Written in February.

A pre-APOGEE talk on Google Summer of Code (GSoC) was organised by CoStAA on 9th February 2020 in the LTC. Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on introducing students to open-source software development. Students work on a three-month programming project with an open-source organisation during their break from university. The speakers for the talk were Sarthak Sehgal (GSoC ’18, ’19, and ’20), Manish Thakur (GSoC ’19), and Apurv Bajaj (GSoC ’18 and ’19). The talk encompassed three broad topics namely organisation selection, communication and initial contribution, and project proposal. 

Organisation selection was taken up by Sarthak. He explained how this is the most crucial and time-intensive part and proceeded with general tips about respecting the Open Source culture. He stressed on how it is essential to not be bound by a particular framework. One should shortlist an organisation and become acquainted with the mentors as soon as possible. The importance of collaboration was also talked about. Debunking the myth that GSoC is just about coding and software development, he explained how it can also aid in entering research fields by choosing a suitable organisation. 

Manish Thakur then started his talk about communication and initial contribution. He talked about the importance of finding an organisation’s preferred mode of communication and how it is important to be clear with one’s issues. He emphasised that private emails are best avoided unless urgently required. The initial contribution made to an organisation is very important and decisive; one should be familiar with the contribution etiquette, the code formatting style, and the code updation practices adopted by the organisation.

After this, Apurv Bajaj talked about the submission of the project proposal. He spoke about the general proposal template and the importance of making one’s proposal stand out from the crowd. He shared his and Sarthak’s project proposal for GSoC ’18 as a sample. Sarthak added that different organisations have different proposal templates and guidelines and the template used by one’s organisation should be followed. 

In the end, Manish talked about the possibility of proposing one’s own idea and how it can stand out if the proposal is good enough. A Q&A session was held at the end of the talk.

The slides used in the talk can be found on bit.ly/gsoc-bits.