Thousands of Conferences Have Been Canceled, But Not This Conference… COSCUP 2020 Day 1 Highlight
The annual COSCUP is coming up today. With the uncertainty of the global COVID-19 epidemic, it’s a blessing to have a physical event where open source community members can meet together. Plus, it was a beautiful sunny day in Taiwan, which was the perfect way to kick off the first day of August by attending a conference!
This year’s event is different in that there’s no need to register. However, due to the pandemic situation, it’s still necessary to fill out a health declaration form to ensure proper epidemic prevention. When there’s no need to grab tickets online, more people will have the opportunity to participate in COSCUP together!
The main program was held at the Integrated Teaching Building of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. The opening by ANT gave us a glimpse of this year’s highly anticipated agenda.
Rico Lin, who is the vice-chair of the Technical Committee at OpenStack, talked about “How to Properly and Effectively Contribute to Large Open Source Communities” in the main agenda this year. Rico has drawn on his years of experience in the OpenStack community to share what it takes to find the right position in an open-source community, and how to achieve leadership.
In addition to the main agenda, Rico also shared the latest developments, operation status, and strategies of the OpenStack project in the “Cloud Native Community” track.
From the “Enter the FLOSS World” track, Bess Lee of the g0v community took Sch001 (an education-focused g0v project) as an example of how to collaborate with other education partners through the open-source community. She also shared her thoughts on the challenges she encountered.
In addition to software, photography can also be another group that embraces an open culture! The “Lightbox Photography Library” is a Taiwan-based, open to all, non-profit photography library established in 2016. With the concept of “free to all,” it continues to collect and organize Taiwan’s photography publications and provides the public with free access to them.
The founder of Lightbox Photography Library, A-Ding, was invited to share his views on the current development of open culture in Taiwan’s photography community, and how to embrace the value of openness in contemporary photography practices abroad.
From the “Google Technology × Public Participation × Open Source” track, members of the “Mask Map Team” shared the origins and concepts of the first version of the “Convenient Stores Mask Map.” They also shared the team composition and technical applications of the second version of the “Pharmacy Mask Map.”
If the use of open source projects involves business, the gray areas of patents and copyrights are often difficult for users to understand, and therefore deserve more attention. Speaker Fay, who specializes in the field of intellectual property, took “Discussing whether Java API can be protected by copyright in the context of the Oracle v.s. Google litigation history” as an example to discuss the eligibility and reasonable use of copyright.
Who said that “open source people” must write code? shiashia, who has been a COSCUP volunteer for more than 10 years, shared her gains and development of multiple skills from open-source events in the “Freedom of Open Source for Career, Life, and Self-Exploration” track. As a person who doesn’t know how to write code, she also shared the necessary preparations for embarking on the open-source journey.
After all, what is “open”? COSCUP invited Audrey Tang, the Digital Minister of the Executive Yuan, and Chien-Hung Huang, the Director of the Kuandu Museum of Art, to reflect on and challenge the definition of “openness” from different aspects such as civic technology, colonialism framework, and democratic politics. Through a three-hour-long dialogue, their discussion made the participants of COSCUP think differently.
In addition to the amazing agenda, hopping around the diverse sponsor booths is a must-to-do when you are at COSCUP every year!
We want to thank 5G, Appier, MOXA, Oracle, KKBOX, and other sponsors for not only recognizing the spirit of open source but also coming to the event to actively support it. They enrich the depth and breadth of COSCUP by sharing professional knowledge with our participants. They also designed many fun activities and brought a lot of goodies, which added the finishing touch to the energy and joy of COSCUP!
At the end of COSCUP Day 1, the most surprising thing was that because there’s no need for registration, which attracted more than 2,000 participants to attend the event, nearly twice as many as last year!
The first day of the event ends smoothly with thundering applause and cheers. The participants had a rewarding experience, and the volunteer team was full of confidence!
Open-source people, we look forward to seeing you all tomorrow :)
