THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Noting that creating a comprehensive and reliable data base of public assets and resources is vital in preparing and implementing development plan, state IT Secretary M Sivasankar today said the problems arising from the lack of this was felt during the post-flood relief operations.
Delivering the inaugural address at the FOSS Young Professional Meet 2018-19 (FYPM 2018-19), organised by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) at Kovalam here, Sivasankar said some ambitious plans are on the anvil to address this issue effectively.
The two-day meet is meant for initiating efforts to make Kerala emerge as a hub for talents in FOSS and related technologies.
“It’s highly essential that every public infrastructure, which has been created in the state gets mapped, in terms of the type of investment which has been into it, technology included into it and vulnerability of the particular public asset,” Shri Sivasankar said.
“This will help a better approach to planning. Once the data is available on the public domain, then various analysis will start happening from the side of individual researchers, institutions and groups, who will all look into this and will come out with specific analytical framework, and perhaps, successful policy recommendations,” he noted.
On FYPM, he said, “There is a very unstated philosophy lies in FOSS about reporting back its activities to its stakeholders and taking their inputs and moving on. This FYPM is primarily structured around this philosophy of ICFOSS.”
In his address, Dr. Jayasankar Prasad C., Director, ICFOSS, said FYPM is an avenue to reach out to student community.
Dr Rajeev. R.R, Programme Head, ICFOSS, welcomed the gathering. R. Srinivasan, Programme Head, ICFOSS, presented the report of FYPM 2016. Sampath Kumar, ICFOSS proposed a vote of thanks.
The annual event brought together students, fresh graduates, young professionals and startup companies that are interested in FOSS-based tools and technologies with the purpose of acquiring information, skills and competencies.
The lead theme for the meet was “Industry 4.0”, reflecting the importance of FOSS in this domain. Delegates from universities, research and IT industry are attending the event.
Workshops on open source architecture RISC- V and Kutty Pi were held on the opening day. The discussion on “In memory of outdated technologies “ featured technology stacks for “Industry 4.0”, which included Data Analytics, Cyber Security, Machine learning and cutting edge technologies such as RISC V and LoRaWAN.
A panel discussion on “Translating FOSS R&D to Entrepreneurships” will be held on the second day at 3.45 pm. Moderated by Santhosh Kurup from ICT Academy.
ICFOSS has also launched FOSS Contribution Award’ as part of the event to honour students, graduates and young professionals for their contributions made to FOSS community.
