Hello there! Thank you for passing by!

Today I will be talking about my decision of choosing FOSSASIA as the organization to work with in the Google Code-In contest, and what this participation means to me.

I had found out about this contest from someone’s T-shirt at a programming summer camp. By that time, I had only had 12 years, so I hadn’t been eligible to participate yet, never mind the absence of experience and knowledge. Fast forward 4 years later, in 2015, I felt confident enough to join, with my only goal being the earning of a T-shirt. By the end of the contest, though, I also gained tons of knowledge and experience, for which I’m grateful up to this very moment. But that couldn’t have happened without the wonderful community that forms FOSSASIA.

So what is FOSSASIA?

FOSSASIA is an organization established in 2009, whose main objective is supporting open source technology. FOSSASIA’s community is formed of developers who work on open source projects (web applications, mobile applications and many many more), but also of designers and contributors who wish to see a better future for people’s lives everywhere around the globe. Besides that, they are the host of many events, summits, and programming contests that bring together people from all continents so they can create, develop, and share their work with the open source community. Why not pay a visit to their website?

What is open source?

I previously mentioned open source many times, so what is that? Open source refers to a program in which the source code is freely available to everyone for use and modification. In this way, open source creates many communities across the globe who develop and contribute to computer programs free for everyone, thus bringing more people together.

I chose to continue my work with FOSSASIA at 2016’s Google Code-In contest, because this community welcomed me with warmth, taught me a lot about open source, and helped me experiment with technologies previously unknown to me. I remember I once claimed a task about writing a git tutorial, and then I realized there are many aspects of it that I know nothing about, and that is how I learned a lot about it. I found FOSSASIA’s tasks the most fun and also the most suitable for me. I enjoy web development, Python and mobile apps development, and this organizations had just what I was looking for. Below are some of the repositories I’m interested in the most, go check them out!

  • Loklak Search - social media search server, collecting messages from various sources
  • Open Event - open event organizer server, for managing events
  • Susi AI - chat application, implementing AI, data science and machine learning

Their work doesn’t stop here, as they are continuously developing new apps and tools that people from all continents benefit from.

I’m trying to contribute as much as I can. So far, I have practiced many of my skills, not only in development, but also in git, especially by helping other students. As soon as I can, I’ll start working on more challenging tasks, especially Python ones, in order to build a solid foundation that will definitely help me in the future.

To conclude, I’m looking forward to the start of our Christmas vacation, so I have more time to contribute and help others, and I hope that in the future I will be able to join this contest again…as a mentor!

Google Code-In FOSSASIA