Code sprint participants

Algeria

Djihed Afifi's picture
    djihed (not verified)

I was educated in Algeria up to high school. I received a government grant to study in the UK as part of a programme to encourage high school graduates. I studied for an MEng in Computer Science from the University of Manchester. I am currently preparing for a PhD in Formal Methods, influenced by theoretical computer science and logic. The subject is Evolvable Systems.

Besides studies, I work within the localisation community to standardise Arabic translation, fix RTL/Arabic issues in Open Source Software and localise GNOME to Arabic (with great progress).

GNOME localisation (http://wiki.arabeyes.org/GNOME - http://l10n.gnome.org/teams/ar).

The technical computing dictionary (http://wiki.arabeyes.org/Technical_Dictionary) : wiki'fied discussion of terms often found in computer user interfaces.

Arabic OpenCD (http://arabicopencd.org): A collection of localised and non localised open source applications.

Minbar (http://djihed.com/minbar): GNOME prayer application.

Taha Zerrouki's picture
    linuxscout (not verified)

أعمل مدربا على الكمبيوتر، مهندس في المعلوماتية وماجستير، أعمل حاليا على تحضير شهادة الدكتوراة أعمل على مواصفة الدعم الحاسوبي للقرآن الكريم مهتم بمعالجة اللغة العربية

مشروع المدقق الإملائي، أيسبل مشروع تصريف الأفعال.

Egypt

Abdelrahman Ghareeb's picture
    BooDy (not verified)

Abdelrahman works as a software developer in OpenCraft. mainly developing web applications using Drupal serving lots of purposes from online communities and web 2.0ish sites to business related applications trying to give corporate fat cats a healthy IT diet.

A bit of a free software fanatic so don't panic if he lashes at you for saying that Open Source === Free Software. Loves to go out, party, have fu.... okay those are lies. He's always in front of his computer either blogging, reading, or secretly plotting an evil plan to move someone to free software.

http://www.eglug.org

Ahmed Mekkawy's picture
    linuxawy (not verified)

تخرجت من كلية الهندسة بالاسكندرية قسم اتصالات والكترونيات. ثم غيرت اتجاهى لاحقا لأعمل كمدير نظام لأنظمة لينوكس فى شركة [eSpace|http://www.espace.com.eg/].

بدأ تحولى لأنظمة البرمجيات الحرة بضعة سنوات قبل تحولى من الناحية العمل الى تكنولوجيا المعلومات..

communications engineer that changed his career to be a linux admin after joining eglug (Egypt Gnu/Linux User Group), untill I became a senior then recently an admin in it. Started the open source initiative in alexandria where I live. Had a limited political experience but now i'm focusing in open source issues.

http://www.eglug.org

Alaa Abd El Fattah's picture
    alaa (not verified)

From his work with children on using facebook to ridicule their teachers in the arab digital expression camps, to his work with pro democracy activists on using blogs to mobilize thousands of Egyptians against their government in the Kefaya movement, Alaa just loves helping people use ICTs to stick it to the man.

By day he works as a Free/Open Source Software developer, by night he dons his mask and cape and patrols the streets of cairo, jumping from campaign to campaign building websites, providing support and training, looking out for activists in need. He likes to pretend that his work on the Egyptian Blogs Aggregator helped bring in a new era of citizen journalism and usher in a new generation of digital activists, while the rest of the world acts as if his blog is relevant.

Amr Mostafa Youssef's picture
    amr (not verified)

Amr is a software developer with personal and professional focus on free/open source software and a passion for the web. He is a frequent contributer to the Drupal project, his favorite content publishing platform. Until recently Amr was leading the software development team at IT Synergy. As a freelance, he is using his increased free time to get more involved in the communities and FLOSS projects he had always believed in.

Khaled Hosny's picture
    خالد (not verified)

A FOSS enthusiast who happen to love Arabic, I love every aspect of it; the language, the script even the writing direction. As a failed self-studying calligrapher who discovered computers much later, I thought I'd be able to convince computers to help me, and still trying.

Manal Hassan's picture
    manal (not verified)

A FOSS enthusiast, her main interest is adapting and delivering technology to non techies, and training them in making it their own. She co-founded the Egyptian GNU/Linux Users Group (EGLUG) in 2004, and has extensive experience in working with NGOs, human rights activists, and children on web technologies and new media. She won the Best of Blogs (BOBs) and Reporters without Borders award together with her husband in 2005.

-Egyptian Blogs Aggregator http://omraneya.net

- Arab Digital Expression camps Summer camps for teenagers where they learn how to express themselves with Digital Music, Digital Video, Computer Graphics, Web Design, etc. http://www.arabdigitalexpression.com campers portal: http://www.arabdigitalexpression.net

-Katib.org A Drupal based blogging platform for Arab human rights defenders and independent journalists. http://www.katib.org

-Egyptian GNU/Linux users Group (EGLUG) http://www.eglug.org

-Take Back The Tech Reclaiming ICTs to end violence against women http://takebackthetech.net

-Arabization projects: Drupal Security NGO in a box

Moustafa Emara's picture
    mousta (not verified)

I graduated from Computer Science department, Alexandria university. I have been in programming since 2003. I work as a software developer at eSpace, also I'm doing my Masters in Bio-informatics only because I love it alot.. :). I used to be a member in a number of social organization. I'm mainly interested in full text search optimizations specially in Arabic, semantic search, web servers scalability, database optimizations and queuing solutions.

I really believe in the effect of communities on arising the public and professional awareness, that's what I'm trying to do here...

Raramorph(Ruby Arabic Morphological Analyzer)
Community Engine(Ruby on Rails Social Networking platform, I added postgreSQL and the arabic support)
System VIPC(Adding Ruby 1.9 support for the famous systemV Inter process communication C library)

    riham.aldakkak (not verified)

Software developer. Currently working as system administrator at espace, an egyptian software company located in Alexandria.

Ruby open source library: Neverblock

Jordan

Waheed Barghouthi's picture
    Waheed (not verified)

I've graduated from Applied Science University, Studied Software Engineering, It was my passion to study any IT related field, Since i was 15 years old I've worked in HTML so it triggered out something, after that i fell in love with web technologies, I've started my work as Quality Control Engineer trainee in STS, then I've worked with Jordan Software Engineering (JSE), as a web developer in ASP.NET,PHP. in 2008 February joined TootCorp to start working with Ruby on Rails (RoR), and its a really nice and easy framework to learn and its so powerful.

Ikbis http://www.ikbis.com Watwet http://www.watwet.com Hashlog http://www.hashlog.com

Lebanon

Mansour Aziz's picture
    Mansour (not verified)

I'm currently working as IT and Web Manager at the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar (www.al-akhbar.com). Over the years, I've worked with a number of social, activist, artistic and media projects bridging between old media and new media. I have an interest in intellectual property, music, mapping, archiving, amongst others.

Morocco

Mohammed SAHLI's picture
    msahli (not verified)

The first Arab Blogger to make a full-time job out of professional Blogging. More than Six years of experience in web development, specially in Arabic.

Owner of miolog.com. It’s the first Arabic blog about professional Blogging.

Author of the "abc Blogging" an Arabic ebook about Blogging.

Co-author of the book "The Future of Web". Will publish soon by Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (KSA).

Syria

Anas Tawileh's picture
    anas (not verified)

a consultant in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D). He worked for many projects to bring technology to developing countries and deliver training and capacity building programmes. A firm believer in Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS), he established the GNU/Linux Syria User Group in Damascus in 2002 and started the Arab Commons Initiative as an attempt to advance the Creative Commons cause in the Arab World. Anas has a Masters degree in Information Systems Engineering from Cardiff University, and has authored several books including: Open Source - Unlimited Opportunities, Wireless Networking in the Developing World - Arabic Edition.

Anas currently work as the programme consultant for IDRC's ICT for Development project in the Middle East and is the Vice President Product Development at Meedan.net, a social media project that aspires to bring understanding between speakers of Arab and English through technology and community empower dialogue.

Khaled Al-Shamaa's picture
    khaled (not verified)

قصتي مع الحاسوب ابتدأت عام 1986 حين حصلت على أول حاسب شخصي (صخر)، ومن حينها وعشقنا دائم، أحب الرياضيات والقراءة ولعب البلياردو ومتابعة سباقات الفورمولا واحد أنا خريج كلية الهندسة الكهربائية والإلكترونية قسم الحاسبات من جامعة حلب عما 1998، وكنت من المتفوقين بها، أتابع حاليا دراستي الأكاديمية في التحضير لنيل شهادة الماجستير عن أطروحة حول استخدام نماذج ماركوف الخفية في البحث عن الجينات عملت مدة ثلاثة سنوات كمدير تقني ومبرمج رئيسي في مشروع مزاد مكتوب، الذي تطور اليوم ليصبح موقع سوق.كوم، وأعمل حاليا كمهندس برمجيات علمية في المركز الدولي للبحوث الزراعية همممم، وكأني أرى علامات التعجب تقفز فوق رؤوسكم، لكني أستخدم ذات لاأدوات في عملي هذا من مخدمات لينكس إلى لغة البيرل وقاعدة ماي إس كيو إل أنا كذلك محاضر في جامعة حلب لمادة المعلوماتية الحيوية لطلاب السنة الرابعة هندسة تقنية، كما سبق وأن ترجمت ستة كتب إلى العربية، وألفت كتابا واحدا، كما أن لي العديد من المقالات المنشورة في مجلة المعلوماتية الصادرة عن الجمعية العلمية السورية للمعلوماتية عذرا للإطالة، وأراكم قريبا

PHP and Arabic Language (http://www.ar-php.org)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ar-php/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11140/

http://www.ar-php.org/tinymce_php_arabic.html

http://www.raypub.com/catalog/book_info.php?products_id=678&bookinfo=longindex

Tunisia

Slim Amamou's picture
    slim (not verified)

I am the CEO of http://alixsys.com a small web services company in Tunisia. I am 31 years old, I have a wife and a beautiful son. I have been working on web technologies for 12 years and I'm a Linux user since 1994.

http://markkit.net

http://github.com/slim/bazdig/tree/master

Yemen

Walid Al-Saqaf's picture
    walid (not verified)

graduated from the Computer Engineering Department of the Middle East Technical University of Ankara in 1998 and ever since, has been involved extensively in the design and programming of online content. He is the founder of YemenPortal.net, which is a news and opinion content aggregator with more than 800,000 items on Yemen. He also launched a special Firefox plug-in called (Access YemenPortal!) allowing his website, which was blocked by the Yemeni government, from being accessed normally within Yemen. His future projects center around aggregating software and circumvention technologies. Currently, Walid is carrying out his PhD studies at Örebro University in Sweden and is focusing on ICTs and new media in general.

  • YemenPortal.net: A news, views, blog, forum, and video aggregator (Arabic/English)
  • Access YemenPortal! Firefox plug-in as a means of censorship circumvention.
  • ArabiaPortal.net (a pan Arab version inspired by YemenPortal.net – under construction)
  • Working on software development for new aggregator tools usable for Arabic websites
  • Working on a multi-purpose service-oriented website for Yemen