From October 16 to 17, Samsung Electronics hosted its two-day Samsung Open Source Conference 2019 (hereinafter “SOSCON”) in its Seoul R&D Campus located in Seocho-gu, Seoul.

SOSCON is an annual event held since 2014. This year’s SOSCON, which marked its sixth itineration, featured nearly 2,000 developers who actively exchanged information and insights about the open source–based projects across the cutting-edge fields of 5G, robotics, AI, IoT, and Big Data. As such, the event comprised 38 sessions, including lectures from renowned leaders of open source software development.

The first day of the event started with the welcoming address from Seunghwan Cho, Executive Vice President of Samsung Research, followed by a keynote speech about the open-source strategies and policies of Samsung Electronics delivered by Seungbeom Choi, Senior Vice President of Samsung Research R&D Strategy Team.

The next speeches were as follows: “5G Network Automation and Open Source” by Seohyung Chung, Vice President of Samsung Electronics Network Division; “Open Source Trend and Its Full Potential” by Jim Zemlin, Chairman of Linux Foundation; and “The Importance of Open Source: From the View of ETRI” by Myungjoon Kim, President of Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

An interesting addition to this year’s SOSCON was the keynote speech delivered by Dongyun Cheong, who won the first place in the Samsung Junior Software Cup for his development of the “Happy Traveler” application. Mr. Cheong’s keynote speech provided a unique insight into a junior developer’s experience in the world of software development.

Winners of the Samsung Junior Software Cup joined the SOSCON with a series of Junior Software sessions, which expanded to projects like “Safety Guard against Natural Disasters,” “Palm Finder for Water Quality Data,” and others developed through the Samsung Junior Software Cup.

The developer session, on the other hand, exhibited different perspectives from the industry through presentations organized by NAVER, SK Telecom, LINE Plus and other participant.

Meanwhile, the Exhibition Zone introduced the visitors to open source technologies that make use of 5G, AI, security, IoT, S-pen, and other technologies from Samsung Electronics. Moreover, exhibitions organized by Samsung’s partners like SKT, MS, NAVER, KT DS, Elastic, and Lablup; academics; and communities with various projects in robotics presented opportunities where participants could engage with.

EVP Seunghwan Cho described the significance of the event as “the importance of open source–based collaboration has become an emergent topic of great importance for the future of the software industry and competitiveness,” and that “we hope that SOSCON can provide an opportunity for open-source developers to share their insights and, through those insights, expand the horizons of the industry toward the future.”

Further details on SOSCON may be found on the official website of the event ( http://www.soscon.net ).