Goals

Asia Source's primary goal is to act as a focal point in increasing awareness, integration and adoption of FOSS desktop and tools amongst the voluntary sector in South and South East Asia. The emphasis is on building capacity amongst existing practitioners to use FOSS as a viable option for access, content and communications.

More specifically it aims to:

• Create a venue for intensive peer learning, skill share and knowledge transfer
• Provide an opportunity for intermediaries working at the grassroots level to expand their practical expertise
• Encourage the localisation and adaptation of FOSS tools and materials to Asian contexts and languages
• Identify and provide an overview of actors working with FOSS and non-profits in the region
• Act as a catalyst for country-level FOSS/NGO events and projects as well as on-going collaboration between technology support providers in the region
• Seed connections and future partnerships across a wider spectrum, between developers, intermediaries and NGOs/activists
• Encourage the strategic inclusion of technology solutions into NGO projects

The event will bring together regional non-profit professionals from both the technical and content end of the spectrum. Our aim is to use this - and subsequent activities - as an oppourtunity to broaden expertise, forge new ideas and connections, and encourage the creative use of FOSS within the projects and initiatives of social justice groups in the region.

The focus on community building is a conscious move to encourage new ideas and relationships to form during Asia Source. It is our aim that the event should act as a catalyst for future projects and partnerships between participants. Experience from other Source events has demonstrated a high level of self organised post-event follow-up and collaboration between participants. This has ranged from a suite of FOSS projects in Tajikistan (four training events, a roundtable, a Tajik version of Linux, a FOSS resource centre and now a regional Central Asian FOSS training and networking event in the planning stages) through to new partnerships between software developers, technical support groups and school networking organisations (this was the case in Uganda when three organisations collaborated to successfully set up 250 refurbished computers in schools, implementing a Norwegian educational distribution called Skolelinux). The organisations involved are confident that new initiatives like the above will be developed by the participants and that their organisations and networks will collaborate to use and expand such initiatives.

In building up connections between practitioners in the region efforts will be made to interconnect with existing regional FOSS activities and networks that are more policy oriented, such as IOSN. This will be done by inviting advocates from these networks to contribute, facilitate and participate in Asia Source. We are confident that the community that develops out of Asia Source will be a valuable addition to existing networks.

Mahiti and Tactical Tech see this event as a crucial piece in their longer-term work with the voluntary sector in the region. Both organisations are dedicated to building the NGO/technology sector and are engaged in a large number of initiatives outside of the training context. These range from driving regional localisation initiatives to influencing policy discussions, and from creating guides and toolkits to developing new technology service delivery models for the voluntary sector. This event will act as a vehicle for broadening the circle of those involved in such initiatives, as an opportunity to seed future projects, and as a venue for new ideas, opportunities and projects to emerge.