[this post is available online at https://s.apache.org/ejj5q ]
by Sanyam Goel & Kevin A. McGrail
Sanyam first came to the ASF as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) student in 2017;
since then he has become a committer and contributor to Apache Fineract and
active participant with Apache community initiatives. Sanyam, along with Kevin
(a.k.a. "KAM"), a long-time ASF Member involved with the Apache Incubator and
SpamAssassin projects, were selected to represent The Apache Software
Foundation at GSoC's 2019 Mentor Summit.
Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on introducing students to
open source software development. Students work on a 3 month programming
project with an open source organization during their break from university.
Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together 15,000+ student
participants and 25,000+ mentors from over 118 countries worldwide. Google
Summer of Code has produced 36,000,000+ lines of code for 686 open source
organizations.
As a part of Google Summer of Code, student participants are paired with a
mentor from the participating organizations, gaining exposure to real-world
software development and techniques. Students have the opportunity to spend the
break between their school semesters earning a stipend while working in areas
related to their interests.
About the ASF and GSOoC: "The Apache Software Foundation has been a GSoC
mentoring organization every year since the program's inception. As a mentoring
organization, the ASF is able to draw attention and new talent to many of its
projects; Apache projects benefit from contributions and galvanize new
community members by mentoring students; and students have an invaluable
opportunity to gain experience by working directly with the individuals behind
Apache projects. This, in turn, enriches the Apache community as a whole, and
furthers the ASF’s mission of providing software for the public good."
At the ASF, GSoC is overseen by Apache Community Development ("ComDev"), the
committee that welcomes new participants to the Apache community and mentors
them in "The Apache Way". Former ComDev VP and Google Summer of Code
administrator Ulrich Stärk, along with Apache OpenMeetings VP and GSoC mentor,
Maxim Solodovnik, helped lead the ASF's participation in GSoC this year, with
the support of numerous Apache community members.
The ASF provides an established framework for intellectual property and
financial contributions that simultaneously limits contributors potential legal
exposure. Through a collaborative and meritocratic development process known as
"The Apache Way", Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available
software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache
License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy
Apache products.
As we gear up for Google Summer of Code 2020, we wanted to take a moment and
share some of the experiences from last year's GSOC!
In Google Summer of Code 2019, 23 students were selected by a careful analysis
and ranking. 17 students successfully completed their Google Summer of Code
projects with the support of 45 mentors spread across dozens of Apache projects
that include Allura, AsterixDB, Beam, Camel, Fineract, Gora, Kudu, Mnemonic,
Nemo (Incubating), OODT, SpamAssassin, and more.
Quick Report on the GSoC 2019 Numbers for Apache.org:
- Accepted projects: 23
- 1st evaluation: 22 passed, 1 failed
- 2nd evaluation: 17 passed, 5 failed
- 3rd evaluation: all passed
Total Apache Mentors: 45
Sanyam and KAM were lucky enough to be selected as the delegates of the Apache
Software Foundation for the GSoC Mentor Summit & the 15th GSoC anniversary.
On 10th March 2019 we got our invitations from Google: "You have been invited
to be a Mentor for The Apache Software Foundation in Google Summer of Code
2019".
With this invitation, there comes a huge pool of responsibilities to mentor
students. For Sanyam, it was his first time to provide mentorship at such a
great level and to drive the complete project with the college student.
Sanyam: "By providing the complete guidance throughout the GSoC Period at the
same time, though I had provided mentorship to at the university level to
juniors in college. I also learned to manage the project and how to play the
role of project lead to fulfill the project with the timelines with the student.
I was really excited to meet Google Open Source team in person and Kevin A. Mc
Grail (KAM) along with 332 mentors from 162 organizations and 42 countries to
share their ideas about open source and to discuss their experience of GSoC
2019. I would like to thank Ulrich Stärk and Maxim Solodovnik for serving as an
organization admin for the ASF community."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 1: Thursday | Munich, Germany - Marriott München
[see photos at https://s.apache.org/ejj5q ]
Day 1 of the summit is started by checkin into the Marriott Hotel, where we met
the Google OPSO team just near the entrance and reception of the hotel.
Google OPSO team was very welcoming and welcomed every mentor by providing a
Goodie bag along with a mouth watering sweet.
At the reception, we met Mario Behling from FOSSASIA community along with
mentors from various organisations like Mifos Initiative, SCoRE Labs and
DBpedia where we talked about the pocket science project.
Then we all headed to lunch, where we met dove into the discussions about the
OSS and how umbrella organisation manages the student applications to select
the students for Google Summer of Code.
GSoC Mentor Summit started with the opening reception dinner along with opening
notes from the Google OPSO team which lead to a small game named as person
scavenger hunt which had a sole purpose to connect and meet the mentors from
different organisations and to interact with them to discuss more about open
source with some drinks and food.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 2: Friday | Munich, Germany - Fun Day (City Scavenger hunt / Castle Tour)
On the celebration of the 15th anniversary of GSoC, Google allocated an extra
day this year at the mentor summit for fun activities like Castle tour and City
Scavenger hunt.
Sanyam participated in the Scavenger hunt where some group of mentors had to
explore the city on their own to find the clues and the top 2 teams got the
prize. Sanyam was lucky enough to be with the winners team. And some mentors
like KAM went for a really nice castle tour thanks to our host, Google.
The day ended up with informal conversations among the mentors over dinner and
games in the ballroom of the Marriott.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 3: Saturday | Munich, Germany - Unconferences (Yay!!)
Day 3 was one of the most exciting days at the event. We had a lot of sessions
organized by different organisations in the form of an unconference, which is
"a loosely structured conference emphasizing the informal exchange of
information and ideas between participants, rather than following a
conventionally structured programme of events."
Mentors organized the unconference sessions on Saturday and Sunday. The
unconference slots were planned with two rounds of lightning talks but ended
with three rounds of lightning talks :-). A lightning talk is a platform for
organisations to present on the work of their GSoC 2019 and GCI 2018 for 3
minutes. KAM also presented a lightning talk for ASF and Apache SpamAssassin on
Saturday morning.
After lunch, all the mentors and the Google OPSO team gathered in a lawn just
outside the Marriott for a group photograph.
["GSoC 2019 Mentors Photo"]
We were involved in various unconferences sessions like:
- How to get more Women interested in FOSS
- The Fundraising Session (Presented by Kevin A. McGrail)
- Source code preservation
- Google Season of Docs (GSoD)
- Intro to licenses and why we need them
After attending all the talks, we also discussed how to retain students after
the completion of the GSoC period.
After the last lightning talk we all managed to spend some more time together
to enjoy dinner, playing foosball, making funny poses on the photo booth along
with enjoying the famous chocolate room (Oh, did we forget to mention about the
famous chocolate table? This year, Google managed to have a complete room of
chocolates!) where mentors across the globe shared the local country chocolates
with each other!
Day 4: Sunday | Munich, Germany - Final day :(
Unfortunately, it was the last day of the mentor summit. The day started with
continuation of lightning talks where Sanyam and KAM almost managed to attend
all the lightning talks and got to know more about the other GSoC organisations
and their amazing projects from GSoC 2019.
We attended some more unconference sessions on the following topics
- GCI Info & Feedback with Google
- GSoC Feedback session
- Breaking the barrier for the newcomers
- Interviews at Silicon Valley
Then we all headed for the final lunch of the summit. By this point, most of
us knew each other and some are planning to extend the trip by visiting some
other cities, or some are planning to return back to their home countries. We
all gathered for the closing session and all mentors had made a great network
of cool people in the open source community!
We have also met a lot of mentors who were previously GSoC students. We had a
lot of discussions about the experiences of being a student as well as a
mentor, what motivated them to become a mentor and how they're contributing to
their community.
[photo of Joey Schlichting, Sanyam Goel & Kevin A. McGrail]
Overall, it was one of the lifetime experiences for every representative. The
trip was full of memories and we got to learn so much, we also made new and
special friends throughout the summit.
The GSoC Mentor Summit-2019 was a wonderful experience and we would like to
thank the Google, The Apache Software Foundation, and once again, the ASF GSoC
Organisation Admins, Ulrich Stärk and Maxim Solodovnik and the event hosts from
the Google Open Source Team.
GSoC 2020 is underway now and we are just gathering project ideas and mentors.
Students looking to get involved, please see
http://community.apache.org/gsoc.html
Sanyam Goel started his journey with ASF by participating in GSoC 2017 as a
student and continued contributing actively to OSS, currently serving as a
committer of Apache Fineract. He also participated as a mentor in Google Code
In and Outreachy programs for Mifos Initiative and DIAL community and always
keen to spread the word about OSS to create an impact around the globe and
focus on reducing the barriers for newcomers into OSS.
Kevin A. McGrail, better known as KAM, is a VP emeritus of the Apache
SpamAssassin project where he has battled spammers for years. In addition to
helping the SpamAssassin project, he has served as in the office of treasurer
and fundraising for the Apache Software Foundation. He is also a member of the
Apache Incubator project where he mentors new projects at the ASF including
echarts, IoTDB & brpc. In his $dayjob, he works at InfraShield.com doing
cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.
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"Success at Apache" is a monthly blog series that focuses on the processes
behind why the ASF "just works"
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache
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