RGSoC 2018 OSS Project Submissions (in ALL languages) are open! (gif by Ana Sofia Pinho)
Hello awesome mentors!
We are back with RGSoC 2018. It gives us immense pleasure to announce that our call for open source project submissions is now open, YAY!
You might have questions about the project submissions, so we have it all covered for you here:
What does it mean to be a mentor for RGSoC 2018?
Usually a mentor is a maintainer of the proposed project (or a core contributor) and is the project’s dedicated contact person for the
team throughout the program. Checkout our mentors guide for more information.
Our project doesn’t use Rails. Can we still apply to RGSoC?
Yes. Even though our name use ‘Rails’ in our program, we are a language agnostic program, and we’ve had projects in the past using a
variety of languages like Python, Rust, and Javascript. Projects in all programming languages and using all technologies are welcome!
When will we be informed about whether our project has been selected for RGSoC 2018?
You have until January 24, 2018 to submit your project; this year, we will be looking through all the submissions after the
deadline, so you will be informed at the end of January.
So, what are you waiting for? Start right now and submit your project here. Use our mentors guide and feel free to send us an email to contact@rgsoc.org if you have specific questions.
Also, don’t forget to share it on social media to help us make RGSoC 2018 the year with the most diverse selection of projects. May the force be with you!
Participating in RGSoC 2017 not only gave a us the opportunity to work on an open source project, but also gave us lots of other opportunities so we can grow as techies. One of the most amazing opportunities we got from RGSoC 2017 was the conference offers. We got two conference offers, one for Dev Day 2017 and another for Ruby Conf AU 2018. And recently we participated in DEV DAY 2017, which was held at Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo in Sri Lanka. Let’s see how interesting it was..😇
On 9th November 2017 early morning (8:00 am) we arrived at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo in Sri Lanka. Both of us were very excited about DEV DAY and the first thing we saw when we were entering the hall, was a huge group of techies having breakfast; let’s say networking. After the registration, wearing our name tags, we also joined the groups to have breakfast together.🥪☕ And we were so glad that we joined them, because we met new friends who enjoyed listening to what we did during RGSoC and we also learned a lot about them.
After the breakfast, then arrived the most awaited sessions.🎉 Altogether DEV DAY 2017 had around 24 sessions, where two of them are opening keynotes, one is a closing keynote and the others are parallel sessions where we had to split up according to our interests.
Sessions started with Marcus Devold Soknes opening his keynote where he shared his experiences in Sri Lanka. One thing he tried to emphasize was looking at our products as a shop when we are measuring their growth. And he also talked about concepts like, design thinking, design driven culture, the lean start-up and etc. He shared that he adopts lean startup structure while making sure that the customer is always first. And he concluded his keynote sharing the words, “Keep it Simple”☝.
The second keynote was done by Satyajeet Singh , who is currently the Head of Platform Partnership in India at Facebook. During his session he talked about Facebook’s vision, which is to bring the world together. He also explained about the multiplier effect using the examples like Baby Chakra and Rappler. And to conclude his talk, he shared about Facebook’s services such as FbStart and Facebook Analytics.
Dev Day 2017 Speakers (Image : ReadMe)
Then there was a short tea break with snacks ☕ and next came the parallel sessions. Just like the hall was split in to two for the parallel sessions, we (team fusion) also had to split in to two, so we can attend the sessions , according to our preference. There were 20 parallel sessions in three different tracks namely, DISC (DevOps, IOT, Security, Cloud), ACLA (Architecture, Coding, Lean, Agile), and IDEU (Innovation, Disruptive, Entrepreneurship, UI/UX). And we could attend six parallel sessions altogether. For some of the sessions we attended together, for some, we attended separately. But it was fun , because we could share the interesting points we learned from each of these sessions with each other during our evening tea break, which made
the evening tea, tastier. ☕😁
And following are the parallel sessions we attended. 👇
Handling Uncertainty in Data ware housing by Dinesh Asanka
Demystifying Service Based Architecture – Journey towards micro services and ahead by Thurupathan Vijayakumar
The Electricity Between Us: Humans and Information by Ben Taylor
Exploring Narrative techniques for delivering UX Design by Nivedita Kamat
An introduction to the Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs by Ben Sadeghi
Give your app the ability to think, using Azure machine learning, Cognitive Services, and neural networks by Haritha Thilakarathne
During each of these interesting session we learned something new. Some topics were totally new to us, yet, were interesting. We learned about Big data, concepts like fuzzy categorization and Box plot method, the importance of using design patterns, data embodiment, how products like Google Home and Cortana are being a part of digitizing the world, the importance of mastering the storytelling for UX design, how important is the user in product development, cognitive services, Microsoft AI, cognitive computing, concepts in Machine Learning and many more. Most of these sessions were not just interesting sessions that gave us lot to learn, but also eye openers for us. 👀
And we should also mention about the amazing closing keynote done by Torgier Andrew Waterhouse, who is currently the Director of Internet & New Media at ICT Norway. He started his keynote explaining us about the possibilities of the technology. Then he raised the question, “How can we empower each other to be superheroes with technology?” , which made us think for a while, because why not? 💪🚀 Throughout his talk, he talked about the history of Internet, how it is being an effect on improving the societies, and how important it is for us. And he also said, “You don’t need permission to put something on the Internet” meaning we don’t need permission to innovate and launch it on the internet, which triggered us to think about our innovative skills. However he also emphasized the fact that we should use internet correctly.
Our Dev Day 2017 moments (Image : ReadMe and Janakshi's Phone)
Apart from these wonderful sessions and tea breaks, we also got the chance to enjoy a wonderful lunch which was full of flavours. 😁 During the lunch break, apart from eating all the good food 🍝🍨🍰, we got the chance to network with lots of new faces for us, yet not so new to the IT Industry. One of them was Dr. Raomal Perera, who was also a Dev Day 2017 speaker. It was really nice to talk to him and the other new friends about our experiences and also about their experiences.
So this is how interesting was our experience at Dev Day 2017. It was indeed a great day for the both of us. And we still have one more conference to experience as a team, well, as Team Fusion. And that’s RubyConf Australia 2018. We are so excited!..😇 And we would like to thank our lovely RGSoC team for giving us these amazing opportunities. It really means a lot for us. You are the BEST.👍
Well, a part of team Alexa. Unfortunately, Sasha @melanoya couldn’t go. :(
But she was in my heart the whole time!
A couple of weeks ago I attended Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. It is said to be the largest tech conference in the world – this year there were more than 60 thousand attendees, according to the conference website. I’ve been at meetups and tech conferences before, but never outside Russia, and I definitely have never been at a tech event of this scale.
Opening night
First night of the conference, there was an opening ceremony for the Web Summit, where CEOs of large tech companies and government officials were discussing the need to build relationships between tech and non-tech organisations. There were also talks about the challenges that the industry will face in the next years. I particularly liked Bryan Johnson’s talk about the need to develop some tools to improve our own brain, instead of relying on artificial intelligence.
Opening night. Photo taken by me.
First day
First day of the conference was very busy and tiresome for me, because I wanted to attend all the talks at the same time, and the venue was truly gigantic: there was a stadium full of people, and there were four huge pavilions. It took me about 20 minutes each time just to get from one side of the venue to another, but I did attend the talks I wanted to hear the most. I liked the talk of comma.ai’s founder George Hotz about self-driving cars and the future of open source. He believes that the only way car companies will be able to stay in the market is for them to open their source code and let other programmers review it and contribute.
After the main program, there was a Sunset Summit without talks, but with good music, food and interesting people to meet. I met a startup from Romania, some programmers from Georgia, and many other people from different countries. And I made myself a pin at Google lounge!
A customized Android pin! I tried to make it look like me, but didn't succeed. :( Photo taken by me.
Second day
Second day was less tiresome for me, mostly because all the talks I attended were at one place: binate.io, a conference about data science and machine learning. I’ve listened to talks on psychohistory – a way to learn about people’s emotions during some historical events, on security of users’ data, and many other interesting things.
Random slide from one of the talks. Photo taken by me.
This day I also met team Gemini!
In the evening, I attended an afterparty for women in tech, where I met some incredible data scientists, programmers, and tech writers.
Last day
I decided not to attend too many talks at the last day of the conference, so I went networking instead. I met some incredible startups from all around the globe, focused mostly on education and building inclusive environment. The most fascinating for me was to meet a company from South Korea that developed devices for people who use Braille.
In the evening, there was a closing ceremony, after which I went home. I didn’t want Web Summit to end, and I wish I took some more time to get to know Lisbon. Anyway, it was a great summit, and I’m thankful to RGSoC for giving me the opportunity to attend the conference.
The first thing I saw when I arrived to Lisbon. Photo taken by me.
Almost two months have passed since the end of Rails Girls Summer of Code 2017, and we can’t shake off this blue feeling. After 3 fantastic months working with extraordinary people from all over the world - we miss it badly!
To help us cope, let’s take a little trip down memory lane!
Our fifth year in numbers
This year marked the fifth anniversary of RGSoC and the summer went on with a blast! If you don’t believe us, just look at the numbers:
RGSoC 2017 in numbers (Image: Inês Coelho)
We are so proud of our 20 teams, the goals they achieved this summer, how they have overcome the obstacles in their paths and how much they have grown! Some of our participants are already working in tech and we couldn’t be happier!
We couldn’t have achieved this without your help! You that donated to our campaign and sponsored these teams, you that mentored them during the summer, you that offered volunteer technical support and you that helped us organize and support RGSoC - you all contributed to make this summer a reality! Thank you!
End of Summer celebrations
The end of summer was commemorated all over the world, with public celebrations in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Tirana and Pristina. Some unofficial parties are still going on, as members of our ever-growing community keep bumping on each other at conferences and events!
End of summer celebration in Berlin, at Mozilla's headquarters (Image: Anika Lindtner)
After RGSoC is before RGSoC
This October, some of us got together in Vienna, while others joined up remotely, to wrap-up this edition of Rails Girls Summer of Code and to kick-off the 2018 edition!!! Yes, we are already working hard on that! And we will be back soon with news, so stay tuned!
Wrapping-up RGSoC 2017 (Image: Ana Sofia Pinho)
We are growing our team! If you are interested in helping us diversify tech, just send us a message - we’ll be happy to meet you!
The Open Source Summit is massive, with over a dozen different tracks. In fact, it is a conglomeration of at least four conferences: LinuxCon, ContainerCon, CloudOpen and the Open Community Conference. In addition, it is run in conjunction with the Embedded Linux Conference. More than 2,000 technologists attend to share information and learn about the latest in open technologies such as Linux, containers, and cloud computing. On the first day, there was a Women in Open Source lunch, which was a pleasant way to be welcomed and also to network. All members of the RGSoC community who were attending the summit found each other at the lunch:
Vaishali Thakkar, Inês Coelho, Jona Azizaj, and Kara de la Marck (Image Credit: official OSSummit photographer)
There were talks on the community aspect of open source woven throughout the main three days of the summit. On the third day, Linus Torvalds spoke in conversation with Dirk Hohndel. A theme of this conversation was the process the Linux community engages in when working on the kernel. It was interesting to hear Linus Torvalds emphasise the importance of the work done by kernel maintainers: “The people who do the work and are reliable are the most important in the community. We’re looking for more.” I also appreciated that Linus considered increasing diversity in open source intrinsically good: that it is vital to enable all people who are interested in open source to engage and contribute.
Dirk Hohndel in conversation with Linus Torvalds (Image Credit: official OSSummit photographer)
On the fourth day, there was an optional Diversity Summit which I happily attended. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo from that event, so here is a photo of all the attendees at the Women in Open Source lunch!
Women in Open Source lunch attendees (Image Credit: official OSSummit photographer)
During the summit, I attended both technical talks and talks focused on community and diversity in open source. I found both to be highly beneficial for my work as a developer and also as an organiser of codebar.
Although I learned a ton throughout the conference, the information that had the most immediate impact on my life was finding out about the Outreachy programme. Outreachy was discussed during the Kernel Internship presentations and at Vaishali Thakkar’s talk on mentoring kernel newbies and then again at the Diversity Summit. Knowing that a programme exists is the essential first step to applying, so I am very grateful that I found out about Outreachy at the Open Source Summit. I messaged the organisers to see if I was eligible to apply (they have a clause that Google Summer of Code alumni are not eligible) and they assured me that RGSoC alumni were eligible for the Outreachy programme. What’s more, they said I should apply in the next few days, as the window for applications was about to close. Examining the projects to apply to, I was very interested in OpenTracing, specifically the task of splitting the Jaeger JavaScript OpenTracing library.
Happily, I was already signed up to attend the optional Tracing Summit the next day. As you can imagine, I listened to the Tracing Summit talks with rapt attention. Then it was time to fly home and work very hard on the application. Fortunately, I was accepted onto the Outreachy programme and will be contributing to the Jaeger JavaScript OpenTracing library!
Being at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit was an incredible experience, and it has led to opportunities that I had not previously imagined. I had a wonderful time, learned an enormous amount, made new friends, and got to spend more time with my super RGSoC supervisor, Inês Coelho.
Image Credit: Inês Coelho, Vaishali Thakkar, and Kara de la Marck
