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Home2013October

FinTP Hackathon #2 Kick-off

Month: October 2013

Friday, October 25, 2013

 

Curious to see the presentation from FinTP Hackathon #2 this Tuesday? Well, here it is:

By Ioana Moldovan, 25 October 2013.
Friday, October 25, 2013

 

Here are some of our themes suggestions for the FinTP Hackathon #2.

But, remember, your creativity has no limits. You can just amaze us at the end of these six weeks of coding.

 

Good luck to all participants!

By Ioana Moldovan, 25 October 2013.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

 

Not quite a tradition yet, but, just like in May, the day after the FinTP hackathon #2, we organized the Allevo User Group. The 23rd edition on 23.

And the reason behind it stays the same: we wanted to debate the ideas from this hackathon’s kick-off while they were still hot. And also to invite more developers from our customer banks to take part in this six weeks coding experience.

On this edition of the user group’s agenda we included:

  • qPI updates

Of course, qPI-SEPA was among the topics discussed, as

We also announced two new qPI features under analysis: qPI-TE transaction enrichment and SEPA corporate to bank qPI-C2B.

  • FinTP project status, including product development, community processes and the Hackathon #2

Andreea, our FinTP project manager, talked about the community principles

…about the community multi-facets structure, the development process roles and phases, the community process system, concluding that

After that it was Horia’s turn to go deeper into the product.

And to say what’s next:

And to talk about the kick-start of Hackathon #2

But not alone, as we had participants from the hackathon sharing their ideas and experience with the participants of the user group.

What was new? The automatic testing tool developed and presented by our colleague Andrei Bogza: a tool that will not completely replace testers, but will definitely increase the efficiency of the testing process.

Following this, we had the consultant session: Ruud van der Horst talking about FinTP and how it can address remittances and financial inclusion.

In the last part of the event, we shared our Sibos 2013 experience with everyone present: remembering the Gen Z Banking for People in the Innotribe tunnel, the success of our Financial Tribes of the Future community session, the interest raised by FinTP and many other I already wrote to you about.

Now, we are looking forward to the next UG, as next year, on top of celebrating 10 years of qPay Integrator, we’ll also hopefully expand the user group. But more details will come in due time.

Many thanks again to all participants for joining our user group discussions and helping us improve our customers’ experience.

By Ioana Moldovan, 24 October 2013.

 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

 

As I’ve kept telling you over the past few weeks, today we had the opening of FinTP Hackathon #2.

And this is how we started the day…

 

… morning coffee on Allevo’s rooftop terrace.

Developers from our banking customers as well as computer science students have gathered here today to test their skills in a core banking open project and to learn more about the FINkers United community. For students, as one of them said during the break the ice exercise, the best way to learn new things is to get involved in such projects because they have the opportunity to hit the ceiling, get in touch with things that are not taught in schosee what role they can play in the community around FinTP.

 

In the first part of the event, Corina gave the most compressed and comprehensive in the same time presentation of FinTP, including not only its features, but also painting a clear image of the market infrastructures, explaining debit, credit, settlement and what a payment really is.

Coffee breaks are also constructive. Cause people really start socializing, sharing ideas, communicating.

After the break, it was Andreea’s turn to present the processes of the FINkers United community and how they are designed to provide a flexible way of working and integrating code into the existing trunk.

The development, testing and implementation processes are no different from those of any other development project; they are inspired by Allevo’s CMMI level 3 internal processes. The roles defined for the development process comprise of: project manager (also responsible for managing releases), technical committee, developer, tester, peer review group, build engineer, integrator and other contributors who deal with documentation etc.

Last but not least, as he really spoke in the participants’ language, Horia, our software development director presented the FinTP architecture; from data layer, through business layer and all the way up to the user interface, FinTP is in fact a full solution for financial institutions.

He emphasized the fact that we are 100% committed to open source. We are building FinTP on a a fully open platform: Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL, using open tools like OpenSSL, Boost, Xerces, Xalan, Jersey, JPA etc. We are also giving back to the community: we use LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), Maven Jenkins, Sonar, Doxygen. Nevertheless, we will continue to support Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and other proprietary technologies; but FinTP will be available on a full open source platform.

Since FinTP Hackathon #1 (15 May this year), we finished the migration from WMQ to AMQ. We have added more resources to the API, we have built additional unit tests and we have integrated authentication and authorization.

We have started to work on a new user interface, a lightweight UI that will also run on mobile platforms. Furthermore, we have integrated the API in the user interface, we have finalized the PostgreSQL migration and our developers have also deployed the final touches to the database schema v2. They are now focusing on decoupling and repackaging the business flows to separate them from the application itself.

What it means to have a developer talk to other developers: Horia had them all listening and asking so many questions that nobody felt the need for lunch anymore.

 

Now the six week of coding are starting. So let’s wish the participants best of luck. Start hacking, guys and we’ll see who the lucky winner of an iPad 4 is on December 12. I can’t put a good word for anyone with the jury, so it’s all on you.

Just a few more things before I go:

• Here is a short video from the event

 

• If you want to see photos from the FinTP hackathon #2, check our album

• If you want to read the updates on the live blog, here is the link

By Ioana Moldovan, 22 October 2013.

 

 

October 22nd marks the kick-start of the second edition of the FinTP Hackathon.

 

The opening event, dubbed “FinTP In Between Two Hackathons” was aimed to provide some highlights on this second hackathon and what’s in it for the participants. Allevo’s senior business consultants, developers, professional customer support, business development, process design and commercial representatives have shared their views related to the final tunings Allevo undertakes prior to openly publishing, in January 2014, FinTP and its set of features. They also revealed the timeline of further releases and how we plan to keep improving the agility and relevance of our presence in the community.

 

This hackathon has two more stages.

 

The development stage: over the following six weeks, each participant will be able to get familiar with the available source code and can choose to work on one of the suggested themes or to anything they find more interesting. Anybody can publish their own ideas and bring their contribution to the framework we’re presenting. Ideas and suggestions are more than welcome. Any idea is a good idea: business, technical, fun… And any good idea can be improved into a great idea.

 

The closing session on December 12, 2013 – In the first half of the day, it will host a workshop for each type of professional profile of the participants, and in the second half of the day a conclusions session to deliver the opinion of both Allevo and the rest of the participants on the readiness of the FinTP project for being published. Last but not least, we will reward the contributors with post Saint Nicolas and pre Santa Claus gifts.

 

And here are the themes we proposed or where you could help:

  • Message editor with validation and correction
  • Search
  • Discovery
  • Performance dashboard
  • Next big thing

… but, remember, your creativity has no limits!

 

We have shared the FinTP Hackathon #2 experience on our blog, enjoy!

Monday, October 21, 2013

 

If this is what you want

 

let me tell how you can get it:

Hackthon #2 postit 1 if you are a student, just write an e-mail to my colleague Denisa

Hackthon #2 postit 2 if not, than you should write to my colleague Corina

But do hurry, as the ETA is less than 20h!

For detailed information about FinTP Hackathon #2, check the event’s page on fintp.org.

By Ioana Moldovan, 21 October 2013.
Thursday, October 17, 2013

 

If you want to have this schedule for the next six weeks, just be one of our “hackathon runners” 🙂

Click on it to enlarge:

 

By Ioana Moldovan,17 October 2013.

Monday, October 14, 2013

 

Some of you might still remember the first FinTP Hackathon that we organized on May 15th this year. With all the stage fright of putting together our first event of such type long gone, we now look forward to its second edition. For the FinTP Hackathon #2, we did not plan only a one-day event, but a full six weeks experience. But our goal stays the same: to enable collaboration for developing the FinTP platform and offer relevant resources to the community.

 

When is it going to happen? Well, FinTP Hackathon #2 has three stages:

Hackthon #2 postit 1 22 October 2013 – The opening event, dubbed “FinTP In Between Two Hackathons”. It is aimed to provide some highlights on the second hackathon and what’s in it for the participants. Allevo’s senior business consultants, developers, professional customer support, business development, process design and commercial representatives will be there to share their view related to the final tunings Allevo undertakes prior to openly publishing, in January 2014, FinTP and its set of features. They will also reveal the timeline of further releases and how we plan to keep improving the agility and relevance of our presence in the community. Our developers will also reveal the themes for this edition of the FinTP hackathon.

Hackthon #2 postit 2 The development stage – over the following six weeks, each participant will be able to get familiar with the available source code and can choose to work on one of the suggested themes or to anything they find more interesting. Anybody can publish their own ideas and bring their contribution to the framework we’re presenting. Ideas and suggestions are more than welcome. Any idea is a good idea: business, technical, fun… And any good idea can be improved into a great idea.

Hackthon #2 postit 4 12 December 2013 – The closing session. In the first half of the day, it will host a workshop for each type of professional profile of the participants, and in the second half of the day a conclusions session to deliver the opinion of both Allevo and the rest of the participants on the readiness of the FinTP project for being published. Last but not least, we will reward the contributors with post Saint Nicolas and pre Santa Claus gifts.

 

We would very much like to see you among the participants. Please check more details regarding the event and how you can register on FinTP Developer Community web page. And remember, your ideas and suggestions are more than welcome on the community’s forum.

 

We’re counting on your contribution!

By Ioana Moldovan, 14 October 2013.

 

Allevo has participated at the Internet & Mobile World 2013 event in Bucharest 9-10 October 2013.

We’ve presented the problem of financial inclusion and what can be done in order to address it from a social perspective, what kind of tools can be used to intermediate and automate remittance flows.

2013 IMWorld
Tuesday, October 08, 2013

 

If the Internet & Mobile World 2013 is on your agenda tomorrow, you should check out the Mobile & Apps Stage at 13:30. Our own Ioana Guiman will be there to talk about the power of online and mobility tools for the Banking & Financial Services Industry.

You read Banking & Financial and thought no…, this is going to be boring? I promise you it won’t as our case study introduces Generation Z and its banking for people.

Not paying somebody’s salary or pension on time, whether this happens due to an unexpected power failure or to poor operations, causes instant frustration to the under-banked person. This is a scenario that frequently happens in less developed or rural areas, where money if often delivered by means formed at the beginning of the 20th century and which, by design, allows errors and delays to occur.

The high cost and reliability of traditional distribution – a combination of trucks of money, post offices, and delivery personnel – can very easily be replaced by today’s technology and by using right kind of tools.

Our talk tomorrow will reveal a tool that centrally processes all financial transactions using industry standards, capable of creating an end-to-end e-corridor from the treasury of any financial institution, past the interbank low payments infrastructure and all the way to the ultimate receiver, who does not have to have a bank account. Financial inclusion is possible because of Gen Z technology.

 

By Ioana Moldovan, 08 October 2013.