Hey guys, in this blog I’ll give an introduction about the GSoC program and how I got selected for GSoC’23 with RocketChat.
Let’s start with my introduction. I am Vinayak Sharma, a 2nd-year B.tech CSE undergraduate at AKGEC Ghaziabad. I am also a Full-stack(MERN) Developer and backend developer at Team OSS.
What is GSoC?
Let’s talk about open-source software(this is too long I’ll use OSS from now on) first. OSS refers to software whose source code is publicly available allowing anyone to view, modify, and distribute it.
Google has its own Open Source Program that administers a 3-4 month-long collaboration between selected individuals and selected OSS organizations to develop their services with application period in March, a community bonding period in May, and coding period from June to September.
This collaboration is called Google Summer of Code in short GSoC.
My journey:
November 2022:
Around this time I joined Team OSS but didn’t fully understand what OSS meant sure I used the largest OSS project Linux (Ubuntu) (shoutout to this video which blew away my tiny brain🤩). I started making basic projects around this time. I was also looking for internships as I wanted some real experience and after exploring a lot I got to know about GSoC.
December 2022:
As I was searching for participating organizations and learning I stumbled upon a few organizations which matched my skillset among them I liked Rocket.Chat and Zulip.
January 2023:
I started reading their docs and how to set up the local environment and only I know how many times I messed up. It was my first time looking at such a large codebase. I got disheartened😞 and decided to give up on GSoC.
February 2023:
I decided to give it one more try as I was not landing any internships and didn’t want to let my all hard work in searching for a perfect organization go to waste. At this time I started attending some meetups and talking to some fellow contributors and in one of the meet I learned an important thing, that I don’t have to understand the whole codebase to get started, this was a turning point for me. I explored some projects in Rocket.Chat and found embedded.chat, it was a really active project so decided to try it out. I made some issues and some small PRs in it. I also participated in JWoC and MLH hackathons also around this time.
March 2023:
As the application period and my end-semester exams were coming close I was in a really in the zone😵💻. I dedicated a lot of time to exploring other prospective projects, talked to other mentors, and started exploring Rocket.Chat’s Apps-Engine. I still remember the exact date 19th March on which I got to know about Whiteboard Integration Project and decided to talk to its mentor Shiqi Mei. He was really helpful and reviewed my proposal.
April 2023:
After submitting my proposal I decided to contribute to it better understand it as it was based on Meteor.js and in this month I was able to implement favorite boards and search features in it.
May 2023:
And received the best notification of my life !!!🤩
My Project:
I will create a Rocket.Chat App integrating Markboard for enhanced team collaboration. I’ll understand the Rocket.Chat and Markboard APIs, design the app’s features and UI, develop it using the Rocket.Chat App SDK and Markboard API, test it thoroughly, and submit it for approval on the Rocket.Chat App Marketplace, and publish it for users to download and use.
Present Day:
Today the the community bonding period will finish and from tomorrow coding period will officially begin. After getting selected I networked a lot of interesting people across the world who have a lot of experience in their field. Many people also reached out to for advice which was a surreal experience in itself😅 . If I want to give some advices to my past self and anyone starting out ,they will be to “Don’t stop due to Impostor Syndrome” and most importantly “Believe in yourself” .
Well writing blogs is tough😆 and I am glad I got it done just before coding period , thanks for reading my blog🙏, if you have any suggestion or question please feel free to reach out to me . Signing Off🚀