Edward Cable

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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Dayna Harp

October 16, 2014 Take a Moment to Applaud Financial Co-Operatives

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Join nearly 208 million credit union members in 103 countries who recognize and celebrate the credit union difference by taking a moment to reflect on the financial co-operatives history and to ponder its achievements.

International Credit Union (ICU) Day® has been celebrated on the third Thursday of October since 1948. The day is recognized to honor those who have dedicated their lives to financial inclusion, recognize the hard work of those working in the credit union / SACCO / Co-Operative community and show members appreciation.

This year’s ICU Day will take place on Oct. 16, 2014. Its theme, “Local Service. Global Good,” emphasizes credit unions’ positive impact in their communities and around the world.

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James Dailey

Talking about Financial Inclusion to Financial Innovators at FinDEVr

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James Dailey, board member and Chief Innovation Officer for the Mifos Initiative, spent this week at FinDEVr San Francisco with Vishwas introducing the Mifos X platform to the world of fin-tech innovators. 
This week was terrific. I was able to geek out about financial inclusion for hours, give a presentation about the powerful Platform that the Mifos team has built, learn what other tech is up and coming, and share the narrative of why Mifos as a rallying concept – open source, open APIs, cloud, mobile – is so important for building the financial services that people everywhere deserve.
The FinDEVr conference at UC San Francisco Conference Center was not the typical conference for Mifos. Attendees were representing some of the largest payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal) and their development efforts were focused on use cases that are quite removed from the world of microfinance or building the basic payment networks in emerging markets.

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Edward Cable

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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Edward Cable

Mifos to Speak at FinDEVr San Francisco

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We are proud to take the stage as a bronze sponsor at FinDEVr San Francisco this week. Billed as the First Event for Fintech Developers, we’re eager to showcase our game-changing Mifos X platform to the world’s leading players in the fintech space like MasterCard, Visa, and Paypal. Organized by the Finovate Group, “for the first time, FinDEVr will gather together hundreds of the builders – devs, software architects, CTOs, VPs of engineering – that are forging the future of financial, banking and payments technology in a single place.”

James DaileyWe are excited to open their eyes, likely for the first time as well, to the massive opportunity there is to bring financial service to the 2.5 Billlion Unbanked at the Base of the Pyramid. James Dailey will be on the main stage on Day 1 to give a talk introducing our Mifos X platform, and the innovative new business models that our a modern componentized API-driven architecture enables. As the world’s one true open platform for financial inclusion, we give innovators the power to build mobile and cloud-based solutions that scale and respond directly to the rapidly evolving needs of clients worldwide.

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Video from Vishwas’ OSCON talk is live!

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Video from Vishwas’ talk on AngularJS at the 2014 OSCON in Portland has now been uploaded. For more on Vishwas’ talk and our booth educating the open source world on technology for financial inclusion, see our OSCON blog post.

Dayna Harp

Dayna Harp Joins The Mifos Initiative

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I am honored and excited to join the Mifos team as the Director of Strategic Initiatives. The primary charge of this position is to assist the Mifos Community to deliver on its mission to speed the elimination of poverty by coordinating a global community that uses Mifos X to deliver responsible financial services to the world’s 2.5 billion poor and unbanked. To help achieve this mission, I will reach out to the global financial co-operatives for support, will coordinate the efforts of end user documentation and will coordinate the volunteer efforts of non-technical volunteers.

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Edward Cable

2014 Mifos Summit – Kampala, Uganda

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We’re excited to be hosting our third annual summit and coming to Africa for the first time. Raj Jain and the team at Yako Microfinance will welcome us to Kampala, Uganda for our annual gathering to unite our community across the world who are using, supporting, and building the Mifos X platform to advance technology-enabled financial inclusion. Once again our summit will be four days long from October 14 to October 17.

Apart from the opportunity to network and connect with fellow community members, this year will have an even larger focus on hands-on training for partners and users, collaborative tech sessions for contributors, & educational sessions led by external experts from the fin-tech & financial inclusion sector.

As we look to stimulate and grow our East African community, one entire day of the summit will be focused on building awareness of Mifos X for the local East Africa region including an Expo Hall for our partners to showcase their solutions to local and regional financial institutions.

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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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