Grants talk:TPS/Ankitashukla/Grace Hopper Celebration India/Report

@Ankitashukla: We were glad to read about your successful information session which was attended by 45 participants. Furthermore we appreciate your efforts in creating the google group in order to guarantee an online follow up and make sure that the new contributors are accompanied by experienced users.
We would be very interested to know whether you have succeded in the meantime in bringing the group-members to phabricator, IRC and the wikitech-mailing list? Last but not least, we really appreciated your pictures. Thank you! Best wishes, --Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 09:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Muriel_Staub_(WMCH), People have been joining in on IRC and showing some involvement. However, still most of them have always felt more comfortable in pinging me directly and asking anything if they're ever stuck somewhere. Although, I'm trying to redirect the entire queries to the more open communities like IRC and mailing lists. :) As for quantifying the numbers of people joining the Wikitech mailing list and phabricator, I'm not really sure of it (the number).

ankita (talk) 17:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi@Ankitashukla: Thanks for your response. To finish your report, we think it would be very valuable if you could name the topics that have been discussed in your google group, as well as share your responses or posts, so that others can learn from your follow up approach. Best wishes and thanks, --Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 14:22, 3 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Hi@Muriel Staub (WMCH): Here are a few topics that we've been covering in the Google group, I'm expanding on one of them. :)

Introduction to FOSS! Hi! This is the introductory mail for all of you to get started with free and open source software (FOSS), no matter what your background has been in this domain till now.

Get your skills and abilities listed First you have to analyze your self. You have to figure out what you actually want and what are you comfortable with. For example you may be an expert in Android and want to contribute to a project related to Android. Or else you may know the basics in Android, by contributing you want to get more experienced. In a completely different scenario, you know Java but you want to contribute to c++ project to learn c++ while contributing. So there can be many reasons why you want to contribute to open source. First take some time. Take a pen and paper and write down what you really expect from contributing to open source. Once you know what you want, you have to figure out your strengths and weaknesses related to that area. Then you will be able to get a good understanding on for what you want to contribute. Once you get your skills and abilities listed with your expectation you can start finding a project. Select a project or two to contribute Many people have this misconception that finding a project to contribute is the most difficult thing in the process. Believe me it is not. Once you know what your expectations are, you have to list out what kind of a project you need. You have to focus on the project’s technical details for this. For example you are a java expert and you want to learn c++ in the process of contributing, selecting a java project is not going to work. So you have to identify the technical details such as programming language and focus of the project (such as algorithms, machine learning and data science). Once you figure out the details you can directly search an open source project which matches your specification in google. Another way is go to the last years GSoC page and search your specifications. Then you will find the related projects. Make a list of projects you like and go through each and every project. Most projects maintain wikis and you can find them in their start contributing page or similar pages. Read through them and try to understand what the projects are about. According to your understanding on them select one or two projects of your interest. Then comes the interesting part. Subscribe to their mailing list Once you found the project, subscribe to their dev mailing list. Most projects have the details on how to contribute/ getting started sections. If you are not comfortable introducing yourself to the community just yet, wait for some time and read the mails coming from the list. If you do not understand anything they are talking about, just ignore them. But by reading these mails you will get a good idea about communication and Do not try to overthink and ditch the project and start another. Shoot an introductory mail Once you are familiar with the mailing list and mailing list etiquette, send an introductory mail to the mailing list introducing your self and asking them to help you on getting started. In most of the cases as a result to this question , a community member will direct you to a page where there will be some beginner tasks related to the projects listed. You can read about them and claim a task. The way of claiming a task is different from organization to organization. In most organization when you go to the ticket of that task, you can comment and clarify your questions and tell them that you are interested in doing that specific task. Then they will assign it to you. Start Contributing Now that you have introduced yourself to the community and found a task, you can can start working on the tasks. In most of the open source projects, they use git for version controlling. What you usually have to do is fork the project, make changes to the code according to the task you are assigned and then make a pull request to the project’s repository in the organization. You can ask from the community about how they are going to do this.

Application Process Once you are through with the project details, search for the application template available on the organization’s page. Start writing the application and just send it to the mentors and the organization’s mailing list for review. Plan out a tentative timeline for the completion of the project’s tasks to be mentioned in the application. Take help from the mentors to improve it further and make it such, so that it is achievable within the timeline. Get it reviewed until your mentor is satisfied with it and strive to make it better as much as you can. Apart from this, your application will not be considered until you submit a patch. The patch submission acts as a proof that you have the desired skills and experience with common tools used by the organisation.

Internship period Be patient until you have the sound grasp of all the developer tools and understanding of the underlying APIs which will lay the foundation of your contributions. It’s okay if it takes the first one or two weeks of your internship. Communicate about the progress of the project work *on a regular basis* to the mentors and the community developers through emails, weekly meetings on IRC and blog posts. Commit your code frequently. This will really help you to get proper guidance and feedback from the mentors, also the mentor will be updated on what you are working on. Even if you have some commitments for few days or so, communicate it to your mentor and stay in touch. There might be times of both frustration and great pride. Allow yourself to experience both and have fun while working. Also, don’t forget to share your experience with other people and help them. :)