IBMers Contribute to SSF as part of IBM Centennial Celebration of Service

This year marks IBM’s Centennial and as part of a year-long Celebration of Service, the civic-minded company has been organizing volunteer contributions of IBMers to projects in the communities where they live with a specific focus on a Day of Service on June 15th – the day before the centennial of their founding.

As part of this Celebration of Service, IBM has organized a contribution to the Sahana Software Foundation focused on a handful of projects which reflect priorities, provide good value to Sahana and are virtual and flexible. This includes:

  • Translations: Using a cutting edge IBM Research project called n.Fluent for crowdsourcing translations of Sahana Eden into the six official UN languages and then beyond into other priority languages.  Read more about n.Fluent in this New York Times article.
  • Technical enhancements to Sahana Agasti: developers with experience in Sahana are working with our Agasti team to identify areas of priority enhancements based on the project’s current blueprints for a targeted contribution.
  • Useability review of Sahana Eden: a UI/UX team is providing a usability review of Sahana Eden and providing recommendations for improvement to be organized as a coding effort later in the year.

IBM and the Sahana Software Foundation have a strong relationship dating back to the origins of Sahana in Sri Lanka following the devastating tsunami which affected that country in 2004. I had the honor of working as part of IBM’s Crisis Response Team which responded to that disaster and helped organize the IBM contribution to Sahana’s development and deployment in Sri Lanka. I appreciate very deeply this relationship and look forward to years of collaboration.

IBM Crisis Response Team delivers training in Sahana to students in Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 2005
Students configuring Sahana on IBM-donated laptops in Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 2005

Happy Birthday IBM!  And thanks.

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