The T4GC Summit on August 31st, 2024, was a truly inspiring event! We were thrilled to see over 90 passionate participants, including funders, tech innovators, and leaders from nonprofits and social enterprises, come together. It was a powerful reminder of the incredible community that believes in the potential of tech for good, and the curious minds dedicated to leveraging it for lasting change. Check out this page for the event highlights.
The summit kicked off with an inspiring keynote by Kailash Nadh, CTO of Zerodha, who framed FOSS as a movement rooted in collaboration, transparency, and collective empowerment. He emphasised that FOSS aligns perfectly with the goals of NPOs, offering scalable, sustainable, and inclusive solutions to society’s pressing issues.
Vijay Sai Pratap, co-founder of Gram Vaani and Ankit Kumar, Software Engineer at Commons Tech, led a session on ‘The Role of Technology in Climate Action.’ They shared examples of how open-source technology is being used in climate initiatives across India and discussed the potential of the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), with CoRE Stack as a prime example. They highlighted how open data and open source technology supports NPOs in climate action and its potential for future advancements.
Gauthamraj Elango, Head of Technology at Reap Benefit, presented about Samaaja, a platform for citizen engagement developed in collaboration with FOSS United. He shared how Samaaja played a critical role in activating youth agency in Assam, particularly through its involvement in the Jal Jeevan Mission. Gautham highlighted how Samaaja enables young people to gather data, report issues, and solve community problems, demonstrating the platform’s impact on safe and sustainable water management in rural areas. By leveraging the low-code capabilities of Samaaja, young changemakers could easily gather data, report issues and solve community issues- all while being supported by a robust community-driven platform.
Varun Hemachandran from Open NyAI introduced Jugalbandi, an open source conversational AI platform that uses Generative AI and Indian language translation models under the Bhashini mission. He explained how Jugalbandi enables conversational AI on platforms like WhatsApp and demonstrated the Jugalbandi Studio Pilot, which aims to reduce the cost of building AI conversational bots.
The panel discussion featuring Prashanth Balasubramanian (T4GC) as moderator, Vinay Kumar (Vice President, Zerodha Tech), Moosa Mehar (Co-founder, Tinkerhub), Vidya Sridhar (T4GC), and Praveen Kumar (T4GC) as panellists, focused on the opportunities and challenges of integrating FOSS into the social sector. The panellists emphasised that while FOSS offers flexibility and the ability to customise solutions for unique local needs, it also requires NPOs to build technical capacity and maintain active community engagement. The discussion also touched on the scenarios where FOSS is most effective, such as in cost-sensitive projects that require customisation and transparency, and where it might not be suitable, particularly in situations demanding immediate support or compliance with strict regulations.
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