana-skinsThe 2014 Banana Skins report is out and although we’ve only just started to skim the report, the summarized findings once again point to the critical role of technology and the potential our platform has to address “future risks” facing the industry.

The Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI), Citi Foundation, and CFI in their annual report on the risks and challenges facing the microfinance sector has pegged Strategy as one of the new areas of concern. Quoting the recap of the study, both internal and external stakeholders are concerned financial institutions aren’t looking forward enough and ready to respond to new forces/trends shaping the market: Read more

Edward Cable

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

Edward Cable

Corent Delivers Mifos X as “SaaS in a Box”

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Corent recently announced that Mifos X is now available on their SurPaaS platform which will allow Mifos partners to easily deploy and operate localized versions of the Mifos X Platform “as a service” and efficiently support large numbers of local and regional financial institutions. 

Corent will be hosting a webinar on July 2 at 1400 GMT via GoToTraining to showcase Mifos X on the SurPaaS platform.  Read more

Markus Geiss

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

Paul Maritz
Craig Chelius

Mifos Initiative Launches Mifos X Platform

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June 11, 2014 – San Francisco, CA

Mifos Initiative Launches Mifos X Platform for Financial Inclusion : Free and Open Source Software for Financial Institutions Bringing Financial Services to the Poor in Developing Countries.

Mifos X was officially launched at a hugely successful event in San Francisco. Over 100 people from the tech industry  and non-profits attended the launch event. The event was graciously hosted by Paul Maritz, our chairman, at the Pivotal Labs in downtown San Francisco (Paul is CEO of Pivotal).

Paul opened the event with exciting remarks about the power of platforms and how Mifos X has been completely rebuilt as a open platform that brings together providers of capital with the poor that can use that capital to lift themselves out of poverty. Paul forecast that as an open platform that encourages innovation in financial services for the poor, Mifos X will be a global force in financial inclusion. Paul sees the next five years as being instrumental for Mifos. Read more

Edward Cable

Mifos Initiative Launches Mifos X Platform for Financial Inclusion

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Free and Open Source Software for Financial Institutions Bringing Financial Services to the Poor in Developing Countries

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Mifos Initiative today launched its Mifos X Platform for Financial Inclusion. The Mifos X Platform is a free and open source core banking system for responsible financial services organizations bringing financial services to the 3 billion unbanked poor globally – the proven method to lift the poor permanently out of poverty.

Developed and supported by a global ecosystem of volunteers, donors, and technology partners, Mifos X is used by microfinance institutions, credit cooperatives, and savings institutions in developing markets.

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