This is about the work of Sunil Abraham in Bangalore... PS: At the risk of sounding vain, I could say that in a small way, our own efforts were successful in getting Sunil to look at Free/Libre and Open Source solutions for NGOs. Today, he has grown vastly in the field, and is amazingly competent. Maybe Free Software Foundation could help (I don't mean financial) groups like this. FN PPS: To be honest, this mail is extracted from one sent out in another context. But I think it's important enough for all of us to know what's going on elsewhere...
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Sunil Abraham sunil@indiacares.org says: "In our own small way we are promoting FLOSS in Bangalore. A short note about us is attached to this mail."
CONTACTS... ===== Sunil Abraham [MAHITI] 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 5352003. Pager: 9624 279519 sunil@mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org
________________________________________________________________________ MAHITI Profile
MAHITI aims to provide affordable and appropriate Information Technology services to the Indian voluntary sector. We specialize in the areas of web / intranet / kiosk / multimedia applications, consultancy and training. We design and execute projects in the areas of resource mobilization, collaboration, advocacy, e-governance and knowledge sharing. We specialize in the use of Open Source and Free Software.
SOFTWARE SERVICES:- Over the last 3 years we have serviced more than 75 VSOs directly. And around 1000 VSOs indirectly. Our clients include Ashoka.org, Indian Foundation for the Arts, Institute for Bio-Informatics and National Law School of India. We also have commercial clients such as I2 Technologies, Datacons, Datamations and Aztec.
MANAGEMENT SERVICES:- MAHITI is also institutional CTO for Tarahaat.com [Rural ICT Project], ICICIcommunities.org [Donation Portal for the Indian voluntary sector funded by ICICI Bank] and Explocity.com [City Centric Portal funded by NewsCorp]. As institutional CTO we play a wide range of roles from envisioning the technological road map right through to design, development, deployment and withdrawal.
DESIGN SERVICES:- MAHITI provides user interface, information architecture and multimedia design and production services. For example a reporting system for I2 Technologies, a study of application servers for Datamations, an automobile dealers MIS for Datacons and a grant recipients portal for the World Bank.
PRODUCTS:- MAHITI is working on two products. One, Knowledge Manager an Indianized version of Zope Application Server. This is a joint project with Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. This was a finalist for Erica 2000 - an award instituted by Ericsson for technical innovation in the non-profit sector. This software will conform to the standards prescribed by the Indic Computing consortia. This is an unfunded project. It is our belief that this tool would increase equity on the Internet. Just like Mozilla is free tool for consuming information on the Internet. Knowledge Manager will be a free tool to produce information on the Internet.
Two, a fund raising software to be developed in collaboration with MCAS and supported by Ford Foundation. This is only meant for small and medium organization as it can handle on 10,000 addresses. It is very similar to a customer management system. With features such as profiling, case handling and mass personalized email. Both these products will be licensed under General Public License.
NETWORKS:- MAHITI is also a founder member of Bangalore Cares - an on-line and print directory of over 570 voluntary organizations in Karnataka. In addition to being a core group member of the Credibility Alliance a consortium of voluntary sector networks that represent over 15,000 organizations in India. The Credibility Alliance is working towards enhancing the credibility of the sector by evolving and establishing standards and encouraging public disclosure of information. MAHITI is also founder member technical forums such as the Indian Zope and Python User Group and Indic Computing.
PARTNERS:- MAHITI has many partners both non-profit and for-profit for different types of collaborative projects. Murray Culshaw Advisory Services [fundraising-india.org] for communication and fundraising consultancy. Together we constantly update and maintain a database of 7,500 voluntary agencies. Mithi Technologies [Mithi.com] for multilingual technologies. Deep Root Linux [Deeproot.co.in] for advanced server appliances. VXL Instruments [Vxl.co.in] for thin clients and disk-less nodes. Vishwa Infotech for rural information and communication technology strategies. Pantoto for community platforms. Alternative Law Forum for legal and intellectual property issues.
TEAM:- MAHITI has a 22 member team located in Bangalore, South India. Consisting of 10 staff members, 8 corporate pro bono staff and 4 volunteers. MAHITI is headed by Sunil Abraham, an Ashoka Fellow. Most members on the team are programmers. We have two user interface designers who focus on aesthetics, coherence and usability. We follow a participatory design approach wherein the developers directly interact with the end users and solicit their feedback throughout the development cycle. Most team members have cross disciplinary skills and super specialization is discouraged.
TECHNOLOGY We use the following servers - Apache, TomCat, JRun, MS-IIS, Zope, MySQL, PostGres SQL, MS-SQL, Qmail, SendMail and Mithi Application Server. Graphical and multimedia tools such as Adobe Suite, Macromedia Suite and Gimp. Languages such as HTML, XML, WML, ASP, Basic, VB Script, Java Script, JSP, Java, Python, C++ and C. We are familiar with the Object Oriented Design and Unified Modelling Language. The MAHITI team has held trainings on these topics for various for-profit and non-profit technical teams. We have conducted over 50 trainings independently or in collaboration with MCAS, Public Affairs Centre, Indev.org and OneWorld.net.