I had the privilege of representing Mozilla and my country, the Philippines for the third straight year in FOSSASIA. For the second year in a row, FOSSASIA 2017 was held at the Science Center Singapore from the 17th up to the 19th of this month. The theme for this year’s FOSSASIA is “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Personal Assistants at Asia’s Premier Open Technology Event.”

I gave an introductory talk about Rust (programming language) on the last day of the conference. My session was held at the Scientist of the Day area, just behind the Mozilla booth:

FOSSASIA is the premier Free and Open Source technology organization in Asia for developers, designers, start-ups, and contributors. Projects at FOSSASIA range from open hardware, to design, graphics and software. FOSSASIA was established in 2009. The annual FOSSASIA took place in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Singapore. FOSSASIA meetup groups exist throughout Asia,” according to their website.

For this year, Mozilla sent an official delegation of seven (07) Mozillians from the Tech Speakers group.

Team Mozilla Tech Speakers in front of the Mozilla booth at FOSSASIA 2017. [L-R] Santosh Viswanatham, me, Diky Arga, Dietrich Ayala, Mijanur Rahman, Noritada Shimizu, and Trishul Goel.
Attendees of the conference were very much appreciative of the different talks our team gave on the final day of the three-day event. Over at the Mozilla booth, which was strategically located right outside the Scientist of the Day area, we had several VR glasses for people of all ages (mostly kids) to try the awesomeness of WebVR. A number of conference attendees who visited our booth were interested in learning more about A-Frame, WebVR and how to be part of the Mozilla community (with some asking if there is one in Singapore).

Also worth mentioning are the number of Filipinos who flew all the way from Manila just to attend this year’s FOSSASIA — Mabuhay! All throughout the weekend, I was surprised to see more than ten (10) Pinoys, most of whom were sent by their respective (Philippine-based) companies to the conference.

 



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert “Bob” Reyes is a technologist, an ICT Consultant and Tech Speaker, a certified Google IT Support Specialist, and an Open Source advocate representing the global non-profit Mozilla (makers of Firefox) in the Philippines. Bob is a Technology Columnist for the Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation and an aviation subject matter expert contributor for Spot.PH.

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