Getting into Outreachy internship program

I recently joined Open Data Kit as an Outreachy intern (Round 15). Last year while browsing Quora, I came to know about Outreachy open source internship program. Ever since I came to know about Outreachy, I wanted to participate in it. Outreachy is an internship program which helps people from underrepresented groups to get involved in Free & Open Source Software.

What is Outreachy?

Outreachy provides three months paid internships and has an amazing platform to learn, code and collaborate with amazing open source organizations. Unlike Google Summer of Code, this program is conducted twice a year and participation isn’t limited to just students. Here, you can find more information about this program. Also, you can sign up for the mailing list for a reminder when applications open!

How did I get in ?

My open source journey started this year only, since the beginning of the year I wanted to apply for this program. I went ahead to apply for Round 14 (May 2017-August 2017). I made my first contribution to Cadasta, being a newbie it took me three days to set up the development environment. Later, imposter syndrome took me over and I felt that my skills aren’t enough so, I decided to apply for the next round.

Before announcement of the organizations and their projects, I tried solving good first bugs in various FOSS communities to get familiar with git and open source culture. Good first bugs are beginner-friendly bugs or issues that are meant to be good starting points for new code contributors and help them to get familiar with the codebase I used this list to search for beginner friendly projects. Getting a two-line patch accepted in an open source project doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re just a newbie, it’s a very awesome feeling. I have closed two beginner-friendly issues in addons-linter, and I made it into the Addons Contribution Recognition document, as well. If you are new to open source, you can check my previous post to know how to make your first contribution.

After the announcements of organizations, while going through various projects I checked Open Data Kit landing page and I’m very glad that I did. Open Data Kit has been providing the best way to build forms, collect data, and aggregate results in a very easy manner. As my first contribution, I added information about setting up the development environment of ODK docs on Windows platform. ODK has a very welcoming community for newcomers, what I like most about ODK is the vibrant community. The maintainers helped me in every possible way. Hélène Martin always mentions contributors and members in relevant posts which I find really nice. Every time I have asked a question, I have gotten a very friendly response. There is this random channel on slack where members hangout and talk about various fun stuffs, which serves as a stress buster.

As of now, I have submitted 14 pull requests and I’m looking forward to contribute more. The next step was writing a proposal, I prepared my proposal, shared it with ODK members, altered it according to the feedback and suggestions given by the members and submitted my application. During the application period itself I learned lot of things which no textbook can teach.

Finally, the result day arrived and I was happy to find out that I was chosen from large competitive applicant pool. I am very grateful to ODK members who spent time reviewing my application and gave me this opportunity. I would be working on automating screenshot creation for the form widget guide, adding support to let users download the copy of ODK docs in PDF, HTML or Epub format and adding multiple languages support.

Huge thanks to Yaw Anokwa, Hélène Martin, Adam Michael Wood, Kate Chapman and Ronald Munjoma for guiding me throughout this journey, following up everytime and answering my queries.

Advice to future aspirants

Tip #1: Choose your project wisely.

The first requirement for a successful Outreachy experience is finding a project/organization that interests you. While selecting the organization or project you can keep these questions in mind like “What do you want to get out of Outreachy?”, “What are your skills?” and “What are you passionate about?”

For each organisations, take some time to learn more about what they do and what is the organization’s mission. Look for something that excites you and keeps you motivated for the coming 3 months.

Tip #2: Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. — — Tony Robbins

Don’t hesitate in asking questions. While, there is plenty of knowledge around us, it would be foolish to think that we know all the things related to our domain. Some people think that asking questions might portray them in a poor light which is a misbelief. In fact asking questions shows how creative and curious you are!

But ask questions, only if you are completely satisfied googling it or digging into the codebase is not going to help. Be respectful to project maintainers’ time.

Tip #3: Be Patient

It’s very likely that the project maintainers maybe in a different time zone than you are. So, be patient when maintainers do not reply to your queries. Remember that maintainers have a lot of patches to review and a lot of contributions to make.

Tip #4: Don’t get disheartened

Don’t get upset if your patches are not accepted initially, you are just getting started. This should not stop you from contributing to the project, just keep going!

I’m very excited to work with Open Data Kit and my mentor Kate Chapman.

I would like to thank Outreachy organizers Sage Sharp, Marina, Cindy Pallares and other Outreachy admins as well, for answering my queries about application process and giving this wonderful opportunity .

Got any more questions? Feel free to drop me a line : )