Hi, Past year i was involved actively in open source contribution. One thing lead too another, in the end i was inclined to try for GSOC which overall gave me an experience worth sharing, so here i am doing it.
GSOC timeline constitute of the following (January-April):
- Organizations apply to be part of GSOC.
- After a month’s period selected organizations are announced by google.
- Interested students join the mailing list of their desired organization out of the selected ones followed by formal introduction of themselves to the mailing list.
- Students start contributing to the repositories present and interacting with the maintainers of the repos.
- After a period of almost two months of interaction and contribution, interested people have to make a project proposal out of the given ideas and submit it via google docs after review of one of the maintainers.
- After a month’s time the results are announced of the selected students based on their contribution and learning.
Four stages for GSOC preparation:
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Start off with contributing towards different organizations of your liking (languages and domains you prefer), based on the past data of the selected organizations.
Note: since you are starting early(like November or December)make sure to choose organizations which have been consistent part of GSOC for a long time.
- Make sure to put good number of pull requests, like improving the source code, optimizations, functional additions, improving documentations etc.
- Join gitter and interact regularly with the maintainers and other participants in order to know what they are looking for.
Note:I would strongly suggest to select your project idea(This can be out of the lot provided by the maintainers or one of your own) from the beginning and start working on it. - Make sure to interact with the previous participants and inorder to get a clear template idea of the proposal to be drafted. The reviewers look for clarity in the project idea proposed along with your capability to do it. In their reviews they will only help you in formatting, so you are solely responsible for your content and presentation.
At the end of process only one or maximum two students are selected by any organization to be a part of GSOC. But the journey of your preparation is what matters the most.
Unfortunately, last year I was not able to make it. But in the process of doing it, i gained a lot.
I was the top contributor to my repository for 5 straight months (Weecology Retriever) with a total of 33 commits to my name,
I became a technical contributor and part of the technical review team of google’s tensor flow project and became organizational member to opengenus.
Moreover, I won a free T-shirt by being part of the hacktoberfest hosted by github.(That’s where it all started)
In the end, i would say keep trying and contributing, as your hardwork would make you land somewhere good.
All The Best!!