Journey into GSoC — Part 0
GSoC (or Google Summer of Code)… an unfamiliar term for me but heard very often when I started my university life as a CS undergraduate. As a person who never had a programming background or written a single code before, it sounded almost intimidating. But half a dozen months in, when I got used to the shoes of a programmer, I came to know what? how? and why? about GSoC. It seemed interesting and challenging to see passionate coders all around the world gathering under a single program to contribute to opensource and build amazing things. It seemed grand, it seemed novel and I wanted to be a part of it too. It took me a couple of years to wrap my head around the concept, but I finally decided to apply to GSoC 2020 on my 4th and the last year of my degree. Here’s my story…
It all started last year when I was talking with a dear friend (and a fellow GSoCer) where we talked about his GSoC experience from last year (2019). From his words, I gathered that GSoC is not something to be afraid of or to be intimidated by and it seemed to be something I can genuinely do (or at least try). From that moment I was keeping an eye on GSoC 2020 following their timelines and updates while preparing myself for the battle.
Pick your poison!
In mid-February, GSoC announced their mentor organizations for the year 2020 and there were plenty. So many great organizations were there, that it was a bit overwhelming. One of the major facts that I considered while picking an organization/project was my interest in the domain and whether I’m confident with the technology stack. Confident necessarily didn’t mean that I was good at it, but it had to be something that I’m comfortable with learning and working with. I went through the projects of all the organizations that were interesting to me and I picked 2 organizations in the end, one being the SCoRe Lab.
SCoRe Lab had a vast array of projects extending across numerous technologies from mobile applications to complex cloud and blockchain tools. Among the portfolio, a couple of projects piqued my interest, one being LabelLab, an image labeling tool that is being used for research purposes and the other being Dengue-Stop, the project I will be taking over for GSoC 2020.
Prepare for battle!
It is not news that GSoC is a very competitive program as there are so many passionate opensource enthusiasts who are applying for this program. Therefore, I knew that I have to prepare if I am to get through this program. So, I picked SCoRe labs and started contributing towards the organization’s projects, mainly LabelLab and Dengue-Stop as they were the projects of interest to me. I reached out to these projects through their Gitter channels and they were very helpful and gave me a lot of insight as to how things work within the organization as well as in opensource itself. The more I contributed, the more interested I was on the projects.
As I keep contributing to these projects, the time passed by and on mid-March GSoC started to accept student applications for the year 2020. I created a comprehensive project proposal with all the insight that I gained from the mentors and past contributions while putting a twist with my ideas for both of the projects. With the mentor’s feedback and insight, I insisted on making the best possible project proposal that I could ever make, as I was so fixed on getting to the GSoC program. At the end of March, I submitted proposals for LabelLab and Dengue-Stop hoping for the best.
Calm before the storm…
After submitting the project proposals, I thought of having some time to myself, watch a movie or play a game… But due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I was stuck at home and soon I realized that I didn’t have anything better to do than to contribute (among other things)… So, I did! Time flew by pretty quickly and the next thing I know, its already May! This was a special month to me as I knew GSoC will be announcing the accepted students. I was both excited and a little bit scared.
It begins!
I woke up at 11 am (I’m a night owl) on a fine day and I was doing the first thing I usually do when I’m awake, which is… browsing my social media and reading emails. Then I came across this email from GSoC which read it as “GSoC 2020: Congratulations, your proposal…” and without even reading the rest I knew what was going on and I was on top of the world. But there was also a second voice in my mind saying “…wait a minute. Is this really true?” So, I quickly browsed through the accepted student list of SCoRe Labs and voila! It was true!
Then my mail inbox was flooded with several emails from GSoC which included a lot of official paperwork and messages such as acceptance verification letter, important tips on GSoC 2020 and their communication channels, and so on… I was so overjoyed and excited to see where this journey takes me.
…what now?
Amidst all this excitement, there was a blank moment in my head… “what now?”, I questioned myself. As a first step, I joined their communication channels and followed the instructions in the lot of emails I’ve got and then I reached out to the project mentors via Gitter where we scheduled a meeting to discuss on the project proceedings.
Last Saturday (9th May 2020), I had a discussion with the project mentors as to how things will be carried out. There were some changes in the project implementation and we had a discussion on the technology stack and chose technologies such as React.js for the web application and Flutter for the mobile application along with Flask and MySQL to handle the backend and data. I’m not very familiar with some of these technologies but since the coding period starts in June, I have more than enough time to be familiarized with these technologies when the need arises. They also recommended me to revise my milestones so that I would be planning exactly what is required from the project in a sensible and balanced manner. You can see the revised plan for Dengue-Stop here.
Since this is a brand-new project, I’m excited to see how it will turn out after some time and hopefully it will become something that is very useful for the community. That’s all for this week. Stay safe. Stay home. See y’all on the other side!
