GSoC Mentors' Summit 2019 - 15 years celebration at Munich

My apologies for posting so late about this event from 2019 when it’s time for GSoC 2020 session to be concluded. In my defence, I've been preoccupied with unforeseeable circumstances and their uncontrollable consequences.

Regardless of that, with this blog, I'll try to relive and cherish my experience while attending Google Summer of Code 2019 (GSoC) Mentors Summit which held in Munich, Germany from 17-20 October 2019. I had been associated with the Mifos Initiative for around 3 years by then. This organization gave a brilliant opportunity to me (a mentor), Rahul (an organisation admin) and Sanyam (under the umbrella organization - Apache Foundation) to represent it in the summit for serving as mentor or admin during GSoC 2019.

This was the first time the summit was held outside the US and was for 3.5 days to mark the completion of 15 years of Google Summer of Code! It used to be a 2-day event usually.

The adventure began (so to speak) much before the actual event when I faced issues in my German Visa application. The German Embassy in India had been dealing with some administrative challenges and despite a timely application, taking a month’s time as margin from the date of the event, I couldn't get my Visa approved. As the date of event approached, my stress level started peaking and only after an intense session of pleading the officials and waiting for the whole day, could I get my Visa on the evening of 16th October. I booked a flight right away and landed in Munich the other day (just in time!). To put things in perspective, what took me a month should have taken 7-10 days.

First Day
It was the welcoming day - we were provided with a welcome kit containing a Tshirt (an event is incomplete without this ritual, especially when it's Google that's conducting it), 1-day train pass, a map of the beautiful city of Munich and a nice 'heart' made of some kind of exotic bread (if my memory serves me!).
 




We got the keys to our rooms, had lunch and I had a great chat on German universities and the culture with Andreas who's a junior professor at a German university.

In the evening, our trio joined Aveek and Till from The Linux Foundation during a visit to the BMW museum - one of the things the city is famous for! Have a look at these futuristic concept cars.
  
                      

The 'Chocolate Day' ritual was observed this time as well. A whole room was dedicated to chocolates brought by people from all over the globe! I could not get to enjoy them, though since I'm one of those rare species who is not a fan of chocolates. However, it was such a nice thing to see so many people contributing.

 

After dinner, Stephanie addressed the mentors with the agenda for the days to follow. 

Second-Day
The second day was the 'day out'. In the morning, Stephanie and team arranged a tour to Nymphenburg Castle - the summer house of the rulers of Bavaria. The significance of the places that we came across upon the route to the castle was also shared along the way. I was completely unaware of the Munich Olympic Games massacre which was explained to us while we crossed the (now defunct) Olympic Park.
In the castle, we were made abreast of German history - the Kingdom of Bavaria, to be specific. The tour guide for the palace, Weller Hillermann, was very experienced and cordial who explained the history and significance of various arts and antiques of the palace in great detail. I wish I had studied history earlier so that I could have made better sense out of such visits :P 


After returning from the castle, we took part in the Treasure Hunt event that was organised in a way to explore various places of the city. It was fun as well as challenging to reach those places when none of us knew German.

Third-Day
The third day was packed with Lightning Talk sessions in the morning and knowledge sharing sessions till evening. I've added some of the talks and related notes that I jotted down. 

I and Rahul also had a chat with Roni, a product strategist who has extensive experience in fintech and wanted to know about Mifos. She shared her experiences on how Chinese authorities are leveraging the latest technology to solve problems in the contemporary world.

During dinner, there were games like Hold my beer! I don't remember the actual name of the game but it was related to that only but it was fun :D



Fourth-Day
Comes the conclusive day with Lightening talks in the morning and some other sessions after that. I gave a small talk related to how my mentee - Moksh - contributed to the organisation and the program despite challenges of internet shutdown because of law and order situation in his state.




After lunch, the event concluded. We decided to tour some neighbouring countries before heading back home.

It was really a fun-filled time where we got to know a lot about various organizations, their works and how they are doing their bit to make the world a better place following and promoting open source.

I'm sharing some of the key takeaways from the sessions below:
  • Funding for Open Source by Kevin McGrail, Apache Foundation
    • Be shameless while going for the cause
    • Even if you possess no knowledge of technology, try to be as good as possible and follow the above point
    • Prepare pitches: 10-20 seconds pitch and some 'elevator pitches' - 5-10 words pitch for different occasions
    • Justify using numbers and stats
    • Try to get whatever funding you can: Azure credits or Discounted services etc - something is better than nothing
    • Best time to approach: Start or financial years when sponsors decide their financial strategies for the year
  • Maintaining Easy by Oleg Nenashev, Jenkins
    • He demonstrated how his organisation manages repo effectively leveraging various plugins like:
  • Feedback/Suggestions regarding GSoC and Google Season of Docs
  • Session on Open Assistant - SUSI - by Fossasia
  • Session on Silicon Valley Interview 
  • Some other projects that I found really interesting
    • Domoticz Home Automation
    • ZynAddSubFX - Software Audio Synthesizer
    • Friefunk - way to share net, especially to unprivileged people in underdeveloped countries 
This list may get updated with more content as I and my colleague Rahul were attending different events and he may also have some inputs to add. 

I tried to add as much info as I could gather so far because, be that as it may, "Better late than never" following "Keeping one's words" and "Sharing is caring" philosophies. Hope it provided an insight into what to expect from sessions like this; what they have for you, and how these help in promoting as well as improving the open-source community and programs so that if you happen to attend some, you may make the best out of it.

That was an amazing and unmatched experience. My sincere thanks again to Ed and the Mifos Initiative which provided me with this opportunity.


Looking forward to sharing more experiences. Till then, leaving you all with a flying dab (clicked in Brussels) :) 

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