Edward Cable

GSOC Mentor Summit – A First Timer’s Experience

/in , /by

Each year at the conclusion of Google Summer of Code, Google invites all mentor orgs to send two mentors or org admins all-expenses-paid for a weekend-long unconference at Google’s offices in Silicon Valley for mentors to share their GSOC experiences and collaborate on growing open source together. Since I’m so close by, I’ve always deferred to allowing our mentors from abroad this great privilege and reward. But this year when I learned four of our mentors would be coming from abroad (we got a bonus attendee for GCI participation and one more from the waitlist), I figured it was my worth my luck to try and get picked from the waitlist and make the 7 hour drive to Silicon Valley to attend.

Lucky enough to get chosen from the waitlist, I was so glad I had the opportunity to attend my first mentor summit as it was a memorable and eye-opening experience and I regret that I’d missed out on attending all the years before. Here’s a few reflections on the event and my hope that all of our mentors get the chance to experience the mentor summit for the first time as well.

Overall the event was unforgettable in that it was incredible to see how passionate so many individuals and organizations were about open source, to witness firsthand the breadth and diversity of the many GSOC projects, and to see firsthand how much impact GSOC has had over the years.

Read more

Edward Cable

Star Contributor of the Month – Naman Dwivedi

/in , , /by

We are recognizing Naman Dwivedi, one of our recent GSOC interns who excelled in his project and has continued to contribute extensively since the summer concluded. From the start, we had heard great things about Naman and he delivered beyond our highest expectations; despite not having full clarity around requirements  during the summer he was able to build an entire mobile wallet framework architecture using the Android Clean Architecture approach and two well-designed apps powered by that framework, PixieCollect and MifosPay. Apart from being an Android wiz, Naman is always available, extremely patient, very thorough, and has a strong grasp of the business requirements and strategic importance of the applications he’s building. Since GSOC concluded, Naman has been actively maintaining his codebases, assisting with QA, and assisting in a strategy to help bring these solutions like PixieCollect to market. We look forward to leveraging the gifts and talents of Naman for many eyars to come.
Read more