GSoC - My Journey of Community Bonding Period
(It was a bit adventurous phase for me. I was working on my project and gave semester exams. And also had surgery in between all that.)
What is Community Bonding Period?
The period of time between when accepted students are announced and the time these students are expected to start coding. This time is an excellent one to introduce students to the community, get them on the right mailing lists, working with their mentors on their timeline for the summer, etc [source 1] .
This is just a basic definition given by Google. In my last blog “My Pre-GSoC Journey”, I explained about Open Source world and why to get involved in it. I would like to add up one more thing about it here, that Open Source is also about culture and ethics.
Every Open Source Organization has its own culture and ethics which their community follows. The best thing GSoC does is, it gives 1 month to the students to get familiar with this, in their community.
This is the time where students get familiar with the way work is done in their community. They get familiar with their mentors, plan their project and timetable, with them. They receive guidelines for contribution, ask for resources to gain knowledge on any topic, etc.
When it gets started?
Right after the moment you see your name on GSoC’s Project page, you enter into the Community Bonding Period.
This year, it started on 6th May. During this time students receive official letters from Google and the community. Students are asked to set up their Payoneer account to receive the stipend. They receive various links to get connected for communication. May 27 was the day when it ended and the official coding period started.
What one should do during this time?
- Get familiar with the Style-guide for specific programming languages, your community is following in the project you are going to do during SoC.
- Ask for resources, required by you, to gain your knowledge for the parts of your project you don’t know.
- Discuss and plan your GSoC work with your mentor.
- Discuss and plan your time-table for your summer.
- Plan weekly calls/meetings, to submit your weekly report, with your mentor.
These are important things to be done, also there can be various other non-coding GSoC related things which you can clear out during this period.
My one month journey of Community Bonding Period.
On 6th May 2019, 11:30 PM IST, results were announced. I was very happy. It was my lucky day because there were two good news for me.
Back in 2016, when I was in 12th std, I made first-ever Electronic Voting System for my school. (See the project on GitHub). It was used for 3rd time in my school on 6th May 2019, the same day when GSoC results were announced. (Click here).
The good news were raining. Happiness got double when I came to know that another branch of Ryan expressed their interest in my software. On 8th May 2019, it was again used in Ryan Mayur Vihar (Click here).
My project was going good. I was making progress. I discussed my plans with my mentors and we decided that we should do some basic work to make me familiar with the things.
The day I received the news about my software, at its night, I suffered a pain attack in my kidney and had to be shifted in the emergency ward. I was diagnosed with kidney stones, two years ago, and my treatment was in process. I came back to home after the doctor gave me a few injections, but in the morning I suffered the second attack and this time it was unbearable. I was again shifted to the emergency ward. The doctor said, the surgery needs to be done very next day.
A friend of my cousin took an extra effort to help my family with the processes and formalities as my father was in Ahmedabad. He lives there because of his job and visits us on a regular basis. When he got the news, he took the immediate option available to travel, but it was going to take him almost 24 hours to be here.
The next day in the morning, I was operated. A trouble was over. My father arrived in the afternoon. On the 11th, I was discharged.
The worst part was, from 15th May my End-semester exams were commencing and on 13th May I had to attend college to give my practical, which was missed because of Post Spinal Anesthetic Headache. I had to lie on bed all the time. Even the height of the pillow used to start the headache. It lasted for a week. As it was end semester exam, giving it in any case was the best option or I had to drop my semester. Other options would not have been beneficial for me due to college policies.
Kidney Stone removal surgery does not sound that big deal. But in my situation I was on edge to ruin my practicals as well as my end-semester exams. So it was depressing, highly depressing for me. And unexpected rare case of headaches was troubling me.
This is the point where a person can make best use of his subconscious mind. I started with being positive in this situation too. I realized that my Stones were big and they had to be removed at one or the other point of time. I thanked to God that this happened before Coding period started, else I would have lost GSoC too.
I got totally inactive on mailing list for almost 2 weeks. I mailed about my condition to the community and they understood my situation in a very gentle manner. One of my mentors assured me to be stress free for the work, till then he made guidelines for me and provide me some links to read for the project. I gave the practical and half of my exams in the same condition of headaches.
Soon after the exams, I recovered. There was a bunch of emails, that got collected. I followed them and updated myself with the current activities of the community. I started with my work and submitted git-patches.
It was a Community Bonding Period in real sense for me. My mentors and my community was very supportive during my condition. As I said about culture and ethics in the first paragraph of the blog. I have experienced it. It will be the most memorable summer for me.
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