Newsletter

It was only 3 months ago when we started this journey to bring Open Innovation to the messaging & collaboration ecosystem around the Symphony platform.

And I am amazed at the progress & traction we are seeing around the Symphony Software Foundation (or just SSF), with major momentum in terms of contributions to our Open Source repository, an ever-growing participation in our Working Groups, and a great turnout at our events, a sign that our grass roots Community is strong and believes in what we are doing.

Contributions Momentum

Thanks to the great effort of our Members, over the sole month of June we saw a massive spike in Contributions approved, with 8 Open Sourced Projects in the Foundation Github Repository.

I want to send a shoutout to the ESCo for approving these projects & Committers. But my biggest thanks (and congratulations) has to go to all the contributors who made this possible. You are building the real foundation (pun intended) for this Community to grow and be pervasive. Keep it up!

Also, an update on the Minuet Desktop Wrapper: we still working through the Minuet contribution, but we expect to be able to Open Source in a matter of  weeks.

Check out our new & simplified Contribution Process and submit your project today! And feel free to reach out to the dev list (or if you are a Member also in the Member List) if you are looking for additional contributors for your project.

Meetups & Community Events

During the month of June, we hosted our first two Meetups, in London, hosted by Red Deer and NYC, hosted by OpenFin. A huge thanks to the organizers who made these so successful!

This was the first occasion to gather the Community, a truly exciting moment for me.

And the Community responded, as both events were sold out with 100+ registrants and about 80 attendees combined.  To get an idea, see some pictures below but check out #SSFMeetup for more highlights of the events.

Not only did we have a full house, we also hosted coding sessions, which resulted in two new Projects in the Foundation, a simple / sample RSS Bot and a more juicy Hubot ⇄ Symphony integration.

We plan on hosting more Meetups in the upcoming weeks and months, so stay tuned on this blog and on our website.

And if you want to host or speak at a Meetup, don't hesitate to contact us!

A growing Foundation to Support the Community

As fast as our Community grows, we need to grow our Team here at the Foundation (and we are still hiring!). So we rapidly scaled the Foundation across many functions to support ambitions of our Community. 

I am especially pleased to announce that Peter Monks has joined the Foundation in the role of VP of Technology.  Peter brings a wealth of experience in SaaS, Open Source and Developer Platforms, but more importantly is the type of guy "you want to hang out with" (as you can see from his Twitter profile). Peter will play a key role in the technical strategy of the Foundation, working with the Community, Members and Working Groups to ensure success of those initiatives. Make sure you find him on Symphony or when you stop by our offices in Palo Alto.

Maurizio (Mao) Pillitu, Director DevOps

 Peter joins Maurizio Pillitu in our technical team, a long time colleague, who has been powering the infrastructure of the Foundation since he joined in May as Director of DevOps and Release Management. Maurizio will be at heart of our Community and Foundation Infrastructure, managing the end to end development → release process of Projects in the Foundation. Make sure you reach out to him on Symphony  (timezone hint: Mao is based in Europe).

The team is growing strong, but it's the Community that's going to make us successful, so make sure you send us your feedback and Get in Touch with the Community!

Join our Community!

We are working hard to build a scalable Foundation and there will be big news over the coming months. We want you to be part of the Community that will help drive one of the biggest changes in Financial Services Technology, with the Symphony Open Source Platform revolutionizing the way firms interact with each other.

Upcoming Events

On top of many internal events at different first,  we are excited to announce our series of Community Meetups, focused as usual to provide updated on the Foundation, the Symphony Developer platform & to host hacking sessions:

• On August 31st, in Palo Alto (California), hosted by BNY Mellon: check more details and get registered!
• On September 6th, in London (UK), hosted by BlackRock: Check more details and get registered!

Make sure you add your Open Source project ideas and if you want to present let us know.

Contribute to the Foundation

Check out our Github Organization, our Wiki, follow us on Twitter or join our chats/list and submit a Contribution.  And if your company is interested to become a Member organization, reach out to us!

But most importantly, be Open!