The Open-Source Kick by GSSOC
By: Manvi Tyagi
Tags: Open Source

ME AN YEAR AGO !

So, it was around the same month of the year 2018, when I got to know about this wonderful thing called OPEN-SOURCE. I was then & there fascinated by the idea but had no clue of where to start & how. So, What I did — I googled, & got basically two types of suggestions:

Just pick any project & start contributing. This was a bit dicey for me. Like an arrow above my heads. Like How do I start without any guidance & support? Somehow, some medium blogs caught my eye describing their experience in something called as GSSOC.

I researched all about GirlScript Foundation & GirlScript Summer Of Code & finally decided to be a part of it, but it was too late, the application period was already over. But the good part — I was in 1st year back then, I decided to hone my coding skills for some months without contributing to open-source & constantly kept an eye on the next year’s application form & followed GirlScript Foundation on their every social media handle.

BOOM! APPLICATIONS FOR GSSOC 2019 OUT

In around January, the applications for GSSOC’19 were out & I very quickly & eagerly applied for it (afterall I was waiting for it for long). One of my LinkedIn Contacts Vipul Gupta had been a mentor in GSSOC, I requested him to review my application & What a great human-being this guy is! He helped me a lot regarding the application(off-topic but I gotta mention this, Vipul is one of the ideals I have in tech-world, He is not only a techno-geek but also an amazing person who is always ready to help).

Another person who helped me through this was another Linkedin Contact Priyabarta Biswas who had been a GSSOC participant last year & headed one of the very awesome projects Mathball in GSSOC’19.

I want to take this opportunity to thank both Vipul & Priyabarta for all the help & guidance they provided.

Finally the results, I got selected for GSSOC’19.

This is how the 3 months of GSSOC followed :)

I joined the Slack Workspace of GSSOC where there were separate channels for all the projects under GSSOC. We were guided to choose any number of projects(preferably one), join their channels & start contributing.

I tried my hands on 2 projects before I found my final project.

The following two are the projects to which I contributed initially:

But I realised I was looking for some core javascript project to contribute on.It was already past a month before GSSOC started. I had little hopes for starting working on a new project & make it to the list of top 3. But still I thought of giving it a try.

Finally MATHBALL !

The project MathBall was exactly what I was looking for. You can read more about the project here.

Yes, the mentor of MathBall was the same guy who helped in my application period. I got really lucky here. Priyabarta is an exceptionally good mentor working on an exceptionally good project MathBall. Now, without wasting any further time, I started looking up for issues & solving them. I was constantly being guided by the mentors in case of any problems. Soon, from the bottom three, I paved my way to the top 3. Or rather more correctly from an open-source newbie to a coder who is now lot more comfortable than before in using GitHub.

The Final Note !!

Thanks to these two initiatives for helping beginners like me. :)

2. These 3 months not only provided me the opportunity to taste open-source but also I made a good number of very valuable & amazing connections from all around the world.

Kudos to all the participants, mentors & organisers.

If you have any questions or any suggestions, feel free to get in touch with me over LinkedIn or on Twitter & the comment section is also all yours.

If you liked this story, hit the claps & motivate me to write more & better.

Thanks for reading!