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