✨ Meet Team Fusion ✨
Hello Everyone!, ආයුබෝවන් | Ayubowan 🙏
We are Janakshi and Kalpani from Team Fusion, working on project OpenDF. We are not just any team, but the first ever Sri Lankan team, to be a part of RGSoC Journey and the one and only Sri Lankan team from RGSoC 2017! 😌🎉 We feel so lucky to be a part of RGSoC family and we thank Rails Girls Summer of Code team for giving us this golden opportunity.. 😇
So who are we?
We are two young ladies who love to code. But, that’s not enough for an introduction.. So this is who we really are. 👇
Janakshi : Janakshi Dulanga (22 years) is from Kegalle, Sri Lanka. She’s someone who loves to do lots of things, that’s right, a multi-tasker. Cooking comes first, then wandering about stars and music, and guess what? She loves Programming too.. She had to choose them all! She’s currently a software engineering undergraduate, from APIIT Sri Lanka, who’s waiting for her final degree results, and hoping to become a Software Engineer who can cook! 🔭💻👩🍳
Kalpani : Kalpani Ranasinghe (22 years) is from Kegalle, Sri Lanka. She is a Karate player, guitarist and pianist. She loves programming too. She wants to become a game developer and a Karate Referee in World Karate Federation one day. 🎮💻🥋 Currently she’s a computer science undergraduate, from University of Colombo School of Computing and apart from her studies she is playing for the Karate Team of University of Colombo.
So what are the similarities between them? Both of them are from the same school, were in the same class, from the same area, having the same height, left handers when it comes to writing, and the list goes on.. And the most important similarity, that made them a part of RGSoC, is their love for being a part of something bigger. 😊✨
The origin story!
It started, with Kasun Delgolla (currently a coach of Team Fusion), mentioning Rails Girls Summer of Code, in front of Janakshi. Being an undergraduate, who has completed the degree and wanted nothing but a way to gather experience before stepping in to the IT industry, as soon as she heard about that, she was curious, so she googled, and got to know about the RGSoC program and thought to herself, “This is cool!” and then she went through the requirements, and tried her best to achieve them all. That includes coming up with a team! Then having a teammate in her mind, she turned to Kasun Delgolla and Tharindu Delgolla, asking them to be a part of the team, as coaches. They said YES!!✌ and offered their help in finding the rest of the team coaches. The best part comes when Janakshi, asked from Kalpani to be her teammate. Janakshi didn’t know that Kalpani has lots of girls asking her to be their teammate for RGSoC, so she asked.
They say, girls are experts in saving screenshots for later.. See what they got out of it now? Memories!
Just like that Kalpani took a bit of time to make her choice.. And guess what she said YES!!!..✌ See? Is it even possible saying NO to your childhood friend? Nah.. Because both of them knew, they are gonna make a great team..😇 Then they were preparing for the application . First they came up with the name Fusion, which means “The process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.”⚛ Thank you google for letting us know about this beautiful meaning. As the next step, they went through the approved project list, and kept their eyes on two projects considering their familiarity with the required skills. With the help of Kasun and Tharindu, they finalized their decision. While the application process is happening, they wanted to find a suitable working place. What place is better than the place you learned it all? yeah, that’s why they wanted to work in one of their universities.
“If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.”
#### ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ⚡
They asked from APIIT Sri lanka, because they always knew, universities will never say “No” to the real need of students, and actually they did say YES!!..✌ See everything started with a YES for them.. So finding the room of requirement from APIIT, was a success! 🎉
Before submitting their application, they wanted to have a plan, a plan for everything, from the working schedule to , the project management tools. So they thought of using tools like Trello, and Slack. 📝✔ And they even had a plan for the working days that they are gonna miss. So they thought of mentioning in their application, how they are gonna cover up the workload, by working in weekends, if they ever miss a working day. May be having such plans, made them stand out from most of the applicants for RGSoC. Then they submitted their application after reviewing it many times, hoping to be one of the selected teams.. It was near midnight, for April 30th, when they heard the good news.. They got a mail from RGSoC team, saying “CONGRATULATIONS! We want to offer you a spot in Rails Girls Summer of Code 2017 as a sponsored team!”.🎉 They felt so happy and couldn’t even believe that they are one of those 20 teams, out of 190 teams, who got selected for RGSoC 2017! Oh the feels.. 💃
So that was how the Team Fusion made it to the Rails Girls Summer of Code 2017. Such a great and inspiring story.. Isn’t it?
Our Team | The Cool Team
Since you all know about the two of us now, here’s an intro for the rest of our cool team. 👇
Coaches
Kasun Delgolla: He’s currently working as the Head of Mobile Development in Riverview B2B- Sri Lanka. He’s a Enterprise Mobility & IoT Enthusiast. He’s loves to help people and play cricket. He’s our lead coach.
Tharindu Delgolla: He’s a well experienced software engineer from IFS- Sri Lanka, who’s also a technical consultant at the same company. He hopes to become a great film maker one day. Well, Good luck Tharindu!. He’s our remote coach, who’s gonna do the code reviewing for us.
Imran Hishaam: He’s a software engineer from Riverview B2B- Sri Lanka. He may be young, but he’s a genius and very passionate, when it comes to coding. He’s helping Team Fusion with ReactJS app development as a local coach.
Udani Gunasena: She’s a well experienced software engineer from ICTA Sri Lanka. She loves music and she’s a great pianist. And we must say, she has a keen eye, when it comes to reviewing UI designs. Currently she’s helping our team as a local coach.
Anuradh Caldera: He’s a software engineer from Riverview B2B- Sri Lanka, who’s currently working as an iOS developer. He’s a genius when it comes to development and the management of native mobile applications. He’s also great at frontend development and will be helping our team with ReactJS as a local coach.
Our Mentor
Milindu Kumarage: He’s a software engineer from Sysco Labs- Sri Lanka. He’s very enthusiastic when it comes to helping the IT Community in Sri Lanka. He’s doing the best he can to help us and guide us through all the project related work as our mentor.
Our Supervisor
Ramón Huidobro: He’s a freelance software engineer who knows how to have fun. He loves to help people. He enjoys swimming and hiking too. The best thing is, he’s our supervisor for this summer!
And this is our lovely team!😎👇 Looking fantastic right?
The Project- OpenDF
Project OpenDF is a cloud based digital forensics tool which helps forensics investigators in investigating forensics evidences. It enables the investigators, mine the evidences effectively and report successfully. Through OpenDF, the usability of analysis of processed forensics data can be improved. It supports team collaboration in investigations and has been able to increase the confidentiality and security of the investigation. Mind Blowing !!.. Isn’t it?
So what exactly are we doing with OpenDF?
During the summer, we are developing a new file browser component using React, so it can be integrated later, once the OpenDF UI is fully implemented in ReactJs. And also, we are hoping to contribute to document the OpenDF APIs. Well, that’s some exciting work, eh? 😁
How’s our journey with RGSoC so far?
It’s been only two weeks since we started our RGSoC journey, and we are already feeling blessed to be a part of this family.
Before July 1st
We had a list of tasks to be completed before July 1st, we tried to complete them all to have a better start. From May to June, we both tried our best to get familiar with the project technology stack. From the setting up of the environment for the project to coming up with a plan for each month and each week was done during the month of June. Since we love to do everything in proper and tidy way we started a Trello board to track our To-do list for each week and our improvement. We even created a GitHub account for our team and published a blog for our team, Team Fusion. Be professional!! 👆
During the last 2 weeks of June, we had many discussions with our mentor Milindu regarding the user requirements for the file browser. And we managed to finalize all of the requirements with the help of our mentor and our coaches. So we were ready for the Start of RGSoC 2017! And were pretty confident too. Because we did months of preparing and had a great plan!.
After the start
Even before July 1st, the starting date of RGSoC, we knew this summer is going to play a huge part of our lives. So we couldn’t just start it without celebrating! That’s how our tiny kick-off celebration, which happened on July 3rd 2017, the very first working day of RGSoC, came into the picture. That was a wonderful and lovely day for all of us. Even some of our coaches could make it to the event. They helped us finishing the special cake! Actually they did the coaching for that too.. How to slice a cake better! 🎂🔪
And this is how our first day of RGSoC 2017 looked like.👇
That Cake, Coffee and those team chats on the project and the plan, and our very first call with the supervisor, gave the start to our RGSoC journey, in the best possible way. By the end of our 1st Week of RGSoC, we could finalize the user stories and the wireframes for all the requirements as planned. Actually sketching wireframes is the real deal, if you are someone who’s going through exam stress! You can ask about that from Kalpani.💆
Opportunities were always on our side, we just had to take them. One day a very special person visited to see how we work. And that was professor Gamindu, from APIIT Sri Lanka. And he suggested an interesting way to improve how we work. That’s Scrum Meetings. According to his suggestions, we are starting Scrum meetings from this week onwards. And our Scrum Master, is none other than Dr. Gamindu, himself! Our coaches are very helpful .. Although we disturb them every week, every day and actually every time, they do not hesitate to give us the best support they can give. And since we are learning most of the new technologies from scratch, their helping hands are precious to us.. Be it an UI related matter, an issue related to implementation, or project management issue, our coaches always made time to give us the best possible solution. So they saved us through the struggles. 😁
This is coach Imran, trying to teach some sense into our brains, on structuring the implementation for the file browser component.
So far we’ve had five coaching sessions which made us realize that there are so many things that we have to learn. The good thing is, because of their advices, now we are adapting to read more and gain knowledge rather than cramming video tutorials. :D Thank you very much for everything you’ve done for us so far and making sure we are not stuck in the same place for years. (බොහොම ස්තූතියි | Bohoma Sthuthie .. 😁)
For these three weeks of RGSOC, we have learnt about Javascript, Git, React , Redux, JSON, ES6 vs ES5, Swagger annotations, APIs and etc by giving our highest commitment. Time is flying so fast. So, we started the development process. Currently we are working on the searchable fields panel and Query bar of our file browser. It is off to a good start! And now our weekly Trello boards looks good and the Done and In-Progress lists are keep getting populated! ✅
Our goals for this summer
We want to learn more about the technologies from the technology stack of OpenDF and other related technologies which are being used in the industry. And our final aim for this summer is to give our best shot at it and do our tasks, in the best possible way. And of course yes!, We are going learn so much! 💻📚😌 Both of us share our knowledge with each other. Most of the times we do self studies in separate machines and discuss the things that we have learned. That is a better a way to learn quickly. And we want to continue this throughout this summer. 😌
And most importantly, we all know that a work like this can be very stressful. But it depends on how we embrace it. So why don’t we enjoy it instead - which is the exact thing we do. 😎💃🍕🍨 Our team find these kind of work more entertaining, than frustrating, which makes it more interesting in return.
So let’s enjoy being a part of RGSoC family!.. 😇🎉
Follow us on Twitter at @TeamFusionJK, @JanakshiDulanga and @KbKalpani and Read our blog on WordPress.