Are you a beginner? want to get started with open source contribution? If your answer is -Yes, then go ahead and read the post, you may find some usefull stuffs.
OutreachySeriously saying- Outreachy is an opportunity for me. Outreachy helps me to grab an internship in the organization I want to contribute for. Outreachy is a program to code, learn and collaborate with amazing open source Organization. This is an amazing platform to build something. This is a kind of Google summer fo code internship program, but the difference is, this program is only open to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people internationally. For more you can visit here
How to get started
First thing that matters a lot is, the Organization. First, select an organizaion according to your area of interest and your skills (the most important thing). Are you a newbie? you don't have any technical knowledge yet?- No problem at all!! There are some documents related projects offered by organizations, you can submit proposal for that. It will be highly recommend to choose project according to you skills. For example- If you have knowledge of javascript, choose projects that required JS knowledge. Point to be noted here, "You can learn advanced topics of a particular programming language during the internship, but it is not possible to learn language from scratch and then work on project".
How did I get started
One of my senior in college told me about this program. I will be always thankful to him. It was 3rd March, I was just going through the program website and then through the organizations and then projects. It was very hard for me to decide organization. Yes, its true, till that I was not sure about which organization I want to contribute for. Afterwards, I gone through the projects of Mozilla, One project which caught my eyes was "Make firefox looks great on desktop" . I don't know why but my cursor always stopped there. So I gone through the link my mentor provided for getting started with project. When I was done with setup and all, I contacted my mentor Gijs Kruitbosch.
A Big Question- What is important contribution or proposal?
At the end of program period, I had 5 patches merged in firefox. So, at that time exactly the same question was going around in my mind. So I asked this to my mentor- ”What is important contribution or proposal?” And his response was satisfying enough. He says "For me, your involvement in project is more important but you can't ignore proposal". Yes, Contribution shows your skills and knowledge, but proposal conclude everything- your skills, knowledge, experience, And the most important your involvement in project. It's important because in some organization your mentor is not the one who is reviewing your proposal, so take care of this.
The Result day
During the program my mentor told me one thing that was soul satisfying: "It's been impressive -- to the point where I've needed to go find more work for you to do!" Yes!! I solved all bugs he mentioned in the wiki for Linux operating system. I always ask him for more bugs.
The result day 22nd April. In this round there was change in result declaration time(In last round it was 7:00 PM UTC but in this round it was 4:00 PM UTC) when I was going through wiki It was 7:00pm UTC, afterwards it was updated. And I was unaware of this update (I still think about this, and say WTH!!). That day one of my friend messaged me exactly at 9:30 pm (4:00 pm UTC) - "Hey Rakhi, Why they didn't declare result yet its 9:30 pm- with this she provide me the the link of wiki too". And when I clicked on that link, result were published.. Ahh, I was blank at that time, And then just saw my name- ohh my gosh... It's me!!! I don't know why but I was in silent mode for few minutes :P . I am Super excited to work with my mentor Gijs Kruitbosch He is the best mentor I ever have.
