Mentoring GirlScript Summer of Code 2019

Jul 09, 2019

GirlScript? Summer of Code? Erm, what?

GirlScript Summer of Code is a 3 month long Open Source program during summers conducted by GirlScript Foundation, a non-profit registered by Government of India and selected by Mozilla under Open Leadership program out of 51 open-source projects worldwide.

GirlScript Summer of Code was started in 2018, with an aim to help beginners get started with Open Source Development while encouraging diversity. Throughout the program, participants across the world get an opportunity to contribute to different projects under the guidance of experienced mentors. This year, the program was conducted from 1st March to 31st May 2019.

My experience…

Initially, I was a participant in GSSoC’19 and I contributed to a few projects including a popular Algorithm & Data Structure based repository on GitHub. In the first few weeks, I contributed as much as possible, and managed to grab a spot in the top contributors of this project. By the end of first month, I got transitioned to a mentor, thanks to the co-operation of all the hardworking organisers. I was the first one to be transitioned from a participant to a mentor and that too within first month! ✨

Being a mentor, there were the following basic tasks for me:

• Helping the participants with the concepts of Git & GitHub
• Reviewing pull requests, checking for plagiarism, handling issues on the repository
• Solving general queries on Slack
• Facilitating open source contributions and
• Promoting good coding practices and introducing coding conventions to the participants.

Besides all this, the main aim for me was to mentor as many participants as possible, making a great impact while doing the same and helping the participants learn as much as possible. And guess what? I mentored nearly 100 active participants and reviewed 100+ pull requests in a short span of a little over two months. To my surprise and as a reward of my hardwork, I also ended up being in the top 3 active mentors! 😍

Closing thoughts…

To sum things up, GirlScript Summer of Code is an amazing initiative by GirlScript Foundation and I am extremely happy to have been a part of this program. I learned a lot and made some amazing connections throughout this program. GSSoC is highly recommended to all those planning to start a journey to contribute to open source and also the people who aim to crack Google Summer of Code, as this can act as a basis for them while creating a sense of enthusiasm within them to contribute to open source.

That being said, to all those who wish to begin their journey in open source, I would love to help you (wait for it)… Git started. ;) You can connect with me on Twitter or Linkedin.