From Indonesia to India: GNOME Asia Summit 2016 being hosted at Manav Rachna International University

Manav Rachna International University (MRIU) is hosting GNOME Asia 2016 at its campus from April 21-23, 2016. GNOME Asia Summit is the featured annual GNOME Conference in Asia. The 2015 edition was held in Indonesia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, but also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss the present technology and future developments.

The first day of the Summit comprised an International Workshop on GNOME with participants from countries such as USA, UK, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, France, Czech Republic, Germany, Kazakhstan, and India.

Prof. (Dr.) K. K. Aggarwal, Former Vice Chancellor, IP University, Delhi was the Summit today. Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova (UK), Director, GNOME; Mr. Cosimo Cecchi (USA), Director, GNOME; Mr. David King (UK), Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat UK Ltd.; Dr. N. C. Wadhwa- VC, MRIU; and Dr. M. K. Soni, Executive Director and Dean, FET; among other senior dignitaries were present on the occasion.

In his inaugural address Dr. K K Aggarwal said: “This is a landmark achievement that Manav Rachna International University has succeeded in bringing an International conference of the stature of GNOME Asia to India. The field of Open Source Technology has evolved over the years. In yesteryears, 80% costs went in the development of hardware while only 20% budgets were allocated to Software Development. Now Software development comprises 80% of the development budget. In such a situation, GNOME providing software through Open Source is commendable.”

Ms. Ekaterina Gerasimova informed that GNOME is an international project which aims to develop software frameworks for the development of software, also to program end-user applications based on these frameworks, and to coordinate efforts for internationalization, localization and accessibility of that software. She encouraged the audience to contribute in order to learn and experience a real world environment, work with people of different countries, cultures and backgrounds, at the same time build a stronger CV. She explained about IRC, mailing lists, workflows, the GOOGLE Summer of Code and Outreach Programs.

Mr. David King talked about programming languages such as Javascript, Vola, C+. He also identified several websites related to development of GNOME application. He also executed several pieces of code for the audiences employing Glib, GTK+.

While thanking the GNOME Asia team, Dr. N C Wadhwa said: “GNOME Asia Summit 2016 will open up new avenues for our students in the field of Open Source Technology. A healthy exchange of ideas is necessary for academic development and this Summit will set a precedent for it”