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 OWASP European Tour 2013 – further information (124 Kb)

Everyone is free to participate in OWASP and all of our materials are available under a free and open software

license. Apart from OWASP’s Top 10, most OWASP Projects are not widely used and understood. In most cases
this is not due to lack of quality and usefulness of those Document & Tool projects, but due to a lack of
understanding of where they fit in an Enterprise’s security ecosystem or in the Web Application Development
Life-cycle.
This event aims to change that by providing an insight into the issues of cybercrime, its impact and detection
and a selection of mature and enterprise ready approaches together with practical examples of how to use
them.

Further details of the event can also be found at: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/EUTour2013

The upcoming round of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women internships will have an application deadline on May 1 and internship dates from June 17 to September 23.

Background Information

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. There are many Free and Open Source Software licenses under which software can be released with these freedoms. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people. FOSS contributors do various things: software development, system administration, user interface design, graphic design, documentation, community management, marketing, identifying issues and reporting bugs, helping users, event organization, and translations.

Many people work on FOSS as a hobby in their spare time and some are employed by companies and non-profit organizations, including ones that are sponsoring this program! Elego, Google, Mozilla, Rackspace, and Red Hat have been the corporate sponsors of the program. GNOME Foundation, Open Technology Institute, OpenITP, OpenStack Foundation, The Tor Project, and Wikimedia Foundation have been the non-profit organizations sponsoring this program. Hobbyist FOSS experience is highly valuable in the professional world because seeing the publicly available contributions and history of collaboration gives confidence to employers when making hiring decisions.

Outreach Program for Women (OPW) internships were inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code and by how few women applied for it in the past. This was reflective of a generally low number of women participating in the FOSS development. The GNOME Foundation first started the internships program with one round in 2006, and then resumed the effort in 2010 with rounds organized every half a year. In the May-August 2012 round, the Software Freedom Conservancy joined the Outreach Program for Women with one internship with the Twisted project. In the January-April 2013 round, many other FOSS organizations joined the program.

By having a program targeted specifically towards women, we found that we reached talented and passionate participants, who were uncertain about how to start otherwise. We hope this effort will help many women learn how exciting, varied and valuable work on FOSS projects can be and how inclusive the community really is. This program is a welcoming link that will connect you with people working on individual projects in various FOSS organizations and guide you through your first contribution.

Application Process

The application process is highly collaborative. You are expected to start working with a mentor and ask many questions during the application process.

If you have general questions at any point during the application process, you are welcome to email them to opw-list@gnome.org or ask them on the #opw IRC channel on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org) , where you are encouraged to hang out throughout the application process. opw-list@gnome.org is a private list and your inquiries will only be visible to the coordinators and mentors for the program. Please start the subject line for all your e-mails to this list with a string [INQUIRY]. For organization-specific questions, please use the communication channels described on the page for each organization. Each project you will consider will have its IRC channel, and you should join it for the fastest way to get your project-specific questions answered and communicate with your mentor. It’s easy to connect to IRC.

You can see further information about the internships and application process here.

Saturday 27th October 2012

Venue: BCS, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf)

What is an unconference?

An unconference is a conference where what happens is organized by the delegates on the day. The event organizers have to arrange something, the main one being a venue, but the rest is down to the delegates. So all the hassle of talk submissions, review and scheduling is taken away.

Typically at the start of the day everyone gets up in turn and says who they are, what their interests are and what they’d like to do. Based on this people write proposals on Post-It notes and stick these on a board. A moderator may read out the proposals in turn to gauge interest, and if sufficient the proposal will be put on a scheduling board (delegates may adjust the schedule to avoid clashes, etc.).

The unconference starts… Experience shows that the unconference format results in high quality sessions focussed on what delegates want.

Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

Why attend?

There are lots of reasons to attend the OSSG/FLOSS UK Unconference 2012, including:
* Keep abreast with new/emerging technologies
* Network with some of the people who are responsible for developing critical applications
* Become part of the UK Open Source community – build up informal relationships that can be invaluable in problem solving

Benefit from the experience of delegates with similar interests

For more information see: http://www.flossuk.org/unconf2012

The BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding a detailed event around the future of HM Government Desktop/Client side computing at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA (http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf) on Wednesday 4th April 2012, from 1000 to 1700 hours.

Rationale for this event

With HM Government looking with renewed vigour at its computer systems and in particular what benefits open source may bring, this event intends to take a detailed look at what HMG Desktop/Client side computing may consist of in the near future. For example should it be based primarily around web services where accessible would not be platform dependent so that for instance Civil Servants can load whatever operating system they like on to an HMG funded laptop. Alternatively could the future follow more closely the success (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/limux-munich-linux-migration-project-reports-success) of the City of Munich using the Limux operating system based around Ubuntu Linux 10.10 or perhaps should some form of rigidly controlled thin client system running off of blade servers be used.

Another possible way forward is through the use of what has been termed the ‘Jigsaw approach’ where business applications are all fully vendor independent of each other and can be swapped from one product to another with relative ease. For instance one Office Suite or Browser product might be used for say 6 months and therefore form part of the HMG desktop for that period of time, but can easily be changed for another product after that period of time.

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments (Breakfast served from 0930, Lunch from around 1300, Afternoon Tea and Cakes from 1530, Wine and Nibbles from around 1700). To book a place to attend please email Mark Elkins at mark_elkins@bcs.org

The Speakers

Gerry Gavigan, Chair, Open Source Consortium (OSC), http://www.opensourceconsortium.org

Chris Kenyon, VP Sales & Business Development, Canonical http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/overview/management-team Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu. Chris has had the privilege of being responsible for Canonical’s  commercial engagements with industry partners Dell, HP, Intel and ARM and has helped lead commercial growth of the company over the last five years.  Chris spends much of time on the road with customers in North America, Europe and China.  His present role spans commercial engagements with both end customers and industry partners.

Event Abstract:
- What do desktops of the future look like?
- How do we give civil servants, health-care professionals, teachers and the armed services access to the tools, they need?
- How would an alternative HMG desktop look like?
- Learning from large Linux deployments globally:
- What are some of the best practices for using Linux desktops and proprietary software together?
- What are some of the obstacles that large non-Microsoft desktop deployments face?
- Is a bring your own device culture an opportunity or a threat to the HMG desktop?

Steve Lamb, Open Source Strategy Lead, Microsoft UK. Steve works with Open Source developers, communities and business leaders to enable & encourage a growing ecosystem of Open Source projects on Microsoft technologies including Windows Azure. Steve is a technologist with solid business and communications experience who’s worked at Microsoft for the last ten years with the previous ten being specialised in UNIX. He thrives on breaking down unnecessary barriers, working with amazing people to understand complicated problems and helping communities be more successful. He has paid great attention to cloud technologies (and social media) for many years. Steve has spoken at major conferences around Europe including TechEd – he’s not “a speaker” by trade.

Event Abstract: Hands up who’d like to use a computer that takes forever to boot, is inflexible, obsolete and expensive? Anyone? No I thought not! Sadly this is the reality for users of the current HMG standard desktop. It really doesn’t have to be this way. My peers will present a range of alternative Open Source platforms. Open Source runs REALLY WELL on Windows Client, Server and in the (Azure) cloud. A MODERN version of Windows can give a MUCH BETTER experience though changing the desktop Operating System is only part of the solution. Having a sensible configuration is critical. Keeping it up to date is key. Keeping costs down is important. Freeing people to work HOW THEY WORK BEST is critical.

Richard Melville, Systems Architect, runs Cellularity (cellularity.co.uk), a company committed to developing and producing the “Stellar System”, a small, silent, user-friendly, distributed desktop system running only free software. Interested in electronics at an early age, and designing transistor radios for fun, Richard first worked in the telecoms industry. Moving on to machine control and thyristor-driven dockside equipment he then decided to take time out and took a Sociology degree at Essex University. On leaving University he ran a PCB design company before joining Racal Electronics, a founder member of Vodafone, when the company was working on installing the UK’s first mobile phone network.

Event Abstract: The landscape of the computer desktop is changing fast, driven in part by the rapid developments taking place in the mobile arena.  Howling towers stuffed under office desks, running proprietary software, and creating an unpleasant noisy working environment are giving way to smaller, more energy-efficient systems.  Over the years we have seen vacillations between server-client to peer-to-peer and back again.  With the proliferation of cheap multi-core processors the time is now right for small distributed desktop systems.  With the low power consumption of such systems and the advancement of battery technology there is the potential of freeing the desktop from the constraints of the mains electricity supply.

Tariq Rashid, Lead Architect HOIT Technology Solutions & Assurance, Home Office, HM Government, explaining the “jigsaw” model and its suggested benefits.

Sam Tuke is UK Coordinator for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). He has been using, developing, and promoting Free Software since 2003, organised and spoken at conferences in Sweden, Britain, and Germany, and is currently working on the Document Freedom Day 2012 campaign for Open Standards.

Event Abstract: Public bodies in Europe and beyond are making use of Free Software in a major way. From Munich City Council, to the schools and universities of Brazil, to the local authorities of Belgium, Free Software is providing new solutions in highly competitive public sector markets. Sam will introduce the most interesting of these deployments, and discuss why Free Software was chosen in each case and what benefits it brought. The talk will conclude with an exploration of the advantages that Free Software can offer to the British public sector.

Jan Wildeboer,Open Source Evangelist, Red Hat

Event Abstract: Building the New Now with Open Standards and Open Source – After a short definition of terms we will go through the history, present and possible future of solutions based on open principles. We will revisit some of the early projects that have worked and more importantly those that didn’t work to learn from their failure.

Full day Training Course by Damian Conway – ‘Presentation Skills’

Monday 16th April 2012

Ambassadors Hotel, 12 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0HX

see: http://www.flossuk.org/Events/PresentationSkills2012

Description: The best and most effective presentations capture the audience
quickly, hold their interest effortlessly, educate and entertain them in equal
measure, and sometimes even inspire them.

This class explores simple and effective techniques for achieving those goals
in any kind of presentation.

The first half of the class focuses on preparation, content selection, visual
design, delivery, handling questions and effective techniques for presenting
various kinds of technical information (code, data, statistics, charts,
structure diagrams etc.)

The second half of the course is an in-depth tutorial on improving the ‘look
and feel’ of presentation materials – especially Powerpoint/Keynote/Impress
presentations. In particular, it demonstrates practical techniques for making
your slides not suck!

Tutor: Damian Conway is a renowned programmer, speaker and educator, best
known for his work on Perl programming language.

Previously as Associate Professor in Computer Science at Australia’s largest
University, for the past decade he has made his living entirely by giving
conference keynotes, technical presentations, programming tutorials and
professional training courses.

He has been keynote speaker at major technical Conferences such as OSCON,
linux.conf.au, OLS, Webstock, DebConf, and GOTO, presenting on topics as
diverse as quantum physics, website design, computational linguistics,
bioinformatics, and programming language design.

He has also been invited to speak and teach at Institutions such as Harvard,
MIT, Carnegie Mellon, U. Toronto and ETH Zurich and has delivered seminars and
taught classes for major corporations including Apple, Yahoo!, Amazon,
Canonical, Xerox, Qualcomm, Canon, Michelin, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Places are limited – early booking is essential Early-bird rates available
until 15th March 2012