I seized on a great opportunity to attend a summer faculty workshop sponsored by hfoss at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. HFOSS (Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software) efforts at Trinity College, Wesleyan University and Connecticut College have been funded by NSF under the direction of Prof. Ralph Morelli (Trinity College and the main organizer) Here is a link to that website. Details of the workshop can be found here.There were eighteen attendees coming near and far (as far away as Hawaii and Oregon!).
Here is a nice group photo of the participants.
This was a hands on workshop - The instructors taught us some things and some of the participants taught us some more. Because the workshop was on Humanitarian as well as free and open source software, the comradeship was very high.
You can see some of us working/struggling with one of the exercises in this photo.
The Tuesday morning session covered basic free and open source materials. Then there were talks that are Humanitarian specific efforts.
Three such topics were:
1) Sahana foundation an open source disaster management system. Developers are based all over the world.
2) Open MRS - Open Source Patient monitoring health care systems. Main center is Partners in health in Boston.
3) Android/Posit/ODK - Based in Washington University Seattle.
I participated in the Sahana group. Even though we were unable to play with the code base, we saw a demo by Trishan (of Trinity College). We were also fortunate have the CEO of Sahana Foundation come and explain some of the things. The highlight may be to have a dimdum and skype session with one of the python developers of Sahana (based at Thailand). I truly learned the global nature of this project and its impact on millions of people. The working group notes can be found here.
The participants were also given opportunity to talk about their respective open source education initiatives at their institutes. Tim from Oregon State University, Norman from Wesleyan, Ralph from trinity, Martha from Hawaii and I gave brief presentations.
A snap of my presentation:
The breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee breaks were all excellent. Lots of thanks to Ralph and Trishan who spearheaded the efforts ably assisted by their colleagues in Wesleyan and Connecticut College and students from Trinity College.
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