For the months of January and February, we're showcasing two Bankers without Borders volunteers who have been updating and expanding our documentation. Bharathi Ramasubramanian and Donnie Tuck have brought an understandable voice to some of the complex new features in our most recent releases. They've updated our user manual so you can use the new features and understand the value they can provide.
For the month of December, we're showcasing Keith Pierce, a man of many talents, who has contributed to Mifos in all capacities. This time, we're recognizing him for his Drupal expertise. Keith has been maintaining the face of Mifos, keeping our mifos.org and mifos.com sites running smoothly and securely.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. This time around we're recognizing Keith Pierce. Keith, father-in-law to our very own Adam Monsen is a former volunteer, contract, and full-time developer for Mifos. Now he's volunteering his time to help us in maintaining our websites built on Drupal. In only a couple months time, he's helped implement a solid and secure development workflow, fixed bugs on the sites, and built out functionality to make the sites more usable for the community. Keith's continued commitment to Mifos shows that there are many ways you can get involved.
For the months of October and November, we're showcasing the Translatewiki.net Community, who've supplied us a robust new infrastructure for translating Mifos and an active community of translators to maintain and extend the languages Mifos is available in.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. This time around we're doing a group recognition for several key members of the Translatewiki.net community. Transitioning the Mifos user interface to FreeMarker pages meant we need to re-translated our entire software. This could have been a nightmare but it's been a blessing. Making the switch from Pootle to Translatewiki.net, we've benefited from a stable and actively maintained translation infrastructure that smoothly syncs with our Git repository. Coupled with an enthusiastic community of translators, we've been able to maintain our existing Spanish, French, Chinese, and Portuguese translations with the new UI framework and are beginning to translate Mifos into languages like Bengali, Tagalog, Telugu, Tamil, and more.
For the month of September, we're showcasing Stanley Kwok, a volunteer who's stepped into the role of i18n (Internationalization) champion for Mifos as we migrate our UI to FTL pages.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Stanley recently joined our community in June but has made a big impact in that short time. Since joining, he's fixed a number of bugs related to the Mifos User Interface, reviewed incoming patches from community members, and gained active commit privileges to the Mifos source code. Recently he's become our Internationalization (i18n) Champion, stepping up to lead efforts translating Mifos through translatewiki.net as we migrate to a new UI framework on FreeMarker.
Stanley Kwok - Vancouver, BC, Canada
Brief Bio (in the words of Stanley): I've been in the IT industry for 10 years now. During this time I've worked in wide range of companies in various industries and using various technologies. My passion is solving challenging problems with elegant solutions.
For the month of August, we're showcasing Gayl Kennedy who while leading the deployment of Mifos at Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria, has provided a critical and discerning voice to help us improve the Mifos product.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Gayl is our first member of the Mifos implementer community to be recognized as our Star Contributor of the Month. Since joining our community, she's been an active participant on the mailing lists, helping to locate bugs and identify design and usability improvementsthrough new feature requests.
Gayl Kennedy - Tipperary, Ireland (currently in Kafanchan, Nigeria)
Brief Bio: Gayl is on a six month assignment at the Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria to implement an MIS system including Mifos for this NGO. She is working as a volunteer through the international NGO Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). Her previous experience has mainly been in the EMEA Operations Centre for a large software company based in Dublin, Ireland where she worked as a project manager on many system implementations – order management, sales tracking, MRP, scorecards etc.
For the month of July, we're showcasing Jim Stamper who's lent his Drupal expertise to help improve the Mifos web presence.
Each month we honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Jim is not our typical contributor, working directly on the Mifos codebase. He's been flexing his Drupal and PHP muscle to help us get a solid working community infrastructure in place by project managing the redesign of the Mifos.org community site on Drupal.
Jim Stamper - Seattle, WA
Brief Bio (in the words of Jim): I'm a PHP Developer currently working at KCTS Television, Seattle’s public television station and the largest in the Northwest. I’ve been in the web industry for 11 years now, the last four architecting apps and doing Drupal development. I’ve previously worked at CentreSource in Nashville, TN and with my own freelance studio, SouthSide Media.
Relevant Skills/OS Experience: LAMP Stack and Linux Administration.
Discovering Mifos: Through a friend who also did some volunteering for Grameen Foundation.
For the month of June, we're showcasing Keith Woodlock, who came on as one of our most productive volunteers this past summer and then joined the Mifos team as a contractor. He's been an instrumental contributor helping to refactor the Mifos platform so it can be easier for other contributors to participate and build on top of Mifos.
Keith Woodlock - Ireland
Brief Bio (in the words of Keith): Having graduated at University of Limerick, Ireland, I have spent most of my professional life working on Java/Spring, web-based systems. So far my work has taken me from Ireland to UK and Australia working in application domains such as telecommunications, transportation, directory search and now microfinance.
Relevant Skills/OS Experience:Java, Spring, Hibernate, Web technologies, TDD/BDD, Agile/XP
Each month we're going to honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Volunteers commit countless hours of their time, energy, and knowledge into building and extending the Mifos platform to make it accessible to microfinance institutions serving the poor. For the month of Feburary, we're showcasing the entire team at SunGard Technology Services in Bangalore, India who have been working closely with the Mifos team for the past year helping to strengthen the core Mifos platform, dramatically increase the performance of Mifos for our customers, and providing direct implementation services to our community.
Each month we're going to honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Volunteers commit countless hours of their time, energy, and knowledge into building and extending the Mifos platform to make it accessible to microfinance institutions serving the poor. For the month of January, we're showcasing Jakub Sławiński who recently joined the Mifos community and his been fixing some critical bugs for our customer, Al Majmoua in Beirut, Lebanon.
Each month we're going to honor one of our top volunteer contributors from around the world. Volunteers commit countless hours of their time, energy, and knowledge into building and extending the Mifos platform to make it accessible to microfinance institutions serving the poor. For the month of December, we're showcasing Michael Vorburger who recently joined the Mifos community to make valuable contributions migrating our issue tracker over to JIRA.
Michael Vorburger - Lausanne, Switzerland
Brief Bio (in the words of Michael): I have a computer science degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). Over the years, I have worked in a variety of environments & roles, from setting up some networking infrastructure and websites for the International Peace Bureau in Geneva to building my own small software business developing and marketing web tools, to working around IP multicast switching with Cisco Systems in California, to some kind of highly configurable CRM solution supporting pharmaceutical companies with their innovation and intellectual property management chain.
For the month of June, we're showcasing Keith Woodlock, who came on as one of our most productive volunteers this past summer and then joined the Mifos team as a contractor. He's been an instrumental contributor helping to refactor the Mifos platform so it can be easier for other contributors to participate and build on top of Mifos.
