Hong Phuc Dang
About me
I have just completed my two-years term as an OSI board member. In my first year, I served as the treasurer/CFO overseeing budgeting and financial reports. In the second year, I acted as the Vice President supporting the OSI President especially during the transition period when our general manager unexpectedly resigned. Josh Simmons and I devoted a huge amount of time to keep operations running. We did a lot of administrative work ourselves and conducted the hiring process together with the staffing committee. Last year I organized and chaired State Of Source, OSI's first ever event that aimed to connect OSI with our members, open source contributors and communities. Before that I also hosted the OSI Annual Board Meeting in Berlin where I organized OSI's first international public meeting outside of the States "Open Source: Past, Present and Future". During my time on the board, I spoke and represented OSI at events across Asia and Europe (CCC, EU Policy Meeting, Fosdem).
I am the founder of FOSSASIA, an organization that strives to improve people’s lives through sharing open technologies, knowledge and fostering global connections and sustainable production. FOSSASIA develops a wide range of open source software and hardware solutions with a global developer community from our base in Asia. Two projects that I am heavily involved at the moment are Eventyay, an open source event platform and Pocket Science Lab, an open source hardware device used for electronic measurements and science experiments. Over the years I have established a network of partners across Asia from education institutions to tech communities and user groups. Together with the FOSSASIA team, we train hundreds of young students and developers every year through Codeheat program where participants learn coding, improving their technical skills while contributing to existing open source projects.
I currently serve as a board member of the Open Source Business Alliance Europe, a German non-profit that operates Europe's biggest network of companies and organizations developing, building and using open source software. I advise companies on open source strategies, e.g. Daimler and work with one of the largest online platform in Europe Zalando SE on open source practices.
The FOSSASIA Summit
I've chaired the annual FOSSASIA Summit for 12 years now. The event will take place online this year on 13-21 March. I would like to invite FOSS contributors outside of Asia to join us.
Personal Interest
I speak Vietnamese, English and Chinese and some German. I enjoy teaching and sharing open source with people from all backgrounds. My favorite thing to do when I am not working is swimming which I could not do the last few months unfortunately 
. I also enjoy setting up wifi networks with friends. I believes Free and Open Source is not just a way to exchange code freely, it is a collaboration model that sets an example of how people around the world can work together peacefully to solve any problem
Why am I a suitable candidate?
- I worked with thousands of people in Asia and Europe who are contributing and using Free/Open Source.
- I am a bridge between Open Source contributors in Asia and the rest of the world.
- I am representing women in tech.
- I am very well-connected and very resourceful (quoted by friends and partners).
- I am friendly and collaborative.
- I have experience working with community participants as well as corporate partners and NGOs and will use my knowledge to the benefit of the organization.
What is my agenda?
- Help OSI to increase its footprint in Asia and Europe.
- I would to ntroduce OSI to companies around the world.
- Help to recruit new members and partners.
- Work together with the core team to overhaul OSI’s web presence
- Work together with volunteers to design OSI materials and translate them into at least 10 languages within one year.
- Work with the board to increase OSI’s presence.
- Represent OSI in events and engage underrepresented contributors in OSI for example from China.