Hacking for a Cause – Mifos at Random Hacks of Kindness

I am totally psyched to be headed to San Francisco this weekend to experience Random Hacks of Kindness for the first time. We are ready to RHoK out with Mifos as one of the featured problems for December 2012.  The sheer enormity of this global collaboration puts me in awe – i really don’t know what to expect but am excited to lead our project and am sure great things are on the way.

Random Hacks

We have been wanting to do RHoK for a while now and luckily all things have quickly come together thanks to Celine Takatsuno from Benetech and Social Coding 4 Good. We are privileged and grateful to be partnering with Social Coding 4 Good who have given us this opportunity to be a featured problem and work with HP Social Innovation teams across three global locations.

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Excitement is in the Air – 2012 Mifos Summit Recap

This past month, we concluded our first-ever global gathering of the Mifos community at our 2012 Mifos Summit in Bangalore, India. It was a huge success with 42 people in attendance from a dozen countries including 11 Specialists,  20 microfinance practitioners, and 11 contributors and strategic partners. I was thrilled to meet community members new and old for the first time and to finally put faces to all the names/voices behind the Skype calls. I was proud to see all the interactions and camaraderie that was shared throughout the grounds of the venue in Bangalore.

First off we want to graciously thank Paul Maritz for proposing and funding the summit; without him none of it would have been possible. A big thank you as well to Cat Allman and Google’s Open Source Programs office who pitched in last minute support to allow us to offer travel scholarships to several more individuals flying in from Africa. Please also extend your gratitude to Suresh, Arun, Praveen, and Rao from Grameen Koota for hosting the summit and conducting site visits along with Nirantara. Finally, a huge thank you to Vishwas, Nayan, and Ashok from Conflux Technologies who went out of their way to ensure smooth logistics and coordinate activities on the ground in Bangalore.

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Specialist Spotlight – SolDevelo

We like to focus in on our Specialists every once a while, recognizing their contributions and providing a more personal glimpse into their organization and team. This time around we’re taking a closer look at SolDevelo. SolDevelo has been playing a crucial role as the technical stewards of the Mifos 2.0 codebase. Head over to the COSM blog to read about each member of the team and what their plans are for Mifos in 2013 including continued expansion of their hosted service, MifCloud.

Specialist Spotlight – Sol Develo

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This regular blog series will shine the light on some of our top Specialists. Not only do we want to recognize them for their accomplishments, we want others to learn from the approach they’ve taken to promote and implement Mifos.

Mifos Specialists are one of the most crucial links in our community – they are the driving force that is promoting and supporting Mifos worldwide.  Aside from championing our product and bringing the Mifos technology to new markets, they act as the fundamental bridge feeding in MFI requirements to be developed by the community. Specialists don’t stop there as many are also developing and localizing the product to fit their local market.  For all these reasons, COSM is focusing it energy on making these Specialists successful – they are the primary channel to market, the eyes and ears on the ground, and the entrepreneurial force that will help us sustainably scale.

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