Chief Guest

Mr. Asim Shaehryar Hussain, MD PSEB, was the Chief Guest of the event. He acknowledged the efforts and role of OSFP in promoting Open Source Technologies in the country. He said that it is the goal of PSEB to promote open source usage in Pakistan and to migrate government organizations from expensive paid licensed software to open source licensed software and technologies in the next 5-10 years.

He said that PSEB has sponsored open source training and migrations in the past where PSEB had trained more than 5500 students and professionals on open source technologies.

He said that OSFP can submit a training proposal to PSEB and ICT R&D Fund to resume such training in future.

Chairman OSFP

Mr. Saleem Rafik, Chairperson OSFP said in his welcome address that the efforts of Open Source shed light on the background and achievements of OSFP. He highlighted very important questions about the opportunities for Pakistan in the technological wave in form of IOT, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Mobile and Cloud Computing.

We need to be prepared to capture the opportunities through Open Source Technologies.

According to him Open Source Foundation Pakistan shall participate in the following initiatives:

• Iqra City an online university city

• OSFP will develop Open source Companies (Membership Portal)

• Carrier Portal for Open Source professionals  

• Open Source Collaborative Communities

• Policy Recommendation to Govt, for Open Source Usage and its Promotion

• ODOO Developers Group

• Python Developers Group

• Linux Users Group

• Big Data Research Group

Dean Engineering Sciences 

Dr. Najam ul Hassan being the host of the event welcomed all the participants and distinguished guest of the OSS 16.

He said the BU is proud to host the event and this collaboration of two organizations shows the acknowledgments of importance of Open Source Technologies from the academia and industry partnership.

He also said that we will work side by side with the OSFP and other key players of industry who are working to promote the open source technologies in Pakistan.

Member EC, OSFP

Mr. Tahir Chaudhry thanked the distinguished guests from Industry and academia, participants, students, Bahria University, Organizing committee, Sponsors and all other support staff for making the event a success.

He made the big announcement of the day that the first Open Source Awards are going to be held in 2017.

These awards would be announced and distributed in collaboration with Industry and Academia..

Dr. Nazir Vaid, Serial Entrepreneur

Dr. Nazir Ahmed Vaid mentioned that we are heading into an age where man will go behind the machines.

Artificial Intelligence will replace the manpower in the coming future e.g.(Robotic Surgeries, Robotic Drivers, Automated Manufacturing Process).

Dr. Numan Naseer

Dr. Nauman Naseer (Open Source and Neuro Robotics in Practice) highlighted the importance and usage of open source technologies to work on the Brain- Computer Interface (BCI).

Dr. Muhammad Sajid

Dr. Muhammad Sajid, NUST University mentioned that the kind of liberty Open Source technology brings with it, encourages the mechanical engineers to develop such products which were only meant to be fantasized before the introduction of open source technologies.

Prof. Dr. Lutfullah Kakakhel

Prof. Dr. Lutfullah Kakakhel, Ex vice Chancellor Kohat University, introduced the portable education server based on Raspberry pi specially designed for area where power, internet connection are dreams.

He said that this service is very much helpful to educate the children from the conflict hit areas and to the other remote areas.

MongoDB Workshop

Mr. Atif Mumtaz

CTO, PersonForce.com &VP Industry Academia Linkages OSFP

Explained the basics of MongoDB and to how to use MongoDB