Join the Sahana Software Foundation for this year’s Grace Hopper Open Source Day on October 6 in Baltimore, Maryland. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is the largest professional conference to support the research and career interests of women in computing. And this year’s Open Source Day at the conclusion of the conference is sure to be a highlight of the event, with a day-long Codeathon that will provide participants with the opportunity to learn about contributing to humanitarian open source projects like Sahana Eden.
The Sahana Software Foundation is proud to be part of the organizing committee for this year’s Open Source Day at the Grace Hopper Celebration. Two years ago, we organized and delivered the first Codeathon for Humanity at the Grace Hopper 2010 Celebration in Atlanta, Georgia, as a complement to the Open Source Track, with over 100 participants joining us for a half-day program of coding with Sahana Eden.
Scenes from the 2010 Codeathon for Humanity
This program was so successful that it was expanded into a full-day Open Source Day program last year involving multiple open source projects.
This year promises to be the best event of its kind, with the inclusion of several local projects to Baltimore – including Goodspeaks and the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. Other participating organizations include Google Crisis Response, GNOME A11y, Kids on Computers, Shared Learning Collaborative, Systers/GNU Mailman, the Wikimedia Foundation and the Women’s Peer-to-Peer Network.
Of course, while these other projects are great, we would encourage participants to rather come work on Sahana Eden during the Open Source Day!
We have a great project for participants to work on during this year’s event – building a Transport Module for the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). The Caribbean is prone to a number of natural disasters, especially during the annual Atlantic Hurricane season, which can bring multiple Hurricanes and tropical storms to the region. The 18 Members States of CDEMA rely on mutual aid and cooperation to prepare for and respond to disasters. CDEMA has decided to base their Regional Logistics Tool that will be a mission critical component of their Comprehensive Disaster Management program on the Sahana Eden platform. Building a Transport Module to record data about airports, seaports and other border control locations is an essential component of that system and a great way to get started coding with Sahana Eden and contributing to a humanitarian open source project. We often use “Building a new module” in our SahanaCamp program as a teaching method for new Sahana Eden developers so the program will be interesting and appropriate for those new to open source while still providing opportunities for more experienced developers to contribute.
More information is available on our Grace Hopper Open Source Day Event page.
Open Source Day registration is limited to 200 attendees. To register, please add your name to the sign up page. You must also register for the Grace Hopper Conference in order to attend the Open Source Day. A Saturday-only registration is available for those interested in attending only the Open Source Day event.
Lots of Sahanans have been involved in organizing the GHC 2012 Open Source Day, including Director Leslie Hawthorn and Member Avni Khatri, who both serve on the organizing committee with me for the Open Source Day, Avni as Co-Chair. Director Louiqa Raschid will be representing the Sahana Software Foundation at the Open Source booth at the conference and bringing a small team of developers from the University of Maryland to work on Sahana Eden during the event. Our facilitation team will be led by Eden leader Fran Boon. Many thanks to the Anita Borg Institute, especially Seema Gururaj, Director of the Grace Hopper Celebration, for their support for the Open Source Day and the Sahana Software Foundation’s ongoing role in organizing, delivering and participating in this event.
Our participation in the Open Source Day at the Grace Hopper Celebration is one of the highlights of our Community Development activities. Look for a report on the event here in mid-October.