ជំរាបសួរ, or chomreabsuor, is what people in Cambodia say to each other when they meet. And it’s time for Fedorans to meet in Cambodia! Fedora’s FUDCon for the APAC region takes place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, held alongside the BarCamp ASEAN in November 2016.

BarCamp ASEAN

Under the slogan “Growing technology together,” BarCamp ASEAN 2016 opens its doors from 4-6 November. BarCamp ASEAN is a 3-day international technology conference and exhibition. It brings together technology professionals, business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, creatives, educators, and students from the ASEAN region. There, they participate in an open exchange of knowledge, skills and experiences related to technology, entrepreneurship, and career development.

BarCamp ASEAN 2016

Participants learn, share, and show new forms of technology and innovation from which individuals, projects, and their companies and organizations can benefit. The BarCamp Cambodia team has successfully organized BarCamp Phnom Penh since 2008. This year they renamed the event BarCamp ASEAN 2016. Their goal is to bring together BarCamp organizers, technology professionals and startups from all ASEAN countries to showcase their innovations in Phnom Penh.

BarCamp Phnom Penh gathered more then 5,000 registered participants in previous years, with more then 30 different institutions, companies, and projects exhibiting. Visitors had hard choices to make, with five parallel tracks. These included talks such as:

  • Third-party Firmware for Wireless WiFi Routers
  • Learning Basic Git
  • Getting to Know Infrastructure as a Service (a cloud service)
  • What Internet Security Experts Know That Most People Don’t
  • …and many others!

Additionally there were more then 50 talks and discussion panels. Visitors could explore the exhibition area with booths of projects like Fedora and Mozilla, technology companies, startups, and schools. Among the exhibitors was the National Institute of Posts, Telecoms and ICT (NIPTICT) and their open source program where students learn to build, program, and fly drones. Another project presented a vision for future agriculture and how farmers might use drones in their work. In fact, drones and robots were nearly everywhere. But there was also a stage in the exhibition area for presentations and games, from impressive traditional martial-art and dance shows to raffles.

BarCamp Phnom Penh

FUDCon

FUDCon is the Fedora Users and Developers Conference. The Fedora community holds this major free software event annually in each of the APAC and LATAM regions. FUDCon is a combination of sessions, talks, workshops, and hackfests. Fedora contributors and users come together and learn from each other, organize, and discuss the future development of their favorite Linux distribution. The 2016 edition of FUDCon APAC will be held together with BarCamp ASEAN from 4-6 November 2016 at the Norton University in Phnom Penh.

FUDCON APAC 2016

Norton University was one of the first private universities in Cambodia. In 2014 Norton hosted FOSSASIA, another FOSS event in the region. For the first weekend in November, the building will be entirely captured by BarCamp ASEAN and FUDCON APAC. The exhibition will take place on the ground floor, while in the auditorium on the rooftop visitors will find all Fedora talks. In addition, there will be rooms with workshops, hands-on labs, presentations, and hackfests.

FUDCon is always free to attend for anyone in the world. You can reach Phnom Penh from Bangkok or Ho-Chi-Minh City by bus for just $20 (USD), while a roundtrip flight from Singapore or Kuala Lumpur is around just $150 (USD). You can find more travel information on the FUDCon official website. So if you live in this area, this event is definitely worth the travel.

In case you’re interested in speaking at the conference, FUDCon’s call for papers is still open. The deadline for submissions is the 25th of September, 2016.