Summer of Code 2010 – A Journey Well-Traveled

In this post, we want to take the opportunity to thank our 2010 Google Summer of Code interns for dedicating their summers to helping end poverty.

2010_300x267px When summer comes around, the Mifos team looks forward to an energetic group of Google Summer of Code interns who are ready to dive into our project and help us push towards our vision of 3 Billion Maries.

This summer was no different as we had five interns hard at work, helping us transition the Mifos platform to its next generation architecture. From the back-end to the front-end, the contributions of our interns will bring forth a more robust product to our customers and a platform that is much quicker, lightweight, and easier for our contributors to build on.

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Star Contributor of the Month – Gayl Kennedy

For the month of August, we’re showcasing Gayl Kennedy who while leading the deployment of Mifos at Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria, has provided a critical and discerning voice to help us improve the Mifos product.

Gayl Kennedy - Ireland/Nigeria

Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world.  Gayl is our first member of the Mifos implementer community to be recognized as our Star Contributor of the Month.  Since joining our community, she’s been an active participant on the mailing lists, helping to locate bugs and identify design and usability improvements through new feature requests

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Star Contributor of the Month – Jim Stamper

For the month of July, we’re showcasing Jim Stamper who’s lent his Drupal expertise to help improve the Mifos web presence.

Jim Stamper - Seattle, WA

Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world.  Jim is not our typical contributor, working directly on the Mifos codebase.  He’s been flexing his Drupal and PHP muscle to help us get a solid working community infrastructure in place by project managing the redesign of the Mifos.org community site on Drupal.   

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Adam Feuer Interviewed by PayPal X Developer Network

Mifos Director of Engineering, Adam Feuer discusses our goal to end poverty, and software’s place in achieving that goal.

20100809_article.mifos_.interview.photo_.Adam-FeuerRecently, Adam Feuer, had the chance to sit down with Matthew Russell of the PayPal X Developer Network for a casual conversation discussing Mifos and how developers around the world can work towards ending poverty by contributing to our software.

Visit the PayPal X site for an edited transcript of the interview or listen to the full conversation in this .mp3 file.

Adam covers a wide range of topics including:

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Uncovering the DNA of a Great Team

Mifos & ThoughtWorks teams discover the keys to successful global collaboration.

bootcamp_art_2Recently the Tech for Microfinance team has been going through the McCarthy Bootcamp, a teamwork laboratory, to help bring our team into alignment and closer to greatness. BootCamp is transforming us into a high-performance team, fully aligned around a shared vision so we can ship a great Mifos product faster to our customers.

Thus far, our team has completed two BootCamps; one with our US-based staff and then a second follow-on BootCamp with our software engineers and professional services staff from around the world. This past May we held our 3rd BootCamp with the newest member of the team Joe McNulty, and four participants from our newest strategic technology partner, ThoughtWorks. Bringing together the ThoughtWorks team from Bangalore with our Seattle staff we aimed to form a strong team that would eliminate the time zone and geographical distances. The following is a highlight of their achievements throughout their 3 day BootCamp:

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Star Contributor of the Month for June – Keith Woodlock

Keith WoodlockFor the month of June, we’re showcasing Keith Woodlock, who came on as one of our most productive volunteers this past summer and then joined the Mifos team as a contractor.  He’s been an instrumental contributor helping to refactor the Mifos platform so it can be easier for other contributors to participate and build on top of Mifos.

 

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Meet the 2010 Google Summer of Code Mifos Interns

This year we’re excited to announce a class of 7 rock star Google Summer of Code interns who will be part of the Mifos team this summer. In now our second year participating in Google Summer of Code, we look to build off the successes of Udai Gupta and Johan Hilding, last year’s interns, by taking on a larger team that will help us to bring participation to a new level.

Our 7 students from around the world bring a diverse set of skills, interests, and perspectives that will help to extend the Mifos platform. Once again we had an incredibly impressive pool of applicants making it difficult to narrow them down to this group. We’d like to thank all for applying and the dedication you’ve shown in wanting to help end poverty through writing code.

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Mifos Earns High Ratings in CGAP Software Review

Grameen Foundation today announced that Mifos®, its open source technology solution, has earned high marks in its first rating on the Microfinance Software Listings and Reviews published by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). The leading resource for information on microfinance software products, it gave Mifos maximum points for technical capabilities and for its suite of professional services. The reviews are conducted by independent evaluators with feedback from users.

Launched in 2006, Mifos provides microfinance institutions (MFIs) with both a centralized, web-enabled platform and an online hosted model (“Mifos Cloud”).  Its high-level security features, connectivity, flexibility and overall architecture earned Mifos the highest marks for technical capabilities.  Additionally, it received 4 out of 4 stars for the comprehensive implementation, training and support provided by Grameen Foundation and its specialists in the various regions.

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Mifos Earns High Ratings in CGAP Software Review

Grameen Foundation today announced that Mifos®, its open source technology solution, has earned high marks in its first rating on the Microfinance Software Listings and Reviews published by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). The leading resource for information on microfinance software products, it gave Mifos maximum points for technical capabilities and for its suite of professional services. The reviews are conducted by independent evaluators with feedback from users.

Launched in 2006, Mifos provides microfinance institutions (MFIs) with both a centralized, web-enabled platform and an online hosted model (“Mifos Cloud”).  Its high-level security features, connectivity, flexibility and overall architecture earned Mifos the highest marks for technical capabilities.  Additionally, it received 4 out of 4 stars for the comprehensive implementation, training and support provided by Grameen Foundation and its specialists in the various regions.

Visit the Grameen Foundation pressroom to read the full press release.  See below for full details of the review.

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End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.

UPDATE: 2010 Google Summer of Code Students Announced

Seven students have been accepted for Mifos projects this year. Join us in wishing them the best of luck this upcoming summer.

Visit the Google Summer of Code Website to see a listing and map of our accepted students and where they’ll be contributing from. Click here to see the full list of more than 600 accepted students participating in this year’s Summer of Code.

We had an overwhelming number of extremely qualified applicants with stellar proposals so it was a very selective process this year. To all those who applied and weren’t selected, we encourage you to apply again in the future and welcome your contributions to our community if there’s a volunteer project or other way you’d like to get involved. We’re always in need of others to help us build technology to fight poverty!
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